July 31, 2005
|
|
|
| Transforming
Disciples, Our Core Values, Sabbatical Learnings Jeffrey Park – Church Picnic Sunday I want to share a few thoughts with you this morning that will be a preview of the sermon series on our core values that I will be delivering in the month of August. The series will continue with the theme of transformation we have been dealing with for the last two years, and I will also continue to share some sabbatical learnings. As most of you know, one of the things I did on sabbatical was to continue chairing the General Minister and President search committee through a second round of interviews for that position. We elected Sharon Watkins General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) last Tuesday morning, and installed here last Wednesday night in a wonderful and moving worship service at our General Assembly in Portland, Oregon. As we thank God for Sharon, we need to keep her and her family, along with our regional minister Bill Edwards and his family on our church’s prayer list. As Luke tells the story, Jesus has become so well-known that great crowds are coming to see and hear him. This particular time, the press of the crowd is so great that Jesus has to get into a boat in order to be seen and heard by the people who long to follow him. They want to know who he is for themselves, they want to hear from him and learn from him. In other words, they want to be his disciples. That is what we want too…to be the people we say we are, disciples of Christ, waiting to be transformed, changed deeply from the inside out so that we can begin to transform our church, our communities of work and school, and our world. Howard Friend describes the transformation we seek. He says: What we are facing is not the developmental type of change we see in a tadpole’s gradual, orderly, incremental, and fully visible transformation into a full grown frog but the much more mysterious transformational change we see in the transition from caterpillar to butterfly. Few people realize that inside the chrysalis the caterpillar has wound around itself, is a bundle of protoplasm, neither a caterpillar sprouting wings nor a husk soon to drop away revealing a butterfly. All the caterpillar was and all that the butterfly will be are contained in the chrysalis, but one form must relinquish itself that another might emerge. This kind of change is mysterious, hidden, and full of surprise – and a far less comfortable process of change than that exemplified by a tadpole. This kind of change is revolutionary. It is seemingly chaotic, disruptive, disorganized, and out of control – not unlike our choice for how we’d like to experience change. But it may well be that we need to affirm and even welcome this kind of change if we are to see life return to congregations in decline. “The Bible is crammed with verses and [stories] that echo this theme. Indeed, the foundational event, the defining [story] of our faith is not resuscitation, but resurrection, the ultimate transformation” (Howard Friend. “Leading from the Bottom Up” in Congregations The Alban Institute, volume 31, number 2, Spring 2005). General Minister and President, Sharon Watkins says about all of us in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), we are a church whose time has come. As we seize this time that God has given us, I long for us to see ourselves as a communion in Christ, and as a congregation in this city the way other people see us. They do not see our growing edges and rough places the way we see them. “Others outside this community see us and are amazed and marvel at the life and vibrancy here” (this is absolutely true for us, and is taken from a description of a congregation in the Washington DC area, as described by its pastor in Finding Your Church’s Hidden Spirit. Celia Allison Hahn, Alban Institute, 2001, pg.64). We are disciples being transformed and people are taking notice. “When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long, but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets” (Luke 5.4-5). The theme of our General Assembly was “Jesus Calls Us”. That is what is happening here. Jesus, the carpenter-teacher-preacher is calling these experienced, exhausted, frustrated fishermen to trust that he knows what they need to do to catch fish. “Go deeper”, he says to Peter. Peter and the others trusted him and they go out a bit further, because he says so, and the throw out their nets. . They put their trust in the one who called them to cast a little bit deeper, to trust a little more completely. We are called as disciples of his to go deeper too. Jesus calls us to go deeply into our core values. He calls us to move more deeply into faith, as spiritual people. He calls us deeper relationships as loving people. Jesus calls us to invest in each other’s lives and to commit ourselves to being a justice-seeking people. If we will deepen who we say we are, people of faith who at our core are a people of spirit, relationships, and justice, we will be deeply serving people, ready to offer ourselves to others as Jesus offered himself to us. “When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink” (Luke 5. 6-7). Sabbatical was a deeply satisfying and transforming experience, and in that sense, my boat is filled to overflowing. I learned about parish nursing, and have written a proposal that can, in partnership with two other congregations and Central Community House improve the health of our neighbors and of ourselves. I have seen what can happen when a congregation works out of a common vision, as we are beginning to do. I will be happy to talk with you more about my sabbatical during and after our meal, but right now, I want to share with you five strengths I found among the congregations I visited. I saw churches, some large, others small that are being transformed in worship and service. As I spoke with pastors and lay leaders, I discovered that churches being transformed, including the one that grew from 3 to 300, and another one with fewer than fifty people gathered on Sunday morning and one that has been among our premier congregations as they have develop these strengths. 1. They have strong, vibrant worship. 2. They have strong outreach ministries that include soup kitchens, and food pantries, work trips, and other ministries outside their buildings. 3. They have a large group, a critical mass of strong stewards. They preach and teach, and practice tithing, and that makes all the difference in the world. 4. They have strong disciplines of study. From childhood to adulthood, they are in Sunday school, and Bible study, they do book studies, and movie and discussion groups. They come together for special studies during Advent and Lent. Their members, not all of them, but again a core group of them are willing to take the time to understand that God wants to engage them mind and heart for ministry. 5. Finally, they have a strong trust filled bond between the pastor and people. That is not to say that there are never any disagreements, it is to say that they trust their pastors, and their pastors trust them to have the best interest of the church at heart. They go deeper and their harvest is rich and plentiful. After the harvest, Simon Peter fell on his knees to worship Jesus, and to express his unworthiness to stand before him. Jesus tells him, gently to get up, to not be afraid, and then he invites Peter and his fishing partners to join him. “Come I’ll make you fishers of men” is how many of us first learned this story. “Come”, Jesus says to Simon Peter and to us, “come and be a gatherer of men and women, boys and girls. He invites us to let go of all that holds us back and to follow him. Follow him toward deeper and richer spirituality, deeper relationships, and deeper justice, and be transformed disciples. As we do, we will be blessed, God will be glorified, and Jesus Christ will be praised. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
|
Broad
Street Christian Church
|
