Bickerton – Salvaged Faith

Discerning What Matters Most

Posted on March 19, 2017Leave a comment

This faith community began in the 1920s , as the neighborhood of Beaverdale was starting to rapidly grow. Reverend Orf, the pastor of Crocker Hill UMC, recognized the growing need for a church presence in this area and so area churches banded together for a committee, remodeled an old farmhouse, and on Easter Day, 1925 the first worship service was held at this location.

As the community grew, the congregation made plans to build a church and the part of our building that is now the music room and offices was built in 1941. A big part of the design at the time was to build a church structure that would be in keeping with the style of the homes being built all around us. Classrooms were added in 1947 – part of Immanuel’s long legacy of education. Our church also opened itself up to the community in this part of our history, housing some of the local elementary school classes in our Fellowship Hall as the schools got too large for the students of the day.

As the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren church were merging in 1968 to form a new denomination – the United Methodist Church, this congregation was continuing to grow and completed work on this sanctuary. In the 1960s, youth bell choirs were formed, with adult bells following a decade later – another part of the way music has been a rich part of our tradition.

In 1970s, we began a new ministry that reached out to shut ins with tape recordings of the worship services. Members from Immanuel were instrumental in helping to pave the way for Vietnamese refugees to be welcomed into our state.

And since that time, we have continued to grow in faith, we are known as a caring and mission focused community, and we have been willing to take leaps of faith to respond to the needs we recognized within the church and the community, like our expansion of Faith Hall which was completed in 2004.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the people of Philippi to encourage them in the faith and as a church. And he reminds them that the God who began a good work in them would not abandon them, but would continue to help them to love and bear fruit for the gospel until that day when their work was finally complete.

And the Philippians needed some encouragement. While they had been on fire for God at the start, they also had experienced intense persecution because of their faith. Many were wondering how they could continue to go in in the face of the opposition they were experiencing. What should their church look like now? How could they continue to serve when so many around them were dying and falling away?

Paul’s letter called them to press on with rejoicing even in the midst of their difficulties and to return to God in a spirit of discernment, so they could discover a more excellent way and so they could be strengthened for whatever would come next… until that day when God fills the entire world with the love of Jesus Christ.

There simply is no comparison between the struggles we experience today in the United States and the persecution experienced in places like Philippi and in other places that are hostile to the Christian faith today. We gather in this room this morning without fear of death. We can sing at the top of our lungs and share our faith and the only consequences for doing so might be some angry words or cold shoulders. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t face bumps in the road or our own kinds of trials. That doesn’t mean that parts of our journey aren’t difficult.

And so, we need encouragement in our faith sometimes, too. And like the Philippians, we constantly find ourselves asking the question, what should our church look like now? How do we continue to serve in the midst of declining membership or in the midst of a culture that cares less and less about what the church has to say? What are we to do when the good news of the gospel seems to be falling on deaf ears?

What is it that we are fighting for? What kind of church are we going to invest in becoming for the future?

I began our message this morning by remembering a few fragments of our past, because the practice of spiritual discernment about next steps always begins with looking to see what we can learn from where we have been. And as I look at the history of who this church has been, I see that we began as a community of people who were willing to take risks and go to new places where we thought we might reach new people.

This church began as a renovated old farmhouse – a house church – that welcomed people into a family. But we didn’t just stay there. As the needs of this community of faith continued to grow, we expanded and grew ourselves. And we took care to continue to resemble the community around us – even thinking about making our physical structure look like the homes in the neighborhood. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Although I’m free of all people, I make myself a slave to all people, to recruit more of them. I act like a Jew to the Jews, so I can recruit Jews… I act weak to the weak, so I can recruit the weak. I have become all things to all people, so I could save some by all possible means.” (1 Cor. 9: 19-22)

So as we think today about what we might be called to next, I think its important to remember that we as a church were willing to take risks to meet new people and willing to adapt to the community as it changed around us so that the community might feel at home in our midst.

One of the problems with looking backward to find the answer, however, is that we can get caught in analysis paralysis and stay there. We can try to recreate exactly what we did before or keep researching and studying and waiting for exactly the right moment and we miss the opportunities that are right before us.

In What Are We Fighting For, Bishop Bickerton reminds us that as a church, we simply can’t wait any longer. He talks about the act of hitting a baseball and how difficult it is to time your swing just right. While it is easier in slow pitch to be able to see what is coming at you, as the game goes faster and faster, we often wait far too long to swing. And Bishop Bickerton says that the church game is going faster and faster and changing more and more rapidly every day. There are so many moving parts to a church and we need more technical expertise to reach people today. We have to adapt and be nimble, and react more quickly to the ways our community and culture are changing, or we might find that we have waiting too long, we have missed the pitch, and our church is no longer relevant.

All around us, there are pitches coming our way. There are opportunities a plenty. In fact, there are so many great ways that we could be in ministry today that it is tempting to try to do everything and toss out a whole bunch of new programs and activities like scattershot and see what works. But that itself is exhausting. Instead of scattershot, we need help to discern a clear focus. And part of that discernment is asking who is the new community that God is calling us to take a risk and step out in faith to reach? How can we be faithful to our heritage as a church, while also paying attention to where the Holy Spirit is leading us next?

As an administrative council, we spent some time last fall in discernment looking at a number of the opportunities, realities of our surrounding community, and ways that we are particularly gifted to lead and serve. We noticed things like that our surrounding neighborhood is now only 80% white, that we have more elementary schools in our community, and that over 1/3 of the families with children around us are now single parent families. We also have more younger, couples moving into the homes of the neighborhood.

How is God calling us to step out in faith and reach them for Christ?

As we continue to discern, we start by connecting our passions and our gifts as a church with the ways we will choose to live in the midst of this place. We can take the things that we value like music and education and being a caring community and we can carry them with us as we go outside of these walls to reach new people.

But we also should be willing to test the things that we have always done and do them not just because they are what we like to do, but to ask always if they are faithful to God’s will for our community. Do our activities and our programs resemble God’s love? Are they filled with the knowledge of our Lord? Are we bearing the fruit of the gospel in what we do? Are we doing them simply because they are easy, or are we rising up to meet the demands of call of Jesus Christ?

Next week, Trevor will be preaching once again and he will help us think about a final part of our discernment… how do we know what really is the core of who we are as a church that will always be the same and will never change no matter how the world changes around us, and where are the places where we can be more nimble and flexible, so that we can continue to grow towards completion for the glory of God. What are the things we should be willing to fight for, no matter what?

Lessons for the Journey

Posted on March 12, 2017Leave a comment

Last winter, my immediate family planned a trip to Hawaii to escape the cold and the snow. We often like to travel all together, but because of my weekend work responsibilities, the rest of the family took off earlier, while Brandon and I stayed here in Iowa to get through church on Sunday morning and then fly out.

Our original plan had been to fly out on Sunday afternoon, but about a month before the trip, they cancelled that flight and rebooked us for first thing on Monday morning. So our alarms were set for 4am, our bags were packed and we were ready to go. And then the text message came. Our flight had been cancelled. There had been storms that weekend in Dallas, flights were backed up and ours was being bumped. We had been rebooked for Wednesday morning.

I instantly got on the phone and tried to see if there was any way we could get out of town sooner. Except the hold time with the airline was estimated to be an hour or more. Brandon and I live near the airport, so I decided to go and try to get in line and talk with an actual agent at the ticketing counter. Only, the lines there were nearly out the door. Everyone was trying to get out of town and no one was going anywhere. There were no earlier flights to be had.

We decided to make the most of the day and built a fire in the fireplace at home and tried not to grumble. The next day around noon, we got another text from the airlines. Our flight Wednesday morning out of Des Moines had been cancelled, too.

I think I spent about three hours on the phone with the airlines and the soonest they could rebook our tickets was on January 1^st. It would be another two days before it would be possible to get out of Des Moines due to the back up all throughout the system. I cried. The good lady from the airlines tried her best to help make something work, but it was a mess.

I finally asked if the flight from Dallas to Hawaii was still taking off the next morning. It had been only the Des Moines leg of the trip that had been cancelled. And sure enough, it was still going to be leaving at 9 am Wednesday morning. Brandon and I looked at each other, and decided to drive to Dallas.

We picked up the rental car around 4pm, left Des Moines around 5, and drove through the night. When we arrived, exhausted, around 4am, we found a quiet corner in the airport to take a short nap, made our flight, and made it to Hawaii to spend the rest of the trip with our family… only three days late.

In our scripture this morning, the Israelites are on a journey as well. While Brandon and I were trying to escape the cold of winter for a warm, sunny beach, the Israelites had escaped slavery in Egypt and now they were headed for the Promised Land. God was leading them to the land flowing with milk and honey. Only, they didn’t quite know how to get there and they trusted God to lead them.

This was supposed to be a fairly simple trip, and yet at the outset, God planned to lead them the long way round. The pillar of smoke and fire was taking them on a journey that would avoid most of the difficulties they might encounter along the way. But no road is easy and the setbacks they experienced were far greater than a few cancelled flights. If you continue reading through the rest of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Israelites experienced loss, frustration, bickering, and ended up wandering for forty years in the wilderness. There were times in the journey when the destination seemed so far away that they wished they were back in Egypt. And despite the daily guidance and food provided from above, there were even times they forgot God was with them. Ultimately however, just like we finally touched down on the rainbow isle and got to spend our vacation with my parents, siblings, and three amazing niblings, the Israelites finally made it to Canaan.

While we might not be on a physical journey, the people of the United Methodist Church and the people of Immanuel are on a journey, too. John Wesley often talked about how we are going on to perfection and I think part of that means that we as the church should always be working towards the Kingdom of God and growing not only in our personal faith, but we should be transforming the world around us to look more like the “Promised Land” every single day. As a church, we need a compelling vision to hold in front of us, a picture of the destination we are longing for, so that we can actively work to bring that reality into being.

But like the Israelites, our journey has been and will be marked by setbacks. Most journeys are. We, too, have experienced loss and decline. In fact, I bet some of you in this room can remember when this sanctuary was built in order to accommodate when we had over 500 in worship every single Sunday. And, there are times of disagreement and disunity. We won’t always be able to find the best worship times for every person and we won’t all agree on what a faithful Christian response is to some of the toughest conversations of our day.

Last week in fact, an email came out from a new group that has formed within the UMC called the Wesleyan Covenant Association. The email contained a video that highlights the three central beliefs of the organization. That God is good, the Bible is true, and that Promises should be kept. And yet, how those three very simple statements were defined is not something that all United Methodists agree upon. So I became part of a group of young clergywomen that created a statement in response, trying to expand and enlarge the conversation.

When Bishop Bickerton talks about this journey of faith we are on, he knows that it will not be easy. But he offers a couple of simple lessons that might help us arrive together at our final destination. As I have thought about the journey of the Israelites, my own adventures in travel, and the journey we are currently on as a church, I find them helpful.

The first lesson I want to highlight is what my colleagues and I were attempting to do last week as we drafted a response to others in the church. And that is the see yourselves and others as a work in progress. I think this faith that we share is not simple, but it is complex and messy and real. We are always learning and growing and going on to perfection. Or as Paul put it, “Now we see a reflection in a mirror; then we will see face-to-face. Now I know partially, but then I will know completely in the same way I have been completely known.” (1 Cor. 13: 12). And so that means we should constantly be in dialogue with one another. We need to admit our shortcomings and leave ourselves open to the possibility that we might be wrong. We do not need to have it all together or have all the answers… we are still on a journey!

The second lesson relates to that idea. In the famous words of Vanilla Ice, we need to stop, collaborate and listen. It is often the people we disagree with the most who can help us to get farther on our journey. We need to collaborate across generations, with our older folks helping out our young parents and our younger folks providing support and care for their elder counterparts. In his book, Bishop Bickerton shares a story from Zimbabwe and Bishop Nhiwatiwa. In the Shona language, the word used for the spirit of collaboration is chabadza . “If you approach a person working in a field, you do not say, “May I plow your field for you?” Instead you say, “May I help you plow your field?” Chabadza represents a willingness to enter into relationship with someone else on the journey.” (p. 36) And it is a willingness to let to, let others help, and to let it be done another way. This is the spirit that we embody here at Immanuel whenever we put the needs of another person above our own and let go of our way in order to let God move us in a new way.

The final lesson is one that I needed to remember many times on our long journey to Hawaii. You need to lighten up, loosen up, and have a little fun. The journey we are on is difficult, and if we don’t open ourselves up to find the joy in the midst of the journey it will feel like its longer than it actually is. We need to enjoy the ride, remember that we are loved by God, let the Holy Spirit encourage us every step of the way. Here at Immanuel, there are so many opportunities to have a little fun as we grow in this journey of discipleship. You can sing and dance with the kids in Children’s Church. You can laugh together over coffee in Faith Hall. You can step out of your comfort zone and make a new friend. You can stand up and let God move you when the music starts playing. You can roll with punches and smile more and see where the Spirit will move.

Above all, no matter where we are on this journey, God is with us, pushing us, pulling us, prodding us, and never letting us go. Like the cloud of pillar and fire never left the side of the Israelites, the presence of God is in this place and will continue to guide us every step of the way. Amen.

The Heart of the Matter

Posted on March 5, 2017Leave a comment

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had this strange sensation in my neck. To me, it feels like my pulse is a bit off of rhythm, like occasionally it skips a few beats, or does a few too many in a row. It isn’t a constant thing, and it was pretty random until Thursday. On Thursday afternoon, this thing, whatever it was, happened multiple times all afternoon long. It doesn’t hurt, but it was kind of freaking me out so I got in to my doctor later that day.

They took my blood pressure, we did an EKG, and ran some blood tests. Everything came back perfectly normal and my physician isn’t concerned… aside that I need to exercise more.

While on the one hand, I’m comforted by the knowledge of what it isn’t, I also don’t necessarily have an answer either. I found myself yesterday second guessing the way I even described the problem. Maybe it’s not my pulse I’m feeling, but a twitch in my neck. Maybe it’s all in my head and I’ve just had too much caffeine.

As we enter this season of Lent, we are going to be exploring some of the ways that both the United Methodist Church and our congregation have found ourselves searching for explanations and diagnosis. And we are going to be honest about some of the symptoms that we see, the realities of our lives together.

In the larger denomination, we are in the midst of a time of disunity that really reflects the culture we find ourselves in. And the UMC is also numerically declining… we have lost a million members since 2006! But simply looking at those symptoms, like the strange feeling in my neck, doesn’t automatically tell us what the problem is. Is it that our older generations are dying out? Are we having less children? Is there too much competition? Are we irrelevant? Theologians and church leaders keep offering their explanations and no one seems to be able to put their finger on “the answer” to the problem.

Bishop Thomas Bickerton wrote the book that is the backbone of not only our worship series this Lent, but also our life group conversations we’ll be having. (Quick plug: if you haven’t signed up for one yet, you can join this morning’s classes at 9:45, go to Java Joes on Monday nights, or join the one here at the church on Wednesday evenings!) He thinks in many ways that we are like the church in Ephesus who had forgotten who they were called to be.

Our scripture this morning comes from a letter Paul wrote to this church and at this time, the church was just on fire for God. They had started as a small group of committed people and when Paul showed up and ministered among them, the Holy Spirit started working. God did amazing things through them… impacting the entire city. Temple prostitution, idolatry, magic, all of these things ended because people instead turned to Jesus. When the Ephesians experienced the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, God accomplished abundantly more than what those first twelve disciples in Ephesus could have asked or imagined!

Kind of like the United Methodist Church. We started with a small group of people at Oxford University who wanted to know God better. They were committed to the gospel and to Jesus and their faith took them across an ocean to start a church. John and Charles Wesley could never had imagined the way that God would use them, but their little bands started healing the sick, taking care of the poor, preaching to those who would never have set foot inside the church, and before you know it, the UMC was a world-wide denomination!

You would think that kind of energy can be sustained forever, but it takes work. We can get ourselves in ruts and we forget the power that got us started in the first place. In the letters to the churches of Revelation, one of them is written to the people of Ephesus and God praises the work and the labor and endurance of the people, but God also says that they have let go of the love they had at first. They are urged to remember the high point from which they had fallen.

Maybe the United Methodist Church, maybe our church, has let go of the love we had at first. Maybe, like the Ephesians, we have a spiritual problem.

Bishop Bickerton points to what he calls the “Five I’s” to help us discern a bit about our spiritual reality and where we might be lacking the love of God.

He notes that the church is a bit low on our INSPIRATION – that we tend to grumble and complain more than we focus on hope. We need to remember where God is leading us and get excited about it again!

He sense a lack of INTEGRATION between what we say and what we do. I actually have been fairly proud of Immanuel in this sense, because not only are we willing to talk about things that are happening in the world, but so many of you are out there caring for the homeless, visiting the sick, and living your faith.

Bickerton also points to the dangers of ISOLATION. Once you disconnect from a community, it is hard to find ways to become part of the group again. On the back table as you leave, you’ll notice some names and some cards. We want to reach out to folks whom we haven’t seen for a little while with a phone call or a card… and if you recognize a name out there and are willing to make a connection, take a card and put your name down!

The fourth I is INDEPENENCE. This world tells us that we have to do it ourselves, but the church reminds us that we are better together. We don’t have to do it alone because we all can do our part.

Finally, INVITATON. This is actually one of the goals of our church today. When we are excited and transformed by the work of God happening here, then we are going to want to pass it on, to reach out and bring people along with us.

At Immanuel, we have had a vision that has sustained us for the last four or five years. Say it with me: In Christ, live a life of love, service and prayer.

But one thing our leadership has realized is that we are called to not just be and exist and look to our past, but to continue actively working towards our future. What are we fighting for? also means What are we fighting to accomplish? What will be different because we have loved, served, and prayed? What is inspiring us to move forward? What is going to challenge us in a way that we simply can’t do it alone and need to invite others to join us?

As our leadership has discerned, we are feeling God pull is in a new direction and we are excited to share it with you over the coming weeks and months.

But the heart of the matter, the deep question that faces not just us, but the UMC, and the Ephesians, is whether or not we really want to tap in to the power of God. The love so strong, so wide, so long, so high, so deep, that God is going to do abundantly more than what we believe in our hearts is possible… if we know where we are going. If we know what we are fighting to accomplish.