So now, everything will show up on the root domain… http://maritimers.ca

You may want to update your bookmarks/feeds/etc…

First of all, thank you for inviting me to be part of your celebration of ministry here tonight. To share in the leadership of this service with Godsent has been something I’ve been looking forward to since I was first asked. They have a wonderful gift to share, and I’m glad they work so hard at coming together to sing God’s praises with people all over the region.

I also find it a bit interesting that you’ve invited me out here tonight. I guess you couldn’t wait a few more weeks when we begin to have our combined services for the summer and you’ll have to hear me every couple of weeks.

What we’ve done here tonight is bring about the two things that excite me most about worshipping God. Those two things are passionate music and preaching the Word of God. I don’t pretend to be some great preacher who will give you all the answers to the problems in the world, but what I do like to do is make people think. For some that might be their version of a nightmare sermon.

The bad news is, it’s what I do. I think a lot. In many ways I am a church geek. I wasn’t always this way, in fact I never went to church before the year 2000. But the church got a hold of me, well, I should say God got a hold on me, and now I think a lot about the state of the church. I am officially a full-fledged church geek.

So, I have been paying a lot of attention to church meetings lately. I was unable to go to Maritime Conference a couple of weeks ago, but I have an idea of what happened there thanks to the magic of the internet and social media like Twitter, Facebook and blogs. The same goes for the Anglican church who had their General Synod this past week in Halifax, and the Presbyterian General Assembly held this year at Cape Breton University.

Through the magic of technology, I’ve been able to see how these three denominations are all scared to death about their futures. All three have experienced dramatic decline in membership and attendance, which then means budgets are being squeezed at every level.

Also interesting is that each gathering seemed to have some sort of formula, or set directives for the church to improve upon in order to rejuvenate the denomination. As if it could all be packaged up into a neat little presentation.

For Maritime Conference it was (and suppose still is):

• radical hospitality
• passionate worship
• extravagant generosity
• intentional faith development, and
• risk-taking mission and service

These are all good things. These are things we need to be considering, they just make sense from a church perspective.

Here’s my problem with programmes and prescribed formulas…

“Where’s God?”

Behind a lot of these things we like to throw around the word ‘love’. Jesus told us to love one another, Jesus wants us to treat everyone equally. Again, good stuff. Love is good. But, loving one another is the second great commandment if you remember. What’s the first? “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.”

It HAS to begin with God. Our lives, our actions, our churches all need to begin with loving God first and foremost. We’ve forgotten how to do this. We need to get back to the first commandment before we can effectively do the second.

We need to learn how to love God, we need to learn how to trust Him and to listen to what He is calling us to do. And we need to do it with our entire being. All that we have and all that we are, we need to turn it to God. Fully. Completely. Entirely. That’s how we love God.

Churches have moved past this step and are trying to invoke the second commandment, and it’s not helping. We’re trying to love others without first understanding the love of God in our own lives.

On the night of his arrest, Jesus prayed for his disciples. He prayed that they become one with him and with God and the Holy Spirit. His prayer is that all who follow him will be one with God so that God may be one with them. If this happens, then God is glorified and truth about Jesus Christ can spread to the nations.

I picked the reading from Jeremiah tonight because Jeremiah is a prophet in a time when the nation of Israel has turned away from God. Prophets were killed, run out of town, or just plain too scared to speak. Jeremiah would have been more than happy to have not been chosen for this job, but it was his. God spoke through him, even if no one was listening.

And in chapter 4 we have the words we read tonight that I think speak to our churches today. “If you return to me, if you remove your abominations from my presence, and if you swear, ‘As the Lord lives!’ in truth, in justice and in righteousness, then nations will be blessed.”

It’s always fun to read verses like this in different translations. Here’s how it reads in the version written by Eugene Peterson, called The Message Bible,

“If you want to come back, O Israel, you must really come back to me. You must get rid of your stinking sin paraphernalia and not wander away from me anymore. Then you can say words like, ‘As God lives…’ and have them mean something true and just and right. And the godless nations will get caught up in the blessing and find something in Israel to write home about.”

Get close to God. Get caught up in the blessings only God can offer, and let those experiences speak for themselves. Then, like Eugene Peterson translated, people will find something about us to “write home about.” They will finally notice us.

All these mainline denominations are so stuck on budgets and finding ways to program the church back into a place of significance in society, they are missing the point. People out there don’t really care about the programmes we offer. They just don’t. Why should they anyways? There are hundreds of other ogranziations out there who do a lot of the same work we are trying to do, and they do it a lot better.

The church is not a social club. The church is the body of Christ alive and active in the world, so Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians. The church is where people come to learn about God, who came to earth in Jesus Christ, and who continues to be among us in the Holy Spirit.

There’s a fun quote that has been making the rounds lately. It says, “Going to church doesn’t make a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.”

It’s true! Showing up in the church is a step in the right direction. But so is walking into a garage to become a car.

It’s about change. We cannot continue to be the same people if we turn to God and ask Him to bring us into a life of faith. God will change us. There’s something about God’s love that cannot leave us as we are.

Before I became a Christian in the year 2001, I was a good person. I had ‘christian’ qualities. I treated people well, I cared about people who suffered. I gave to charities to help people around the world. But I also did things that weren’t so great, things God changed in me to make me a better person, better equipped to do the work he would call me to do. Changes that led to me standing here today.

One of which revolved around music. I changed the music I listened to. So instead of music full of profanity and negativity, I started to listen to contemporary Christian music, and now it is a big part of my spiritual practices in that I now play and listen to it regularly to help me focus on God.

God can change us when we open ourselves to the love he offers us in Jesus Christ. When we come to follow Jesus Christ we gain so much, not in just this life, but for eternity.

From the Gospel of Matthew we heard tonight how Jesus invites us to become his followers by denying our own selfishness. He tells us if we want to save our life we need to surrender it. We need to give it to him. We need to let God take our lives and turn it into something that will proclaim the Gospel to the world, instead of seeking to gain what the world has to offer for ourselves.

Jesus warns us, if we are ashamed of his message and live according to the sins the world wants to believe as truth, then we will be quite surprised on the day he comes to collect his faithful followers and bring them into God’s glorious kingdom.

The time when we will be fully aware of just how much God loves us. It will be far greater than we will have ever expected.

But for now we need to seek that love. We need to try and be as close to God as we can. To follow Jesus Christ so that we can be faithful Christians in our lives today.

When we get closer to God we begin to get a glimpse of that incredible love. A love which will enable to us to be faithful to that second great commandment, which is to love our neighbour as ourselves.

First, we learn to love God again. We do this by turning away from the “stinking sin paraphernalia” and seek God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength and all our mind.

From there we will be better positioned to bring our churches around from the times of struggle we find ourselves in. It will be our turn to return to the love of God and what he has in store for us within and through our churches.

Let’s not focus on programmes and formulas, but let us first love God, follow Jesus Christ and listen to the Holy Spirit and see what God has in store for us first.

This week we continue through the book of Galatians. Last week we learned Paul was rather ticked off when he wrote to the church in Galatia. He was ticked off because it seems there are people coming into Galatia who are trying to convince the Galatian church to take on certain aspects of Jewish law which Paul feels is not right.

This week we see how Paul explains his calling in regards to who he is supposed to reach out to compared to Peter. He believes they have both been entrusted with the Gospel message, but God has called them to evangelize to different people. Peter is called to preach to the Jews and Paul has been called to preach to the Gentiles. Paul has no problems with that, he knows the Gospel is for all people. Circumcised or not, the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not discriminate.

But someone got to Peter. Peter began to shy away from certain groups of people, namely the uncircumcised Gentiles. He wouldn’t eat with them anymore, he wouldn’t talk or travel with them anymore. So Paul confronted him.

Paul asserts certain people came to him and forced him to retreat into associating with only Jews and Jewish Christians. He couldn’t be around Gentiles any longer because of they were unclean. They weren’t following customary Jewish rituals around cleanliness. Namely circumcision, which marks a man as being Jewish. Jewish, not Christian would be Paul’s argument.

Peter became afraid of those who were seen as holding greater authority than he had in the church. So he began to teach what they thought he should teach, and according to Paul, it limited his ability to be a faithful witness of the Gospel message.

And here comes Paul’s main argument, his main reason for why Peter is going in the wrong direction by following what the Jewish-Christians are telling him he needs to teach, and who he needs to teach it to.

It begins in Galatians 2, chapter 15. “We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but thought faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”

This is the main argument, this is Paul’s main point, his reason for writing the letter to the church of Galatia.

It’s about faith, it’s not about law.

For generations and generations, thousands of years people have been told how they need to act to be Godly people. It started with Moses when he gave the Israelites a list of rules to follow. Why did he give these rules? It was about purity, about preserving the people through whom God had chosen to bring his grace to the world. Other nations were doing these things, and they were seen as almost barbaric, and the Israelites needed to stay focused on God, to not fall into the temptation of becoming like the other nations.

So the laws were not about how to be close to God, but how to be seen as a nation of people who had chosen a certain way of life. It was to set them apart from other nations.

Jesus came and now these laws were no longer in effect. Now it was about being as close to God as possible. Which means to follow Jesus Christ and let the Holy Spirit guide and work within you.

Paul states it plainly, “… we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ; and not by doing the works of the law.”

We are judged by our faith and not how well we follow rules.

Some of you have told me about how you remember church growing up. How on Sunday’s you did nothing it seemed but go to church. There was the morning service, afternoon Sunday School, then back again for the evening service. You had to dress a certain way. As a child you had to act a certain way and sit in a certain place. And you had to go no matter what your friends were doing out in the field.

There were expectations placed on you as a church-go’er. At least there was on Sunday’s, that’s for sure.

The world has changed a bit since then hasn’t it. No longer are children dragged off to church, as least not as much as they were before. No longer do we spend most of the day in the church building. Look around you, see how many are here this morning? It seems many people don’t spend much time at all inside churches on Sunday anymore. Did you know we are one of the bigger churches in Sydney Mines in weekly attendance?

I had a conversation with some folks a couple weeks ago where we talked about everyone who has moved away. The Sunday school, the children’s choir, the pews, each full of people. And now they are largely empty. Why are they empty. Well, a lot of familiar faces have passed away.

Our kids from the Sunday School and the children’s choir? They’ve grown up and are off in school or have moved away. For some of you sitting here this morning, you are the only members of your family who have remained in Sydney Mines. Everyone else has moved away to find work.

But this is an indicator to me. I’m willing to guess that if we went into most of the other churches in town who have long histories here, we would find the same stories being told.

And it’s true. A lot of people have moved away from not just Sydney Mines, but Cape Breton. In talking with Bev, she never would have guessed she would be moving back to the island after leaving for university, and especially after we made the move to Ottawa.

So, it’s not just us, but all the churches who are facing this struggle. The problem is, we became comfortable in the successes of our past. They days when families were larger, the days when people were dragged to church because it was the thing to do on Sunday. Nearly everyone was expected to be in church. In fact, for some people, if you wanted work, you better be seen in church on Sunday.

We’re victims of our own success. All the things I just mentioned filled the pews of all the churches in town. So, we enjoyed it. People gave generously. The finances were great, we had lots of people, so we stopped looking outward. That’s not to say there wasn’t outreach ministries, not that we didn’t help people, it’s that we stopped trying to grow the church. We stopped spreading the Gospel message. We stopped evangelizing and encouraging more people to join us through the sharing of our own faith stories.

In simpler terms, we stopped looking ahead and lived in the present. Everybody does it. But to look ahead means being focused on God. It means focusing on the risen Christ and the impact his life, death and resurrection has on us today.

It means letting go of the things we hold onto as ‘laws’ in our lives and turning to Jesus Christ and asking him to bring us into a life of faith, where our actions are not dictated by tradition or history, but instead by the Holy Spirit who places the truth of the Gospel in our hearts.

Paul wrote in his letter, “For through the law I died to the law, so that I may live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I know live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

This is how Paul does his work. This is how Paul inspires people to come to Christ Jesus and turn their lives to God. He lives and breathes the Gospel so people, wherever they meet him, can see Christ in him, and it moves them in their own faith journey to become members of Christ’s body by joining becoming Christians and joining the church.

Even after forming new churches in areas all over, Paul never stopped sharing, he never stopped encouraging the churches to keep growing, he always asked them to continue living a life of faith, in whatever way God was calling them to serve.

He did not hide, he did not ask people to change, to become like all the other Christians, he just asked them to follow Jesus Christ and let God work through them in the power of the Holy Spirit. And don’t let anyone else tell you any different.

The struggle for us is, how do we do the same?

Over the next few weeks we’re going to be focusing on the book of Galatians. It comes up in the lectionary at this time every three years. This year I decided we would make it our primary focus, and in a way it’s very fitting for us to listen to these days.

The United Church of Canada was founded 85 years ago. Discussions began in the late 19th century between several denominations within Canada. Most notably the Presbyterians, Methodists and the Congregationalist churches.

For several decades the topic was debated until finally they found enough common ground to go ahead with uniting the various denominations. They drafted the Basis of Union, organized the governance structure and celebrated 85 years ago this week the birth of the United Church of Canada.

From each denomination we have brought in various traits. Yet even in many communities, there is still a bit of left-over residue where their style of worship has hints of the founding group of the particular church or community.

We have always been a diverse church because we came from diverse places. This has been a trait we have celebrated for a long time; our differences yet our still coming together as followers of Jesus Christ. Each with our own history, style of worship and gifts.

As we enter into a time where we read Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we can’t help but draw some more recent comparisons. But before I go there, we should probably learn a little about this book we’ll be focusing on for the next month.

This letter was written by Paul around 50AD. Scholars aren’t convinced if it was one of his first letters written around the year 49 or one of his later letters written around the year 55. But they are fairly confident that Paul wrote it. He’s written it to a group of Christians in the region of Galatia. There’s no mention of a particular city or audience. So we aren’t exactly sure of where it was sent to.

So despite some of these questions, Paul’s letter to the Galatians is an important book. The book teaches some important things about living a life of faith in the world today. Important lessons we can hear and learn from today.

The first thing we can notice about this letter is how it is different than the other letters of Paul. Typically Paul opens his letter with a short greeting, then he moves into a time of thanksgiving and lifting up of the church he is writing to.

Let’s hear how this letter starts.

He opens with a greeting, as usual,

“Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— and all the members of God’s family who are with me,

To the churches of Galatia:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

This is a little longer than he might usually open with, and right away he starts to talk about sin and an evil age. So there’s a hint something is up for those of us who may be familiar with his other writings.

Now Paul would normally move onto a prayer of Thanksgiving for the church he is writing to. For instance in Philippians he writes:

“I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

This is typical of Paul. He thanks God for his audience and their faithfulness in following Jesus Christ. Listen to what happens in Galatians instead:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!

Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Paul is ticked off in this letter. Paul goes on to report the authority by which he teaches. Paul teaches that his authority, what he has learned about a life of faith, he did not get from people. Paul received his revelation directly from God. He is very careful to note this, to the point where he says he it a couple times, and how it was not from any person. He even says he hadn’t seen any of the other apostles other than James, the brother of Jesus.

Paul is laying out a strong foundation, he is citing the origin of his authority before he enters into what it is that is bugging him so much.

So, what’s bugging him so much?

I won’t go into too much detail since we’re just getting introduced to the book, but I’ll give you a hint.

What’s bugging Paul is circumcision.

Yup, circumcision.

If we go back to Paul’s introductions of why he wrote the letter, we read that he feels the Gospel they have received from God has been perverted.

Paul feels the Galatians are being pulled away from what God has done to and through them. He says that even is he, himself, teaches them wrongly about the Gospel, then he should be accursed, just like anyone else should be accursed.

I love what he says, and it’s something we need to be self-aware of as well. Paul says, “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

How true these words are. Being a follower of Jesus Christ does not mean we are supposed to be people pleasers. If we spend all of our energy pleasing people then we cannot be faithful to our call to being Christians, because people put their own agenda before the needs of others or before God’s will.

Being a person who seeks God’s approval means stepping out and being faithful in our stances on things happening in the world. It means speaking out against the sins that are all around us, even in our churches.

Our own denomination has changed dramatically in the last 85 years. As a church that began as a coming together and a celebration of differences, we’ve continued to welcome a vast array of views. This is not necessarily a bad thing. When it becomes a problem is when we allow these views to direct us into a place where we are more social club than church, and then begin to push this mindset into our churches.

One of the basic rights of our local churches, as outlined in the United Church Manual is our right to define our own worship policies and practices. Recent events in our church is encouraging conferences and presbyteries to begin to “strongly urge” congregations to reconsider their policies with respect to what the national church says.

This is troubling to me. It begins to tell congregations that what they believe God has called them to do and be in their communities does not fit into the model the church is developing.

Do you see a parallel here? Paul is warning the Galatians to protect themselves because the church leaders are expecting them to change into something more homogenous. Something more inline with what the leaders say they should act and look like.

Our United Church is welcoming of a variety of views, but increasingly these variety of views are narrowing and other voices are being progressively shut out.

Paul is right. We need to know that Paul is right. No one can tells Christians what is right or wrong with how we live if we are being faithful to God’s call in our lives. If we are listening carefully to what God is asking us to be and do, then that’s who we are to be.

Listening to human teaching takes us in the wrong direction. God’s direction is the one to take, because anything else is a perversion of the Gospel message.

We read together from Psalm 146 this morning, which said,

“Put not your trust in any mortal, for in them there is no help.
When they breath their last they return to dust, and their plans become nothing”

God’s word is eternal. God’s promises never end. We are children of a God who leads us and guides us to the truths He would have us live out in the community to which we serve. Thanks be to God. Amen.

This has been a weekend of making connections. I feel like I’ve been in about 4 places at once, or at least very close together anyways.

The first there was a funeral on Friday morning. A woman who died rather suddenly last week. On Friday morning we gathered to celebrate her life and to offer her into God’s care. Together we mourned as she left her earthly home to join with God in His glorious kingdom.

Yesterday afternoon I was in Whycocomagh celebrating with members of Bev’s family in the wedding of her cousin. In this ceremony I read from Matthew 19 where Jesus reminds us that marriage is when a man leaves his family to become one with his wife. “They are no longer two, but one flesh,” Jesus says. Two people, once separate are now one, brought together by God.

Both of these seem very appropriate for Trinity Sunday.

Trinity Sunday is the day of the year we specifically acknowledge the three persons of the Trinity. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We do this every Sunday, but this is one day in the calendar where the Trinity is our focus.

For many people, the concept of the Trinity is very difficult to understand. How can three entities be one entity. How can God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit be one?

People like to point out that the word Trinity does not appear anywhere in scripture. Sure, it’s not there, but the concept is. Jesus tells us he is one with God. Many times he tells us this. He also tells us his Spirit, and, in other cases, God’s Spirit, will be with us as well after his resurrection.

So sure, we can’t find the word ‘Trinity’ anywhere in the Bible. But it is a word that was picked to describe what is seen in the Bible by the council of Nicea in the year 325. You don’t need to know much else about this conference except they wrote the Nicene Creed. It’s in our hymn books, you may want to take a look at it sometime since we don’t tend to use it in our churches.

They struggled with the scripture and needed to find a way to solidify and bring together the various Christian churches at the time. They felt the needed some sort of formula they could all agree on. So they came up with the concept of the Trinity which they saw as the basis all churches needed to agree upon in order to call themselves Christian. Everyone had to believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as one. They called it the Trinity. From there they wrote the Nicene Creed as their statement of faith.

Did everyone agree? No. Some churches were pushed out who would not adopt this statement or agree to the Trinitarian formula. Which is kind of what they wanted. They wanted to push out the churches who were they saw as not believing and teaching about Jesus Christ. They wanted the church to have a common focus which would lead to proper teaching.

So we continue this tradition today. Still today, many churches recite the Nicene Creed, or at least the Apostle’s Creed which is based on the Nicene Creed.

So what we have is this word ‘Trinity’ which was picked to describe the union between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Trinity.

People ask, how can three people be one person? It doesn’t make sense to our human minds. We struggle with this concept. Our brains begin to smoke if we think about it too long.

Over the years people have tried to come up with little examples we can get our heads around. Like the apple I shared with the kids. Some other people use water as an example. We can experience water in three different states. We have our every day liquid water. We have water in a solid state, we call that ice. And we have a water as vapour, we call that steam. So if water can be three things yet still water, then how about the Trinity?

All of this is just ways to help our scientific brains try and understand how this works. It’s how we’ve been brought up, all the numbers need to add up or it doesn’t make sense. 1+1+1 has to equal 3. But in the Trinity we’re told 1+1+1=1. So we get lost.

Some days, having a Christian faith means letting go of scientific reason. It means taking a leap of faith into the unknown. Because that’s where God lives. God is so big we cannot comprehend something so vast when we only see a tiny little part of His vastness.

We need to forget about this three piece puzzle where it seems things don’t seem to match up quite right and understand these three pieces are just part of a puzzle of infinite size. A puzzle larger than our universe.

Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans we have the peace of God through our relationship with Jesus Christ. Through this relationship we have strength to get through all things. Things that cannot bring us down because we have God’s love, which has been poured into us by the Holy Spirit.

Without a relationship in Jesus Christ we cannot get access to the peace and love of God offered to us. Gifts we receive through the Holy Spirit Jesus has sent to be with us.

The Spirit Jesus says will come and guide us in our lives. The Spirit who will speak to us what it hears from God. Our closing verse from the Gospel of John we read this morning tells us, “All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that [the Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one. They are of one mind, they work together as one unit, each with a part of play.

God, the Father, is the creator.
Jesus Christ the Son, is our saviour.
The Holy Spirit is our guide.

Without God we are nothing. We don’t exist because nothing would have been created. Genesis 1 tells us this.

Without Jesus we have nothing. Our lives would be without hope. Without Jesus we don’t have access to the other two persons of the Trinity. No access to the Father, no Spirit would be sent to be with us.

Without the Holy Spirit we are lost. We have no guide to speak to us as to how God wants us to live and act in the world. Without the Spirit we are walking blindly in a dangerous world. It is the Spirit that gives us direction. It gives us inspiration to serve and be faithful to what God has planned for us.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three persons. One God.

Let us read together the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son],
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

We didn’t want to disturb our new neighbours. For the last couple of weeks we’ve been watching loving parents care for their newborn children, and we wanted them to have the space they needed to do what they needed to do.

In the ugly, rotted out, twisted tree trunk in the middle of our backyard where our clothesline attaches, a family of starlings have made their home. We watched with interest as the parents carried materials needed for their nest deep in the trunk. We awed in the amount of work it took to feed their new hatchlings as mom and dad starling were flying in and out constantly to satisfy their crying babies. We delighted in seeing their heads pop out of the hole waiting for mom or dad to return.

Then over the weekend it stopped.

We have a lot of stray cats in our neighbourhood that we have been chasing away on a regular basis as they have taken interest in our little friends.

We arose one morning to a different song. Instead of the eager chirping of the babies, it was replaced by the mournful song of a parent. We can only assume the cats finally got what they had been looking for.

Now entering our fourth day, I watch as the mother stands on top of this rotted trunk singing her beautiful song of love and mourning and looking around. Popping in and out of the nest in a frantic search for her children. Her purpose in life is now ended, and she is clearly in mourning.

I think of the fragility of life and how quickly it can change. It reminds me of Eccliastes 3:1-8

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Enjoy the time you have. You never know what tomorrow will bring.

Have you ever had to make a decision you knew would be unpopular yet made it anyway knowing it was the right thing to do?

Most of you are parents, so I know you understand me! You have no doubt had to make a decision on your child’s behalf knowing they would hate you for it, yet you stood beside your decision because it was the right one to make.

We make decisions all the time. Some are trivial, some are more complex. Some lead to things we never imagined. I once turned down a job which, had I accepted, I would have never found my way  into ministry.

So, we never imagine what sorts of consequences will come of the choices we make in our lives. As parents, it feels like every decision we make can impact our child’s life. Whatever we do, we might wonder if this is helping my child grow into a responsible citizen, or is it leading them down the wrong path. Will the pain we suffer because they don’t like the decisions we make be worth it when we know they are safe?

In our reading from Acts today, Paul decided to make an unpopular decision. It was an odd decision really. They were being followed around by a slave woman who had the ability to tell fortunes. While she followed them she would call out “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She was like a walking billboard for the apostles. Telling everyone what they were up to. Paul got tired of this after a few days and took care of it. He ordered it out of her, and it left.

Why would he do this? Why would he stop a woman from proclaiming what they were up to?

Well, think about who it was that would call out to Jesus in such a way. Who were the ones who would call out in a loud voice proclaiming who he was? The only ones who would do such a thing were people who were possessed by demons.

In Mark 1 we learn of a man possessed by a demon in the synagogue who called out in the presence of many people, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? … I know you are the Holy One of God!” In Mark 5 there is another demon who was in a man, a man who could not be restrained because of the demon, and he ran and knelt before Jesus and said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” This was the man who had many demons within him that Jesus cast into the herd of pigs which then jumped into the sea.

In the Gospel Luke 4 we hear that Jesus cast out many demons, and as they came out they shouted, “You are the Son of God!”

This woman following Paul and the other apostles had a demon. It gave her abilities that were not natural, and it kept calling out about the apostles. So Paul helped her with her demon. He ordered it out in the name of Jesus Christ, and it left her. From then on she no longer pointed them out.

There’s a reason why demons want to point out Jesus and his followers. They are a threat to their existence. For Jesus, demons would point him out in hopes it would draw the attention of the Jewish leaders so they would take him away and kill him. The demons know why Jesus is there. Jesus is going to save the world and defeat Satan and his army. If Jesus cannot finish his work, then they win. So, whenever they have the chance, they shout and draw attention to him, but Jesus rebukes and silences them so he can continue his work.

For Paul and his group, it’s the same thing. The demon wants to point them out in a region where they are not welcome. Remember, even though Paul has changed teams, from persecuting the followers of Jesus to instead proclaiming Jesus, the church is still under threat of prosecution. Those who seek to build up the church are still under threat of imprisonment and death. So, again, Satan and his demons want to put an end to it. So Paul decides to remove this demon from the woman.

This is an action that doesn’t make them very popular. By casting out the demon they have removed a very lucrative ability which brought lots of money to this slave woman’s owners. They are flogged and end up in jail. So, the demon still almost gets it’s way. Almost.

While the men are in jail, they sing and praise God. A great earthquake comes and all the doors of the prison are opened. The jailer, fearing the prisoners have escaped, attempts to kill himself, but is stopped by Paul and the others who have not left their cells.

The jailer comes to them and seeks to be saved. The apostles lead him to Jesus and the jailer takes them to his home to clean up their wounds and to have himself and his entire family baptized. These are Romans… gentiles. The gospel continues to spread outside of Jewish circles. The church continues to grow.

The apostles are living out what we heard Jesus praying for in the gospel of John. In the reading we heard Jesus praying for the church. Jesus prays that the church may be one. Jesus also prays for the church to be one with God and with him, as God and Jesus are one. Jesus wishes we were so close together the world will not be able to ignore the reason why the church exists. To show the love of God sent to the world in Jesus Christ.

Jesus prays his ministry, his existence, his life will fill us with his love. Jesus knows how much God has loved him, and he wants to share that abundant love with us. He wants to be one with us.

Jesus was one with the apostles. Look how readily, how quickly they responded to people who wanted to come to Jesus. They were always ready to lead people into lives of faith, to help them turn away from the sin in their lives. They were always ready to show the love of God to people in need.

Who are you in the picture. Are you one of the apostles, showing God’s love to everyone? Are you one of the people seeking to find the love of God in your life? Or are you unsure of where you stand?

Maybe you are wondering where you might fit into the church. Maybe you haven’t experienced a lot of love in your life. Maybe you don’t know how to express love in a meaningful way.

If you fit any of these descriptions, you need the love of God. God offered amazing love in Jesus Christ when he came to earth to show us the way back to God. A way people turned away from a very long time ago. Jesus came to show us how to get back there.

Remember how Adam and Eve would walk in the garden with God. How deep a loving relationship they had with each other. God wants to bring us back into such a relationship. I also think many people want to get back there too.

We continue to look for love and meaning in so many places. We buy things, we work harder, we turn to sinful acts in order to find some kind of fulfillment. Yet nothing…. nothing can offer the same fulfillment, the same meaning as experiencing the love of God in our lives.

Peter, Paul, Philip and all the other apostles had the love of God. They were one with Jesus as Jesus is one with God. And they shared the experience with people who were seeking the same thing. People who wanted to know God in a way different from just following rules and laws. These people wanted to experience a relationship, they wanted to understand God and how He loves us. They wanted to learn more about Jesus and why he came, what he taught, and what he did for all mankind. They wanted to know why demons trembled at his name.

They wanted, we all want, to experience being part of the “one”. Being as close to God as we can, experiencing his love and his passion for us. We want to follow Jesus so we can learn more about God and how we can be more productive, more faithful in our lives today. We want to know how we can help share God’s love with others.

We do this by becoming one with God. Jesus prayed we would all be one with him, so we could see God’s glory which He so patiently wants to share with us. So that, person, church and God can be one, drawing people into this circle God has created for all who come to Him.

Today’s suggested readings also had a passage from the book of Revelation. It says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end… The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”

The invitation has been made. We are invited to be one with God. We are invited to welcome others to join us. Anyone who thirsts. Anyone who longs to experience the love of God.

Come!
It’s that simple. All we need to do is respond to the invitation. To respond to with faith and hope that God will renew, heal and change our lives.

Jesus prayed, “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

We are more than welcome to become one. Jesus prayed it would happen. Who are we to argue with the Son of God who came to bring us back to a place where we are loved more than we can ever imagine?

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am a big fan of the book of Acts. I believe it has a lot to say to our churches today about how we do ministry. Most specifically, what we should be considering as our call to Christian witness in the world.

Through it all, the Apostles continue to face opposition to their work and yet they continue to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with the everyone they encounter.

In our reading this morning, Paul has a new apprentice. A man by the name of Timothy. Paul recently split with his previous partner in ministry, Barnabas, when they had a disagreement over who else was to accompany them on their way. So they decided to split company and head into different directions. Barnabas headed to Cyprus and Paul headed to Syria to encourage the churches there.

It really is amazing about how the Apostles started their various trips. How they would keep seeing visions that would invite them to go and see others and change their lives forever by sharing the message of Jesus Christ.

There was Ananias seeing the vision calling him to go to Paul after he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Philip was called by an angel of the Lord to go meet the Ethiopian eunuch. There was the vision Peter saw from God before he was called to go to the Roman centurion, Cornelius, who himself saw a vision to go find Peter. To name a few we’ve heard of the last few weeks.

They had visions which called them to places where they have never heard, or understood, who Jesus was and what he did as a sacrifice for all people.

Imagine if we had such visions today. How would we respond? What would we do if someone came to us and they shared with us how God told them to come here to share the story of Jesus Christ with us. Or if they were being called to share the Gospel message somewhere else. Maybe somewhere like Haiti. Or maybe somewhere like Pakistan. Would we think they are crazy? How would we respond to someone sharing this with us?

Yet it happened all the time it looks like. At least on a regular basis, the Apostles saw visions and acted upon them. At least it must have happened regularly because they didn’t appear to question them. Sure Anenias did, but he still went (it must have been his first vision).

Here Paul saw a vision inviting him to Macedonia. We’re told he set sail, leaving what is now the western end of Turkey and landing in what is now northern Greece. Paul is far from his home of Tarsus. To walk this journey, over 1000 miles, would take about a month if you walked 8-10 hours a day (according to Google Maps). Imagine, walking out of the church doors and walking to Ottawa. That’s about the ground he covered… just wandering the countryside, walking about with no plan about where to eat or sleep until he had the need for either, and all the way sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with those he met. I know for some of you this would be a nightmare… “What do you mean no schedule?”

These guys did ministry wherever they went, wherever they were called. They just responded and did it. God calls them to a place to serve, and off they go to get started.

It’s a bit different for us today isn’t it? Now we have these buildings we work out of. The Apostles didn’t have buildings, they just worked wherever they could. They seemed to have some central locations, but no official church buildings like we have today.

We don’t seem to get the same clear messages the Apostles received either. We don’t have these dreams of visions of God calling us to places to serve and teach. Now we wait for people to come to us first. I guess it goes with having a building, doesn’t it. We now have a visible location in the community, so why wouldn’t people come to us if they needed to hear about Jesus? Right?

Well that’s the problem. People don’t know they need to hear about Jesus. People think everything is just fine the way it is. They have good things in their lives, they have friends, jobs, family, a home, what else is there? Even the people who don’t have all these things, the people who have addiction problems, or live in poverty, they see the building, sure! But what does the church offer that encourages them to walk in the door?

The Apostles didn’t wait for people to come to them. They were always on the move. Always sharing the Gospel message to new people, people who hadn’t heard it before. And people changed. People came to know Jesus Christ and sought to turn away from the sins of their lives. They were baptized and began to learn about Jesus from their elders. They began to serve in the local community. They shared their own faith with their friends and families.

What in the world compelled the Apostles do such things?

Well, it comes from the promise Jesus made to them in our reading from John this morning. Jesus promised to send an advocate to teach them everything. This advocate came as the Holy Spirit, which on Pentecost sent the Apostles out into the streets preaching the Good News of the risen Christ.

By receiving the Holy Spirit the Apostles have opened themselves up to God’s clear directions in their lives. And they respond. The have developed a deep understanding of what God is asking them to do, a deep longing to do God’s work in the world, and it is through the Holy Spirit they find wisdom and direction.

Jesus also calms their fears by giving them his peace. The peace which took him into places without fear or hesitation. The peace which led to the cross where he took all the punishment, all the shame, and still pointed people to God as he went through it all. The same peace the Apostles received and gives them the courage to go out into the world in the same way. Not fearing those who oppose them, who try to imprison and kill them. Not fearing how they will be received when they go into this new places to teach them about Jesus.

The Apostles listened and received this amazing gift from God. A gift far greater than anyone on earth can give. A gift of fearlessness of what the future holds, because they know, no matter what happens, the future holds life with God.

Our churches are struggling to find this. Many of our churches were founded on this basic principal. A travelling preacher would make his way around the countryside helping to build churches. Sailing across the harbour year-round, which led to the building of churches on the northside.

And now we sit and wait for people to come to us so we can share with them. Many churches function this way. We sit, we wait, and then maybe we share with those who come through the doors. I say “maybe we share” because I’ve been in churches where they do not welcome strangers at all. We do here, and we do it well. But we are also waiting, wondering when people will come to our doors.

The example of the early church needs to inspire us all. After Jesus ascended to heaven the disciples sat and waited until they received the gift of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus promised he would give them. After that it almost sounds like they never sat again. They walked literally thousands of miles to teach people about Jesus Christ.

The good news is we don’t need to walk that far. The uneducated about what Jesus Christ has to offer are right outside our doors. They are our neighbours, our co-workers, our fellow students, even our own families.

I know some of you have been talking about your new minister. Telling your friends to come and hear me some Sunday morning. That’s fine, I don’t have a problem with that. Remember, I am just one person in this church. I am just one of many teachers, preachers and leaders in this congregation.

The church is not it’s minister. The church is not the building. The church is all of us, but it’s not just all of us.

The church is all of us under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The church is like those first leaders of the church who were so connected with God through the Holy Spirit they had visions of what God was calling them to do.

Do we long to have visions? Do we long to dream about what God is calling us to do as not just Carman United Church, but as dedicated followers of Jesus Christ?

Do we want to bring the Holy Spirit into this place? To ask God to fill us with dreams of ministries we never thought of? Do we want Jesus to give us his peace so we will never be afraid?

If we do, it means we stop sitting and waiting and we start listening to what the Holy Spirit can do when we let it into our hearts.

Are you ready? God is!

“Where Does the Church Go From Here?”
Acts 6:1-7

Alright, here it comes. Are you ready for it?

I don’t care if the United Church dies.

There I said it. It may not come as a big surprise to you after what I said last night, but it’s something I feel. I mean, what is the United Church anyway? It’s a man-made institution, a representation of a faith in God. A God who works far beyond the reaches of one single denomination.

If the United Church of Canada disappears tomorrow, will God stop working in the world? Of course not. Many people around the world do the work of God, serving the people of God. It won’t change if one denomination disappears.

Our denomination is struggling. 50% of our clergy will reach the normal retirement age in the next 10 years. That’s 1,100 ministers. In ten years!

According to Canadian census data, between 1991 and 2001 over a quarter million fewer Canadians identified the United Church of Canada as their religious affiliation. In the same period, a half million more Canadians identified themselves as having “No religious affiliation”. There is no doubt in my mind next year’s census will reflect similar numbers. It’s shown in how our General Council Executive meets this weekend to explore ways in which it can reduce it’s budget by $3 million a year over the next 3 to 6 years.

The numbers look bad. There’s nothing you can do with them to make the future of the church look bright. Our congregations are in decline. We have no ministers to fill the empty pulpits, and that’s an issue we see even today. The examples of churches I mentioned last night. Two of them are examples of churches that grabbed the nearest warm body because they needed someone. It ended up with the ministers jumping ship leaving the churches tilting badly in the waters.

Other denominations are struggling too of course. But we are the ones who are struggling most. We were once the most powerful Protestant denomination in the country. We had the ears of parliament and had influence on national affairs. We are still the largest Protestant denomination, but we have been caught by those who have “no religious affiliation”. They now make up 16% of the population according to 2001 statistics, while the United Church comes in at just under 10%.

When I look at my friends, the one’s I grew up with, most do not attend church in any shape or form. Unless you include Keith’s or Budweiser as religions. Their parents don’t go to church, their children don’t go to church. We are entering our third generation on unchurched Canadians.

Our churches are crying out for new leaders, more people, more money, more energy and more youth. But what are we doing about it? How are we responding to the coming crisis? One thing we’re trying to do to fix the problem is relax the rules for becoming a minister. Make the process a little easier, make it so candidates don’t need to move around so much because of their family needs.

I don’t like that idea. It’s the wrong approach.

If we want to know how to grow a church, how to create a movement of people coming to our denomination, if we want to renew our renewal groups, we need to look at a little book called the Acts of the Apostles.

What did the Apostles do after Jesus ascended into heaven? They went back to their upper room and waited. There’s nothing wrong with them doing this, it’s what Jesus told them to do. But a few weeks later came the day of Pentecost. We all know what happened that day. The Holy Spirit filled the room and filled everyone who was there. They ran out into the streets and began to preach about Jesus Christ.

Peter’s first sermon led to 3000 people being baptized and coming to the Lord.

For about 5 weeks they sat in the safety of the house and not one person came to join them. But when they take the Holy Spirit out into the streets, people came from all over to hear the Word of God and the promise of new life in Jesus Christ. And they responded to the call.

The church exploded. And every day after that the church attracted more people.

Our denomination has changed its focus from being an agent of the Spirit to being an agent of “maintaining what we have left”.

We are cutting ministries, we are closing churches, we are bringing people back home from overseas missions, all in an effort to save money. This is all we hear from our “Mother House” in Toronto. Send more money, spend less money, we can’t maintain so many buildings and ministries. Chop, chop, cut, cut, save, save.

We are being told we need to be faithful stewards of what we have left.

Garbage.

Useless advice at a time when we need true leadership.

Yes we are going to have to close churches, demographics tells us this. Each of our rural communities can no longer support their own church, amalgamation and closure is an ugly truth we must face. But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.

The book of Acts shows us it doesn’t need to be this way. It doesn’t have to be “chop, chop, save, save”.

I just finished reading a book the other night called It. No it’s not a Stephen King novel, it’s a book by Craig Groeschel. You’ve never heard of him, I know. He is the leader of a multi-campus, ground-breaking, edge-pushing church that meets in thirteen locations. (http://lifechurch.tv)

In his book It, which is subtitled “How Churches and Leaders Can Get it And Keep it”, he talks about things I see in the book of Acts. First of all, he describes ‘it’ as the thing which drives your church. ‘It’ is something different for every congregation. ‘It’ can be many things to many different people. What ‘it’ is, is something that gets people excited about serving God. A thing that fills people with the Holy Spirit and moves them to a committed relationship with our living God through the risen Christ Jesus. ‘It’ brings about passion for God.

On Pentecost when Peter and the other apostles ran out into the street to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ. They had ‘it’. People saw they had ‘it’ and wanted ‘it’ too.

Our church today has tried to create ‘it’. In recent years we have had the Emerging Spirit campaign, trying to connect with young adults of my generation. There’s the wondercafe website with it’s silly ads and videos in an attempt to get people to ask questions and discuss. All designed to encourage people get into our buildings and help us grow.

Good idea in theory. But in practice, I do not believe it has gone well at all. If people are actually trying out our churches based on our ads and what they see on our hip, new, expensive website, they must be awfully disappointed. Our churches are the same old buildings they have been for the last 50 years, with the same old message of “How are we going to keep all this running?”

This is not ‘it’. ‘It’ cannot be created at a national level with the expectation all churches will buy into the programme when most congregations have no idea what they are being asked to do.

‘It’ is a grassroots movement. ‘It’ is finding what works for your church today, which may not be the same thing as yesterday, or tomorrow, or next week, month or year. ‘It’ is what God is calling us to do right now.

Getting to this point is a scary journey. Why? Because ‘it’ requires drastic changes in the way we have always done things. We need to be flexible, we need to be agile, and we need to be willing to risk everything to get ‘it’.

Let’s face it. We are pretty comfortable where we are. The status quo, while not very productive is a nice play to be. We’re happy, we’re used to this, why go through all the trouble for something that might not work?

This is why we’re in the on the doorstep of a huge crisis in our church. In fact, we already have one foot inside the door, or maybe in the grave would be more accurate.

We have neglected the Gospel message. I said last night we have watered down our approach to preaching and scripture by not dealing with the difficult and challenging messages in the Bible. As a result we are seeing fewer and fewer people moved to follow Christ in any meaningful way. We have abandoned the Holy Spirit in search of our own approach to the Bible and thus our ministries.

If we want to save this church, we need to be Spirit-led people. We need to engage God and let Him transform us and move us into new directions. And each church needs to make that move on its own.

In Acts 6, it seems as though the apostles recognize they are losing ‘it’. (Just because you have ‘it’ doesn’t mean you get to keep it forever. You need to continually evaluate your position and your ministries, that’s how you keep ‘it’) The apostles seem to recognize their ministry has become stale and they’ve stopped paying close attention to God and what they have been called to do. They say to one another, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.”

The apostles catch that they are so caught up in service and the work of the church, they realize they are missing further opportunities to grow and serve in new ways. So they get more helpers. They find some people who are gifted and assign them to the tasks of serving, and the apostles go back to focusing on what God is wanting them to do next. This leads Philip to go to Samaria and start a church and to baptize the Ethiopian eunuch to open up more of Africa to the Gospel message.

It allows the church to be ready to receive their greatest opponent into their midst as they meet Saul who will become Paul after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.

It allows Peter to go off and heal Aeneas, to bring Tabitha back from the dead and to convert Cornelius, a Roman centurion.

Each act bringing more and more people into the church as they see the Spirit of God moving through all their actions.

Imagine the opportunities they would have missed if they simply kept their heads down serving tables. If they simply said, “Well, we’re doing good work here, God must be pleased with us!” Don’t get me wrong, they did important work, absolutely. But by finding people who had gifts to offer in that ministry, it opened up doors which launched new ministries and churches all over the region.

Each and every step of the ministry of the first apostles was a step where they risked everything they had. The church was being persecuted, they were in and out of jail all the time, their lives were threatened, at any moment I’m sure they thought it could be over.

But they kept going. They kept risking their lives for the sake of the Gospel. And because they were willing to do these things, the church kept exploding with new members from all backgrounds.

Tomorrow churches across the world will read from Acts chapter 11. It’s Peter defending his trip to evangelize to the Gentiles. Many churches will no doubt focus of the vision he had where God declares food to be clean. It would be my hope that instead they focus on verses 15-17 where Peter says, “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

Peter spoke the truth of Jesus Christ to the gentiles, and they got ‘it’. They felt the Spirit of God come upon them and they opened their lives to the power of God to lead and guide them. There he baptized the Roman leader and all who were with him when they heard Peter speak. A new church was planted and he stayed there for several days, teaching them and leading them to God’s ways.

This is the hope for our renewal groups in the United Church. I am very excited to know they have begun discussions to find ways in which they can come together and share in this valuable ministry. To find common ground and ways in which to share resources.

I have an interest in each group. I believe each group has gifts to offer to the church as they seek to be obedient to God’s plan for them. But, from what I can see on the sidelines, none of them have ‘it’. None have the drive and passion to get out and speak the truth and bring about change. There’s just not enough people and resources it seems. Their energy levels have waned in recent years.

Which means we need to work together. To be perfectly honest, it’s the only way I’ll get involved with any of them. One group, one voice, one passion. Small yet strong with the Spirit of God to bring about change in our denomination. To fight for what we feel is important to the Christian faith and not what is important to the organization.

It’s time for a new thing. It’s time to take a risk and move forward, to step out boldly to say we are one body as we bring our parts together with Christ as our head.

What have we got to lose? The numbers don’t lie about the future of the denomination as we know it. If we don’t make a change, if we don’t seek God to work within us in the deepest, darkest part of our souls, what do we have left?

Craig Groeshel shares in his book how his church began in 1996 in the unheated garage of a home with a couple chairs and an old overhead projector. From there they kept risking everything to do what God was asking them to do. And now thousands of people worship in the network of churches they have built. All because they took chances when God asked them to.

The first church, the church in the book of Acts exploded from a room full of people into thousands of people in a matter of days, because they risked what they had to do what God wanted them to do, share the Good News of Jesus Christ with the world.

Our churches future is bleak. We’re are going to continue to get smaller and smaller. We’ll have fewer and fewer leaders and churches.

Good!

We need it. Believe it or not, we need it. We have too much. We’re too comfortable. We’re too set in our ways. We’re so big we can’t change. We need to be in a position where we are willing to risk our future for the sake of doing God’ work in our communities. We need to equip ourselves to be able to serve our communities. We need to realize each of our communities are different, they have different needs. We need to listen to what God is calling us to do in our own neighbourhoods.

Proverbs chapter 1 says, “Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: ‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.’”

This is God at work in the world. God in not in our buildings, He’s not in our organizations. God is in our streets, in the people who travel them, the people who work along them, the people who live on them, this is where God is. And God is crying out to us to join Him. His Spirit is making known to us what the needs of our communities are. We need to stop and listen. We need to get out of our buildings and join in the work God wants us to do.

God wants us to have ‘it’. He wants us to have His life giving Spirit within us. He wants us to respond just as the first apostles responded by rushing out into the streets and making Him known to all people.

This isn’t going to happen in our churches overnight. It’s going to take time, but there’s a way we can start. There’s a way in which we can begin to welcome ‘it’ back into our churches.

At AST, in your final year you have to do some original research and present it. You have to go out and interview people and learn about a topic that interests you. I chose to go out and talk to people my age who are already in the church to learn about what they want to see.

Every one of them mentioned they want to be able to wrestle with the Word. They want their preachers to challenge them in their faith and show them how God is at work in the world. They don’t want the message to be watered down, they want, no they crave the meat of the message so they can respond faithfully to what God is asking us to do in the world.

They want ‘it’.

They want God to speak to them, they want to know how they can become more like Jesus. More Spirit filled, more receptive to God’s call in their lives.

We need to help them get there. We need to let our preachers know we don’t want the same old message which keeps falling on deaf ears. We want the Truth of the Gospel. We want to hear how God changes people’s lives. We want God to change our lives. Why else go to church? We don’t believe God can change things, then why bother at all?

In Craig Groeshel’s book, he closes by offering us three prayer to use in our daily prayer life.

The first prayer is to ask God to stretch us. Ask God to take us into new experiences, new directions, new ministries. To try new things, maybe places where people say it can’t be done. He says we have more in us than we may realize, so let God stretch us to see how much He has blessed us with. It will be more than we know.

The second prayer is to ask God to ruin us. Yes ruin us. He’s not talking about sinful acts which destroy us. He’s talking about letting God break us for His glory. To let God show us something that just breaks our heart. To let God expose us to some of the greatest injustices in the world, and have it ruin us so much all we can do is want to make it right.

Look at Job. If anyone was ever ruined, it was Job. Everything he ever had, anything he ever loved was taken away from him. In the end he learned what really mattered. What mattered was what God wanted him to do. When Job finally figured this out, he was blessed more abundantly than ever before and he grew in his faith.

We need to let God ruin us so we can see the greatest need in the world. To let God expose us to something we know will tear us apart at the seams because God wants us to know the world suffers, and He suffers because of it.

And finally, Craig wants to pray for healing. Our own healing. Not of our sicknesses, but of our wounds which keep us from entering into a deep, committed relationship with God.

Maybe it’s our pride. Maybe it’s an addiction we have to attention, or email, or Facebook, or TV, or whatever. We need God to point out to us we are broken in some way, and to ask Him to heal us.

Is it a relationship, our marriage, a past hurt in our lives? We need to be whole in order to fully understand what God is calling us to do as Christians and as churches. We need to be healed.

Stretch me. Ruin me. Heal me.

Our prayers to God.

Stretch us into new directions. Places we’ve never been before. Ruin us. Break our hearts for the broken people in the world. And heal us. Take away the things which keep us from You. Make us whole so we can follow You, God most Holy. Now and Forever.

“The Hitchhikers Guide to Nick”
Genesis 12:1-4

Is anyone familiar with the book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”? Remember how the main character had a normal life, but through a chance encounter he ended up on a spaceship just before the earth was destroyed? From there his amazing adventure began. His life changed forever.

As I look back over my life, I can subdivide it into two stages. The first stage is up to the year 2000. And then of course everything since then.

Before the year 2000, everything was “normal”. I had next to no church experience what so ever. I had a couple of years of Sunday school at the local Lutheran church while I was growing up on the South Shore of NS, just outside Bridgewater. That was it. My church experience is reduced to some vague memories of being in the church hall with my friends, and the nightmares of a couple of Christmas pageants in the church.

I was a good kid though. I didn’t cause too much trouble. I wasn’t a party guy, I played lots of sports, I got along well with others. I lived a normal life.

I resisted the temptation of going out drinking and partying with my peers. I had good marks, I went to university. But things changed a bit for me in high school. I wasn’t the popular jock anymore. I seemed to have problems fitting in, finding my crowd. It made high school very tough, and my marks suffered a bit. I was a computer geek before most people understood what a computer really was. This was the early 90s, and computers were just barely beginning to take hold in society.

So I went on to take Computer Science at Acadia. But, just because I was good at it, I was never driven to succeed. I was quite happy to coast along, and my marks showed it. I failed a number of courses and spent a lot of time on academic probation.

Somehow though, I made it through and I moved with my new bride to Ottawa to begin my career at a prestigious company known as Nortel. And it was a rough start right off the bat. I joined the IT group for a small department which provided the tools necessary for the company to develop products. By small, I mean it was me and one other guy. A guy who wanted help with the job, but seemed to be unwilling to help me develop the skills to be as productive as I could be. But, because I was simply coasting along, I didn’t feel the need to change things, it was an easy job because I didn’t have a whole lot to do. It nearly got me laid off less than a year after I joined the company.

Instead, I got transferred to another department. In this new department I had much better mentors who helped me develop my skills and grow in my leadership abilities. Here we prepared for the upcoming Y2K scare as we prepared the computer systems of the company to avert the crisis.

Things were moving up. It was also about this time when my wife, the life-long member of the United Church decided she might like to start going back. So she started to attend a church with some friends of ours. I would go occasionally, but didn’t find it very interesting.

The year 2000 comes and goes with no crisis in the industry and I continue to develop as a member of the company. I grew enough to be moved to another department, this time to be their team leader and help them become more cohesive and efficient like the department I came from. I’m 26 years old, and already tagged as management material. Life was looking good and promising. I’ve even started to go to church more often since they got this new minister, a Rev. Dr. Anthony Bailey.

It didn’t last long though. In 2001 the technology sector took a major hit. Nortel began a long series of lay-offs, and I changed departments a bunch more times as we were continually merged together, then tasked with cleaning up the technology infrastructure as less equipment was needed with so many fewer employees. I changed from a promising potential leader in the company who people came to for help and service to a sit at my desk job and plan projects to save the company money. My career path was now uncertain, at least from my point of view.

But all through this I’m getting more involved in the church. I’ve joined the church, I’m maintaining the church website, I’m getting involved with committees and the board. I’m also beginning to get involved with the youth group. And they have an interesting impact on my life.

In the spring of 2002 I was asked to help out with the sound system for the youth group’s 30 Hour Famine weekend. Specifically they needed me to help them set up and run the system for the band that one of the churches brought to lead worship in the morning. I was only there because the man usually in charge of this sort of thing couldn’t be there.

Yet it turned out to be a very powerful spiritual moment for me. Encountering these youth who really sang their hearts out for Jesus touched me. This is the first time I thought about ministry, in particular, youth ministry. And I thought about it very seriously. Things started to change, to the point where I went to a conference with youth ministry workshops and took in as much information as possible from those workshops and the other youth ministers in attendance.

After a busy summer, things simmered down a bit with the youth ministry idea. But that fall, things were starting to feel like change was in the air. The house that Bev and I bought just the year before, the house we planned on spending many years in, suddenly seemed temporary. Bev and I both sensed change was in the air. In fact we hid it from one another for a couple of months, when finally we confessed to one another we both felt we were not going to be in Ottawa much longer.

We began to search for work and houses in Nova Scotia, we felt the desire to prepare for a move back home. Ironically, one year after I started at Nortel I turned down a job at Acadia. And now here we were searching for work.

Then the day came when we knew it was going to happen. The day we ended up on the spaceship, and everything we knew changed.

We were lying in bed on Sunday morning, January 12th, 2003. We were debating whether we were going to go to church in the morning, or would we just go to the special evening service that night. As we debated the choice, Bev said, “Oh! We have to go, I’m reading scripture this morning!” Decision made. Off we went.

During this service, every moment seemed to be speaking to me. The prayers were touching me, the music was richer than I had ever experienced before. And during the sermon, I had a discussion with God. I didn’t hear a word Rev Bailey spoke that morning, all I heard as I watched him preach was, “You will be up there.”

All I could think was, “Really? I can do that?”

The answer was an emphatic, “Yes!”

As the service ended, I was in tears. I sat in the pew in awe, praying. On the way home I shared with Bev what I had experienced. As I shared with other people what I had experienced in the service, no one else could say they felt the same way. No one else noticed a different tone or presence in the service. Just me. From there we began to prepare ourselves to leave Ottawa. I managed to secure myself a lay-off and we sold our house and moved back.

This is where the reading from Genesis comes in. I feel very close to Abraham. God spoke to me on that Sunday morning, promising me to take me places, and I attempted to respond obediently. God was telling me I was going on a journey and to pack up my things and come along to a place He would show me.

Our lives felt very much like Abraham and Sarah’s. We felt God had big plans for us as he called us to follow Him, but we had no idea what was in store for us. We left everything we knew behind us, we started a family (not with a maid though, see Genesis 16:3,4) and just went where we felt God wanted us to go.

It hasn’t been an easy journey. I had problems convincing conference interview boards I was ready to be a candidate, it took me until 2007 before I was even named as a candidate, almost 4 years to the day after sitting in church that fateful morning.

I was attending a very liberal theological school which was focused more on finding ways to survive than producing spirit-filled ministry personnel, and the politics of the place were difficult to deal with.

But I survived. Some days I’m not sure how I made it through, but I did. It helped there were a couple of faculty who supported me through some of the tough times. I also found a couple of other students who were of a like mind and theology, and believe me they were few and far between, and also hard to find at times since speaking from a conservative theological standpoint was not always the smartest thing to do in this particular academic environment. But we found each other and supported each other.

Theological school was the hardest thing I had to do in this process. All the way through my theological stance was challenged by other students and many of the faculty. They didn’t do it to my face or intentionally (at least most the time) but to be in a place where liberal theology is rampant was very discouraging for me. I felt what I had to offer was being lost, I felt like my gifts were going to be useless as I enter ministry because no one in the church would agree with my views. I was afraid that after a couple of years I would be done and forced to look elsewhere to follow God’s call in my life.

Here I am, in an ecumenical, inclusive school, being excluded because my “patriarchal” view of God might offend someone. But if I’m offended by their overt feminist and liberal theology and watering down of the Trinity, I’m in the wrong and have to put up with it. Their inclusive club excludes me. Go figure.

There was one particular day where I was feeling quite low. We sang a hymn I enjoy in chapel. “Come in, come in and sit down, you are a part of the family.”

Was I? How am I part of a family when I feel pushed out like I’m the ugly duckling? Why can’t my theology be celebrated like everyone else’s? It was like high school all over again, “why don’t I fit it?”

There were even times when I was very close to exploring other denominations. One faculty member who supported me even offered to help me explore her own denomination if I needed to move on. She wasn’t the first to try and lure me away to other denominations.

This feeling, oddly enough comes strongly in triennial cycles. Every three years I get this strong urge to move. The last time I felt this way was last summer. The time before that, the summer of 2006. Before that, the summer of 2003. Can you think of any reason why I might feel this way? What might have happened during those summers which made me want to walk away to join another denomination? These were General Council years.

Believe me, I was tempted, really tempted. As I read through the proposals that go to each General Council, it’s like I know the writing is on the wall. It’s just a matter of time before one of these proposals passes that will force me out. Where the church will give me no option but to walk away because I cannot conform to what the growing expectation of being a leader in this church requires me to believe, to preach and to do.

But, for now, I feel God wants me to remain in the United Church. He is not ready to let me move on. God wants me to continue to share my story and my faith with the people of this denomination. He wants me to share my gifts in the church.

This journey introduced me to gifts I never knew I had. Public speaking is one of them. I also seem to have a small gift of music. I haven’t been able to develop it as much as I would like because of the lack of time required to do so. But it helped me through the whole process.

At AST I found other students, the same friends I found earlier, and we got together to play the music we needed to hear and play to meet some of our spiritual needs. We needed to praise God our Father, and music was the safest and most fulfilling way we found to do it.

Music suddenly became a big part of my life at AST. It began as a mid-week break for us just to get together and worship God through music, and to explore the experience together as we tried out new music we couldn’t use elsewhere because of the content of the music. We played contemporary music, which was often deemed not inclusive enough for AST general consumption.

We were also all self-taught musicians. And we played with passion and spirit. The next thing we knew we were being invited to play at other venues than the quiet AST chapel when no one else was around. We played for youth groups around Halifax and Dartmouth. And it was a lot of fun sharing our music with others. Including music I had wrote myself. Ironically though we were called the AST worship band, we were never asked to play at AST events.

We had to take a year off while I was on internship. When I came back it seemed we picked up where we left off. And picked up another musician, this time a trained musician who could help us develop our music further. In that year our ministry grew. We started to play outside of Halifax. We played in Berwick, we had a weekend trip to PEI, and we also played on the Eastern Shore of NS as well. Pretty much mostly in Anglican churches! God took our music and used it to help people praise God in a new way. To hear the what God offers us in song, and to explore new styles of worship they weren’t used to.

The band and my friends were what helped me get through AST. We supported each other, we reminded each other of the gifts we had to offer to God’s people and we continue to do so even after we’ve graduated.

Over this time, I was also doing some student supply at churches who were in need of pastoral support and worship leadership. Both churches were in painful states when I arrived. One had a minister on short-term disability, but also was in the midst of a battle with this minister over control of the church. It was a poor match as the goals of the minister did not align with the goals of the pastoral charge. Being part of this community was a great experience for me, and I grew a lot working with them. I learned to listen to concerns, I learned to lead worship on a weekly basis, and I learned that despite my unpopular theological stance in the academic setting, people in the pastoral charge were hungry to hear the Word.

I had another supply stint with another church who’s minister left on short notice. On the last Sunday, the minister told the congregation God had left them and they were going to hell. I started the next day. Once again, I discovered people simply wanted someone to hear their concerns and to love them. And again, they were hungry for the Word.

Where I am now, same story. A fractured relationship with the previous minister over control. They want to be loved and listened to, and they crave the Word to be preached honestly and directly. They want to deepen their faith, the want to wrestle with the issues being brought forth in scripture, they want to know God deeply and personally.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you our denomination has watered down scripture. We avoid the tough stuff, we talk more about justice and love than we do about finding a deep, life-shattering relationship with God our Father who sent His son to die for us.

I am so glad I can be here with you this weekend, because it’s good to know we can gather and remind one another we are not alone. As people who love God and love what our church has stood for and as people who want to fight to keep the Holy Spirit alive within it, we need each other.

Like Abraham, we all have a promise from God that He will show us the way to the promised land. He will protect us from harm. When times get tough, God will provide for us when we show our faith in Him. And because of our obedience, many, many people will be brought to the Lord as believers.

As a renewal group, we may be small right now. We may not have a lot of energy anymore. But we continue to love God and seek to follow His will for us and our renewal groups within this denomination. All we need to do is touch a couple of people. Abraham had one son. Yet through him millions… billions of people came to know the Lord. More descendants than grains of sand, more descendants than stars in the night sky were the promises he was given.

Abraham is an example for each and every one of us.

Abraham heard a call from God to pick up and move to a new place. To leave the old way behind and to start a new thing. Do you think, despite God’s promises, Abraham expected by having one son he could start a massive movement.

A movement that lead to Moses leading thousands of people out of Egypt and back to the promised land? A movement that lead to King David and his beautiful Psalms. A movement where the King of the world came down himself and shared his vision of love for all people, and his desire to be known by us and to bring us into life with Him?

It starts small. It can start with one person.

It starts with our desire to be close to God, the One our souls that long to be near, to be with the one who created us and the one to whom we wish to return.

It’s not about meetings, it’s not about how powerful we are. It’s about how much love we have for God and how much love we have for our neighbours. Jesus said in his final instructions to his disciples, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

It begins with changing lives.

Lives like mine, changed by small encounters in a church in Ottawa by people who showed me God’s love and what it could do. I’ve been strengthened and led by God to get through the tough times to where I am today. Sharing His love with His people. Trying to help people let God change their lives too.

Tomorrow morning I will share with you my vision of the future of the church (you may read it here). Some of which will be captured in the special edition Fellowship magazine coming out later this spring. I look forward to sharing and talking with you about it.