Caution: God At Work
May 2nd, 2010
St. David’s United
Rev. Dan Chambers
May 2, 2010
Psalm 16
Luke 9:1-6
Caution: God at Work
He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal…
Luke 9:1
From kindergarten to grade 8, I lived in the proud state of Illinois. We lived not in the cornfields, which were abundant, but in the woods, which were also abundant. We’d look out our back window and regularly see pheasants, cardinals, woodpeckers, rabbits emerging from the tangle of bushes and trees. In the summer, we’d rival Minnesota in the size of our mosquitoes, and though Minnesotans famously claim the mosquito as their state bird, ours were just as big and hungry.
Our home was near the Fox River, the territory of the Algonquin Indians, but by the time we got there, it was the home of Dairy Queen and Ben Franklin Pharmacy and the Town Pump bar and grill.
A few years ago my parents went back to Dundee to visit friends. They drove around the small town, our old neighborhood, and saw our old house which they built when they were only 35 years old. “It’s changed so much,” they said. The old school is gone, and the meadow we used to walk through on my way to school is now a huge condominium development. The outskirts of the town which used to be fields are now strip malls and the vast tracts of land that used to separate our small town from the suburbs of Chicago are now taken over by urban sprawl. Neither cornfields nor woods are abundant in that area anymore. Only the mosquitoes remain, as big and bold as ever.
“You can’t go home again”, Thomas Wolfe observed, and with a pang of regret, we admit he’s right.
The landscape of the church in North America has changed dramatically as well. You’ve heard me quote statistics that outline the precipitous decline of mainline denominations in Canada, how fewer and fewer people attend church and how more and more people check “no religion” on the census. But you may be as surprised as I was to hear the old sage, Loren Mead, make this observation about the age in which we live:
We are at the front edges of the greatest transformation of the church that has occurred for 1,600 years (since the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and suddenly Christianity shifted from being an outlawed religion to the official religion of the state) . It is by far the greatest change that the church has ever experienced in America; it may eventually make the transformation of the Reformation look like a ripple in a pond.
I wish I could say he’s got it all wrong. It would be handy to dismiss him as a crackpot, an off-base prognosticator, an academic who indulges in hyperbole. But for better or worse, he’s not. In fact, he’s not even a lone voice howling in the wilderness. He was simply one of the first to send up a flare and wave a flag of warning that the future church is not the church that has been. In the last 20 years, his predictions have held true and many others have joined the project of mapping the shifting landscape of religion in the 21st century.
Author and professor, Leonard Sweet, says, “It used to be that Christians could count on the home court advantage. Now, they’re all away games. And the crowd is not cheering for the Christians to win.”
We’re in a different world, and we can’t go home again.
So where does that leave St. David’s? As you know, we have challenges, and the challenges mean we’ll have to make some decisions, and the decisions mean we’ll have to be open to how the Spirit of God is calling us to be. We also know that wherever we go, whatever we decide, God will be with us. The God who journeyed with the Hebrew people through the wilderness and the God who remained present to the disciples abides with us still. Again, Leonard Sweet said, “These are the best of times and the worst of times. God does the best of things in the worst of times.” There is no doubt in my mind that God is up to something here.
About eight years ago, Rob Whittle organized a team at Palmer/Jarvis advertising, now DDB, to design a logo for St. David’s. He approached them one afternoon and said, “People, we’ve been asked to design a logo for the most important client you can possibly imagine.”
Wow, they thought. Who could this be? They’ve already done work for McDonalds and Nike and other major companies. Who could this be?
Rob said, “I need you to design a logo for God.”
Actually, the logo was for St. David’s, but a logo for “God” had a better ring to it and after all, Rob is in advertising.
So they talked and explored and met with me to find out who you are and what we wanted the logo to say to the world. A couple of weeks later, they presented us with three ideas, and the one we selected is at the top of your bulletin.
When in colour, the logo is blue, a colour of healing and hope.
The cross in the center refers to the central place of Jesus in our faith and in our lives. Of course, being Protestant, the cross is empty as it’s a symbol of resurrection living and the ongoing presence of Christ in our lives. You’ll notice the cross is at an angle; it’s not square in front of you like something fixed and static. The angle of the cross represents our faith moving forward, always changing, always growing, deepening, maturing.
The circle around the cross represents the world, but again, this isn’t a static circle. It’s a dynamic one of constant change, spinning, whirling, turning. As Christians, we’re called to be in this world in a healing, life-giving way.
It’s a great logo and fits perfectly with our vision statement: “Changed Lives, Changed World”. In other words, here, lives are changed for good. Here we rediscover purpose, we heal, we open to the presence of the sacred, we let grace do its work. But of course church isn’t only for us, and it certainly isn’t about us. It’s about being disciples of compassion and agents of justice in the world in the name of Christ and so not only are lives changed here, we also extend ourselves so that those in our community and in the world itself are changed for good. Changed lives for a changed world.
“Go to the towns and villages and proclaim the kingdom of God and heal,” Jesus told his disciples then and now. That means we can’t wait for people to show up on our doorstep, but that we’re called to go into the streets and coffee shops, the libraries and community centres, the hospitals and care facilities and shelters and proclaim the kingdom of God one conversation at a time, one visit at a time, one gift of food or clothing at a time, one smile or hug or handshake at a time.
I believe that not only is the world inevitably changing, and not only is our faith, if it is alive and kicking, constantly changing, but so is God. God is on the move and is always about to do a new thing, as the prophet Isaiah reminded us 2,500 years ago. The question remains unchanged: can we perceive it? This new thing God is doing, can we see it? The challenge for the Hebrew people Isaiah talked to and the challenge for us today is that God often shows up in places and times and in people we don’t expect, so it’s not easy to perceive the new things God is doing.
God is on the move, whether the church is ready to move or not. The Spirit of God doesn’t wait for institutions to catch up. This is a restless God who has traveling in the toes. It would be impossible to be a step ahead of God. It would be dumb luck to keep pace with God. If we even sense the direction God is moving, we’re doing well. Can we perceive it?
So we need to sense the direction of things. What is our future together? When the ground rules have shifted under our feet, how will we be a community of faith today and in the future? How will we continue to support each other, be there for each other, and also be there for those who don’t know yet that they have a home here?
The Visioning Team has talked about priorities and possibilities. We continue to examine our context and demographics. A few from the Visioning Group have met with a few of our committed members, both long established and newer, to hear what you’re thinking. On Sunday, May 30th, we’ll have a congregational meeting to discuss together more fully our situation. We’ll look at our finances, our volunteer base, our staffing configuration, and then we’ll talk about a few possible responses we might take. As we approach our congregational meeting still a few weeks away, please feel free to come and speak with me or the Chair of our Board, Deb Burian, if you have any concerns or questions or if you’d like to express an opinion. Give us a call or drop us an e-mail or make an appointment and we’ll talk.
We’re standing in a strange place: if you look at the statistics of many congregations in the United Church, we’re very healthy. We have more financial resources than most; we have far more children and youth than most; we have solid lay leaders and a fine staff and a congregation that respects and appreciates and even enjoys each other. We actively reach out to others in our community and offer care to our small corner of the world. I would say that we’re part of a genuine community of faith, or what Martin Luther King Jr. called “a beloved community.”
All that said, we’re in a position where our building is in need of serious repairs. After renovating the sanctuary about 5 years ago, we now need to attend to the roof and replace a couple of boilers. Each year we struggle to meet our operating budget and in those years we’ve ended in the black, it’s usually from the generosity of a few families. Having children and youth is wonderful, but we struggle to find Sunday school teachers and Colleen Blair often handles the youth program on her own. For several years running, we’ve relied on some blessed souls to Chair several critical committees, and this year there are a couple of committees that remain vacant without anyone to guide them, including Stewardship.
For me, the question is not so much, “Can we survive?” I think we can, in one form or another. The pressing question for me is how we remain most faithful to our call as a community of faith. What is the best use of our resources? How do we want to channel our energy? With seven other United Churches on the North Shore, does it make sense that all eight of us are scrambling to find money to fix the roof of our 50 year old buildings?
Do we need eight United Churches on the North Shore? Many of these churches were built in the 1950′s, when lots of people went to church. But the 50′s and early 60′s was an anomaly in the history of Christianity in North America. It was an unusual blip of high church attendance. Sunday schools were bursting at their seam; people were packed in the pews.
Ah, but Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas any more, and clearly the world has changed dramatically from that time. You can’t go home again.
One of the great blessings and a curse of our denomination is that power doesn’t come from above. We will not have a bishop tell us what we have to do, for example. Whatever we decide, it is our decision.
The advantage of this form of governance is that we’re largely responsible for our future. The direction we take is the direction we choose to go. It’s up to us to pray, listen to each other and to be faithful to the Spirit of Christ who calls us to come and follow.
The disadvantage is that sometimes congregations don’t make good decisions for the well-being of the larger Church. Sometimes it means congregations are not able to be proactive, or that they’re so comfortable with the familiar, they’re willing to dwindle and die rather than change. The decisions are in our hands. Whether we like it or not, no one is going to barge in here and tell us what to do.
This we know: We can’t go back again to the way it was. But we can move ahead in a way it wasn’t. We can choose to be agents of the kingdom of God and find ways to offer healing to a bent and broken world. We can let people know that church is more about compassion than judgment, more about peace than adversity, more about creative vision than oppressive doctrine, more about freedom than rigidity, more about kindness than theological hostility, more about life than death. We can let people know that God isn’t finished with us yet, and even in our fragmented being there’s a light of radiant hope that brightly shines.
I think we need a sign at the front of the church. You’ve seen signs along the road that read, “Caution: Children at Play,” or in a construction zone, “Caution: Men at Work” (what is the inclusive version of this?). We should have a sign that warns people as they come through these doors, “Caution: God at Work.” Or, if you prefer, “Caution: God at Play.” Either way it’s a reminder that the Spirit of God is at work within us and among us and God’s not finished with us yet.
Next time you walk into the church, envision that sign above every door: Caution: God at work. And you’ll know you are entering a place where lives are changed…for good.
With faith in the God at work in us all. Amen.
