mission – Salvaged Faith

UMC 101: The Mission of the Church

Posted on February 6, 2022Leave a comment

Text: Isaiah 6:1-8

I think one of the greatest failures of the church today is that we put God into a very small box.

Jesus is our friend and companion.

The Holy Spirit holds our hand and brings us comfort in tough times.

The Father tenderly calls us to do the right thing.

These are all images that are safe and simple and focused on ourselves.

Not only are they woefully inadequate for encountering a world full of problems that are too big to tackle alone, but they can’t begin to capture the fullness of a God who is truly other… truly holy.

The prophet Isaiah begins to have visions.

Over and over he sees images of the failings of his nation and the bloodshed and oppression his own people have caused by relying on their own might to solve the problems they faced.

And then Isaiah has a vision of God.

A holy, living, powerful God.

Not a safe and gentle friend, but a vision of the Lord upon a throne.

God’s presence is so great and beyond comprehension that just the hem of God’s robe fills the temple.

And there are winged creatures, seraphim, flying around shouting at one another:

“Holy! Holy! Holy! Is the Lord of Heavenly Forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory!” (Isaiah 6:3)

As the room shakes and fills with smoke, Isaiah isn’t comforted and he doesn’t feel safe and secure… he is afraid for his very life.

“Mourn for me; I’m ruined” he cries out.

He sees just how unholy he is compared to God.

He sees just how unworthy his neighbors and his nation are.

And he knows that this wholly other and almighty God sees it all too.

But then this God does something unexpected.

God’s holiness draws close.

A glowing coal touches Isaiah’s lips and his sin and his guilt are gone.

But this isn’t just about Isaiah.

It isn’t just about one person encountering the holiness of God, repenting of their sin, and being forgiven.

The way some of our churches live out this story today, Isaiah would have gone home from this incredible experience, assured of his salvation, stay loosely connected with his faith community, and hold on to this memory when things were tough.

That’s how we too often treat faith, isn’t it?

But that isn’t the end of this story.

The voice of God thunders throughout that space asking… “Whom shall I send? Who will go?”

How will this world be transformed from a place of sin and death?

Who will call people to repentance and carry the message of love and forgiveness?

And forever transformed by his encounter with the holiness of God, Isaiah realizes he has a job to do.

It will be hard and messy and frustrating and full of joy and power and love.

But he takes up the call and allows God to send him back into the world to transform it.

You know, if I were to sum up the core of the gospel message that Jesus proclaims it just might be: God loves you, God forgives you, and God has a job for you.

Every day, in a thousand different ways, God is inviting us to participate in the reign of God’s kingdom.

God is asking, whom shall I send into this world to fulfill my reign and realm in this world?

And the church has stepped up to say, “Send us!”

Our Book of Discipline lays out for us our purpose:

“The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world by proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and by exemplifying Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor, thus seeking the fulfillment of God’s reign and realm in the world.” (p. 93)

The text goes on to say that “whenever United Methodism has had a clear sense of mission, God has used our Church to save persons, heal relationships, transform social structures, and spread scriptural holiness, thereby changing the world. In order to be truly alive, we embrace Jesus’ mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and to make disciples of all peoples.” (p.94)

I just love that phrase… in order to truly be alive…

You see, we believe that when we encounter the holy, awesome, expansive, presence of God it changes us.

It transforms us from those who are dead in our sin into those who are alive in the Spirit.

It empowers and emboldens us to head out into the world not as ordinary people, but as servants of Christ.

In order for the church to be alive it needs to be actively engaged in this work as well.

What does this look like, practically speaking?

Well, we good old “methodical” United Methodists are pretty clear about the process for carrying out this mission and making disciples. And we hold one another accountable to this process by tracking and monitoring how well we do each year:

First, we need to proclaim the gospel! And this isn’t just about my sermons on Sunday mornings. It is about how all of us share the good news of Jesus in our daily lives.

It is about how we show the world that we love God and love our neighbors. Or as the Book of Discipline puts it, “the visible church of Christ as a faithful community of persons affirms the worth of all humanity and the value of interrelationship in all of God’s creation.” (¶124, p. 94)

We connect people to one another, we connect issues to our faith, and we connect all of it to God.

Each year in our statistical reports, we take note of how well we are doing in this area by reporting our church demographics and who we are reaching.

It probably isn’t much of a surprise to you, but the professing membership of our congregation is predominantly white and just over 60% female.

About 30% of our participants in Christian formation groups are children or youth and just 3% of our participants are between the ages of 19-30.

These kinds of statistics challenge our local church to think about how we might reach out to younger and more diverse people by building new relationships in our daily lives.

Second, we help our neighbors experience God’s grace as they repent and turn to faith in Jesus. Just as Isaiah confronted his own sin and received forgiveness, we proclaim a need for transformation in hearts and lives. One ofthe primary ways we do this is by sharing the message of God with people in our times of worship.

We talk about the sins and concerns of this world and God’s intentions for all the earth, we hear about the grace of God, and we give people the opportunity to respond.

And so every year, we keep track of how many people are worshipping with our faith community, and how many baptisms, professions of faith, and new members our church has witnessed.

In 2020, before the pandemic, our church had an average worship attendance of about 160. What has been amazing is that even throughout this difficult time, we have grown the number of people who worship with us each week. When you combine our in-person and online attendance, we have been reaching, on average, just over 180 people every Sunday!

In this past year, we welcomed five new people to our faith community, baptized two little ones, and are supporting twelve students as they go through the confirmation process.

The third thing that we believe the church does as we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world is help people to grow in their own Christian life. This happens in worship, for sure, but also in small groups, conversations, leadership opportunities, and the various places we share our gifts with one another and the world.

One of the biggest ways that we can see that our church is alive and continues to thrive is that even as we suspended some of our opportunities, we adapted and created new ways to grow.

We have studied scripture on Zoom, included younger folks in our brass group, brought in new leaders for Sunday school, continued to include those who moved away in online opportunities, and expanded teams to support and encourage our elders, our teachers, and our college students.

When you add up all of the individuals who have participated in some kind of ministry opportunity in this last year, 229 people have been nurtured in their faith through this church.

Fourth, we give people opportunities to say, “Here I am, send me!” As the Book of Discipline puts it, we “send persons into the world to live lovingly and justly as servants of Christ by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, caring for the stranger, freeing the oppressed, being and becoming and compassionate, caring presence, and working to develop social structures that are consistent with the gospel.” (¶122, p. 94)

Our call is to put faith and love into practice in real and tangible ways that make a difference for our neighbors and transform this world more into God’s realm each day.

As a church, we keep track of the number of folks who serve in mission and community ministries that our church sponsors… from Joppa, to Hawthorne Hill, to CFUM meals, to Trunk or Treat, and more. 131 members of this church actively engaged in this work… and we know so many of you are engaged beyond this church too in service and work of advocacy and justice.

Together, we try to not only see, but respond to the hungers that people experience in their lives… not just for food, but for safety, for healing, and for relationship.

And we do all these things not just once… but over and over again. In our work of putting faith and love into action, our witness continues to make disciples who will transform the world.

You know, I have to be honest.

In this season where the world is talking about the “Great Resignation” and the stretch and strain so many people are feeling, it is hard to get excited about recommitting and increasing our engagement with the church of Jesus.

Not only are we busy, but we are tired. And for all sorts of legitimate reasons.

One of the reasons we put God into that small little box is because we aren’t sure that we really can take on one more responsibility.

It seems easier to hold God at arms length… to focus only on the small differences God makes in your daily life… instead of worrying about anyone else.

But friends, the holy and awesome and terrifying power and presence of God is here!

The whole earth is full of God’s glory!

“Woe is me!” Isaiah cried out.

He was ready to die, give up, give in…

And the holy power of God gave him the ability to say, “Here I am… send me.”

And our church believes that in order to truly be alive… to be energized and empowered… then we have to let that burning coal of God’s love and mercy and grace touch our hearts.

We have to “embrace Jesus’ mandate to love God and to love our neighbor and to make disciples of all peoples.” (p. 94)

Take a moment to rest and rejuvenate your spirit…

But also know that the Holy Spirit is ready to set your heart and your life on fire.

And friends… the good news is that we don’t have to do this work alone.

Each one of us within this Body of Christ called Immanuel has a unique gift and role to play… whether it is praying, or leading, or giving of your resources, or doing the hands on tasks of ministry.

Here at Immanuel, we embrace this vision of discipleship. We believe that we follow Jesus as we connect with one another… as we worship and repent and confess our faith… as we grow in community… and as we go together to the world.

All of us, together, with God’s help… can not only be disciples… but make disciples… and transform this world.

Sing! Play! Summer! – Chainbreaker

Posted on June 16, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Isaiah 58:6-9, Psalm 107:10-16

For the first 20 or so years of my life, I understood salvation as one concrete idea: that Jesus died for my sin on the cross.
Substitutionary Atonement is what we call it. Jesus took our place. He was our substitute and paid the price for our sins so we could go to heaven.
But before too long, I discovered that I was terribly mistaken.
Not about Jesus dying for our sins.
But about thinking that was all salvation meant.

In its fullest sense, “Salvation is ‘God’s deliverance of those in a situation of need… resulting in their restoration to wholeness.’ It is restoration because salvation does not offer something new; it is God’s original intent for creation.” (Introduction, The Lord is Our Salvation)
The best word I can find to describe that original intent, the life that God intends for each of us is the word shalom.
It means completeness, wholeness, well-being.
And God’s work of salvation in Jesus Christ rescues us from whatever hell we might experience in our lives that has destroyed shalom, so we might experience life and life abundant once again.

Christ dying and paying the price for our sins is one piece of that work of salvation. But it isn’t the only one.
In fact, in the Western world, there are three major understandings of what the cross means, all different ways of talking about how Jesus saves us.
These are called atonement theories.
They describe how we become at-one again with God… how we are brought back into shalom… how we experience wholeness once again.
The first is the one most of us grew up being familiar with – a Forensic understanding of salvation. These theories say we are like a defendant on trial and have been found guilty of breaking our covenant with God. So, a penalty must be paid. Jesus knows we are guilty and out of love, pays the price for us. He satisfies the debt we owe.
The second is called Moral Example. This grouping of theories claims that the cross is the natural outcome of the life of Jesus, who spoke truth to power and dared to love those who society rejected. And in his life and death, Christ shows us how we should live, too.
The third of the major groupings is called “Christus Victor” – Christ as the Victor! This theory talks about an eternal battle between the forces of this world… good and evil, life and death, abundance and scarcity. We find ourselves trapped and imprisoned by sin and destruction, but Christ comes to set us free and restore us to wholeness.

In Psalm 107, this story of God’s redeeming love is told.
Some wandered away and found themselves lost and starving, but God rescued them from their trouble and led them back home.
Some were foolish and stumbled down a destructive path, but God rescued them from death itself and healed them.
Some set out to make their own way and their own pride became their cage, but God rescued them and brought them out of their distress to safety.
And some became prisoners, sitting in darkness, suffering in iron chains because they rebelled against God’s commands. But God rescued them and broke away their chains.

We were lost, but now are found.
We were trapped by addiction, but now we are free.
We were dragged down by our addiction, but we have been lifted up.
We were drowning in our fears, but we have been brought back to the shoreline.
We needed freedom and saving, but we’ve got a prison-shaking Savior.

For a couple of years now, we have been singing, Chainbreaker, in our contemporary worship service. Written by Zach Williams, it captures those redemptive stories of Psalm 107 and invites each of us to tell the story of how God has invited us into a better life.
Williams had been doing prison ministry through his church and wanted to speak to what God had been doing through the lives of the people he worked with… but his own life as well.
He had found himself for years walking a dead-end road and kept hearing a voice that said he wasn’t going to make it. That he was a failure. That he wasn’t good enough.
And to be honest, that is all of us. We are not good enough. We are trapped by our own mistakes and failures. We buy into the lies of this world that tell us we cannot fully claim our identity. We let our worries and our addictions and our pride bind us up like chains.

As we say in our prayer of confession before communion:
We confess that we have not loved God with our whole heart.
We have failed to be an obedient church.
We have not done God’s will.
We have broken the law.
We have rebelled against God’s love
We have not loved our neighbors.

We are those prisoners, suffering in iron chains, sitting in darkness.

But then comes the line we pray after we ask for forgiveness:
Free us for joyful obedience.
Free us for joyful obedience.
Free us.

Williams found himself trapped by that voice in his life that told him he wasn’t good enough… until Christ came along and set him free from the weight of the guilt and the chains that he was carrying around.
He found a liberating freedom and joy in surrendering his life to Christ.
But he also realized that this freedom was not a personal gift.
No, it was meant to be shared.
And there is great joy and life that is found when we in turn head back out into this world to set others free.

In Isaiah chapter 58, the people have been trying to please God in their own way, but the prophet reminds them of what God wants from them.
This is the kind of fasting that God has chosen:
“to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed, cancel debts.
What [God is] interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once.”

This morning, we sent out volunteers from our church to be in mission in Memphis. As they make that long drive today, they are heading out to souls that are hungry and burdened and stuck.
Our friends and neighbors and family have the opportunity this week to tell their own stories of God’s saving love, but also help to break some chains themselves.

But you don’t have to go on a mission trip to joyfully obey God’s will.
Right here in Des Moines, you can help us tackle hunger with your food pantry donations.
You can work to honor the dignity of women and girls and speak out against human trafficking.
You can volunteer with local refugee support groups.
You can donate your funds to our annual Peace with Justice Sunday offering – which is used to help effect change in a broken world.
This offering is used to support ministries like a peace ministry on Arizona border communities and address civil rights violations in Liberia.
In North Georgia, it helped provide resources to help low-income students attend preschool.
Grants from this offering have supported the Alaska Innocence Project, that helps to exonerate wrongfully convicted individuals.

This is what God wants for us.
God wants to rescue us from the hell we experience in our lives.
Jesus wants to save us from our guilt and addiction, from our sin and temptation, from our fears and our failures.
And then the Holy Spirit empowers us to turn back around into our communities and neighborhoods so that we can help take away pain, make a way for the lost, and break the chains of all who need freedom.

The story of salvation… the story of how we are made at-one with God… is about far more than a personal debt being paid.
It is also the story of coming home… of finding our place… of being rescued from anything that holds us back so that we can be restored back into the abundant life of community God desires for us.
That better life that waits for us is not simply a heavenly destination beyond the grave…
There is a better life right here and right now, for all of us, because Christ has set us free.

Rise Up!

Posted on January 7, 2018Leave a comment

As we gather this morning to worship, we are looking backwards towards these strange individuals who saw a star in a sky and who let it take them to a manger in Bethlehem.
They heard God speaking through that heavenly vision… maybe not in so many words, but in a language and a message that they could understand.
They were stargazers, astronomers, people who identified with the light.
And when God spoke to them, they arose.

“Arise, shine, the light has come” we hear in Isaiah, chapter 60.
Arise! Shine!

These are not words spoken only in far off lands to far off people.
No, God is still speaking.
The message of old is still being heard throughout this world.
Even in the midst of times that seem dark and troubling, painful and chaotic… there is a still small voice that is whispering:
“Arise… shine…”
In his reflection on these texts, Rev. Dr. B. Kevin Smalls notes (https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship/season-after-epiphany-2018-worship-planning-series/january-7-2018-god-is-speaking/epiphany-baptism-of-the-lord-2018-preaching-notes) that sometimes the darkness in our lives is so thick that we don’t trust the things that resemble the light:
“Might be a trick… and tricks don’t always
Lead to a treat, so I retreat in the darkness,
Hoping, slightly, ever so lightly that
My deepest fears will submit to the changing
Of dark gears leading to light years of praise
And adoration.”

We like to believe that we are the people of the light, like the Magi, but there certainly are times that we refuse the light.
We hesitate to take a risk, a step of faith.
We are comfortable in the darkness, in what we know, in what is familiar.
As Smalls writes,
“Darkness is for lying down, laying down, hanging around, pretending to be asleep.”
And wow, it feels good to pretend to be asleep. Or to actually be asleep.
To close our eyes and ignore what is happening outside of our lives, our homes, our neighborhoods, our country.
And so we get complacent in the midst of a changing climate and culture.
Statistics that should make us quake with their injustice barely faze us.
• Black women in the United States are 243% more likely to experience maternal death than white women. (https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/black-women-are-3-times-more-likely-to-die-from-childbirth.html)
• Every day, 46 children and teens are shot in murders, assaults, suicides & suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, and police intervention (https://www.bradycampaign.org/key-gun-violence-statistics)
• 1 in 5 adults in the United States or 43.8 million people experience mental illness in a given year (https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers)

But usually, we are too nice and kind to want to have real conversations about racism or gun violence or mental health.
We hesitate to talk about these things in church or to ask how God might be speaking, calling, pushing, begging us (the people of God) to respond.
Maybe we are like the people of whom Isaiah was speaking…
You see if we turn just one chapter ahead in that prophetic text, these people felt like:
“justice is far from us and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo! There is darkness… we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.”
They were sitting back, retreating into the darkness, waiting for someone else to do something about it.
“Hoping, slightly, ever so lightly that
My deepest fears will submit to the changing
Of dark gears leading to light years of praise
And adoration.”

But then Isaiah comes along with the reminder that we can’t just sit back and wait for our fears to go away.
“Arise, shine, the light has come”
Maybe those old words aren’t quite seeping deep enough under our skin to be heard and felt.
Let me try it again from the Message translation:
“Get out of bed, Jerusalem! Wake Up! Put your face in the sunlight. God’s bright glory has risen for you!”
God’s glory has risen for you… So what on earth are YOU going to do about it?

The Magi in our scripture rose up… they got out of bed and they followed where God was leading them.
Over field and fountain, moor and mountain, that star in the sky was their guiding light until it took them to the place where the child was.
And when they arrived, they could barely contain themselves.
They felt an overwhelming kind of joy, the Gospel of Matthew tells us, that was born out of the sense that they were in the right place at the right time.
So they fell on their knees and worshiped that little child.

You and I… we are called to get out of bed, to shake off the sleep, to open our eyes and put our faces into the light and to hear where God is calling us to go.
As we start a new year, of ministry together, I have such a fire and energy in my heart.
I can see all sorts of amazing things that God has in store for us if we would simply put our face in the sunlight and head out into this world.
This church is so generous, so powerful, so filled with talent and compassion and love.
And as we have risen up and followed God’s leading – I know that many of you have experienced that immense joy that comes from being in the right place at the right time… from finding that place where your gifts have met some great need in this world.
We experienced that kind of joy in our gigantic Joppa garage sale.
We experience it as we laugh and serve together at CFUM.
We experience it when we dress up in ridiculous costumes to help our young people understand something in confirmation.
Or when our children teach us the nativity story on Christmas Eve.
And in all of these places, we are also discovering the joy of realizing that we are not alone!
There are all sorts of other people on this journey with us. People who have the same kinds of yearning and hopes and fears… and who are ready, with us, to rise up and to truly make a difference in this world for the sake of Jesus Christ!
They are sitting right here in the pews with you.
But they are also outside of these walls – our neighbors here in the community – who might have the same kinds of passion and see the same needs, but might not use the same faith words to describe it.

Maybe they are the Magi – the strangers, the Gentiles, the ones who we didn’t know, but who have been on this journey as well, to bring light and hope into the world.

God is speaking and leading all around us…. Giving us opportunities to bring hope and joy and light and love to all we meet. Together, let us rise up to seek them.

Drop Kick Me, Jesus

Posted on September 10, 2017Leave a comment

Yesterday after the Iowa – Iowa State game, Chad Leistikow wrote that it was a game “neither team deserved to lose.” [1] You all know I’m a huge Iowa Hawkeye football fan… but I am also the sort of fan who loves to cheer on Iowa State or UNI or any other Iowa team, as long as they aren’t playing the Hawkeyes. But the game yesterday was the sort of game where you were really happy that neither team beat themselves. Sure they both made mistakes, but none they couldn’t overcome. It was a great game.

There was another rivalry game this weekend. Creston/Orient-Macksburg were on the road verses their conference opponent Harlan. This week, five Creston players were kicked off the team after posing in a KKK style image with hoods and a burning cross. The community, including their African-American quarterback, Kylan Smallwood was stunned… he thought of those kids as teammates and friends. One of the families issued a statement – “We sincerely apologize for the hurt and strive we have caused this community. We do not condone the behavior… Our family strongly believes that all individuals are created equally in God’s eyes.” [2]

The community is only beginning to respond in a way that allows for conversation and healing in the midst of the tension they expereince, although it is yet to be seen how that will play out. In some ways, Friday night’s football game was a chance to return to “normalcy” for a moment, but the real work is just beginning. It will take that whole community, standing up against racism, demonstrating repentance and forgiveness for healing to truly take place. But even a football game can show a glimpse of hope. In an act of solidarity, the Harlan marching band turned towards the Creston fans and played their opponents fight song. It was a reminder that whatever happened on the field Friday night was just a game and really, we are all supposed to be on the same team.

My friend, Laura, is a pastor in Ohio and she is a huge Buckeyes fan. After a frustrating loss last night, she posted on her facebook wall that her faith has given her a different set of lenses to view such heartache. Football is only football. “It is not oppressions, hunger, disease, poverty, devastation, or in this moment hurricane force winds. Keep perspective Buckeye nation.” [3]

Keep perspective, Immanuel.

Because Laura is right. Football is fun and exciting and we all enjoy giving one another a hard time, but we are here to play a different sort of game.

As we heard in our scripture reading this morning, we are called to follow Jesus and to run with perseverance the race that is set before us. As the Message Bible updates this passage in every day language:
“Start running – and never quit!… Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed – that exhilarating finish in and with God – he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever… When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long list of hostility he plowed through. THAT will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”

Here at Immanuel, we do believe that God has given us a race to run. For over five years now, that vision has been to “In Christ, live a life of love, service, and prayer.”
Like tackling, passing, and running in football are the basic skills that players must learn and practice, in many ways, love, service, and prayer are the basic moves we utilize in our faith. In everything we do, they help us to run the race of faith.

But one of the things that we have been talking about for more than a year now as the leadership here at Immanuel is that they don’t paint a picture of where we are going. They don’t tell us what the finish line looks like.
How will this church, how will this community, how will this world be different because we have been loving and serving and praying?
So last fall, our Administrative Council began praying and brainstorming with one another. We took the values and priorities that you as a church named in last year’s CAT Survey. We looked at our community demographics. We explored this history of Immanuel and the vast resources that the vision team had put together five years ago.
And today, we want to put some meat on the bones of this vision. If you look at the half sheet, you’ll notice that is still our vision, but we have fleshed it out a little bit.
We believe God is calling us to personally engage in and partner with our community as we live out this life of love, service, and prayer, so that broken people and places might be healed by God’s grace.
If love, service, and prayer are the basic skills that we each will employ, the goal… the endzone if you will, is that this community and this world will experience God’s healing and wholeness.

As my friend, Laura said, there is a lot in this world that is broken.
Broken relationships can be seen all around us: in the partisan division, in racial tension, and in family strife.
Lots of people in this world also experience the pain of broken bodies – we are surviving and thriving in the midst of chronic disease, broken bones, addictions, and poor health.
And there are places that experience brokenness, too. This morning, we look out on the devastation caused by hurricanes and wildfires, but closer to home, we can see the impact of poverty and how our economic choices impact the environment around us.

We believe God has called us to love and serve and pray in each of these places.
We can help people heal relationships, reconcile, and learn to talk to one another again – like we did with our Cookouts and Conversations this summer and will do with the “My Neighbor is Muslim” study this fall.
We can be present with one another in the midst of pain and loneliness and isolation – like we will when we train folks from Immanuel to go out and visit our homebound seniors next week and like we do when we go out with Joppa to the check on the homeless.
And we can pool our resources to make a difference all across this world – whether it is through disaster relief and health kits, through donations to the food pantry, or through the Season of Creation organized by our Green Team.
God is calling you and me to love, serve, and pray… to practice those basic skills… so that God’s goals might be reached.
But basic skills alone will not help us get to the end zone.
In football, you put those things together in strategic plays. Those are the ministries of our church. Whether it is choir or children’s church, Ratatouille or Under the Bridge Casseroles, Re:Ignite or Men’s group… every activity we do, is aiming for that end zone and helping us to live out God’s mission in this church.

The other thing that I have learned after many disappointing seasons watching my favorite team is that in order to be successful and reach that end zone, every single player has to play every single quarter. And the coach needs a game plan that will help those players be successful.
If you flip to the back side of this sheet, you will find our game plan for ministry here at Immanuel. We can each practice our basic skills… but part of being on this journey together is that we should all be moving the same direction.
And as your pastors and your staff and your leadership, we think there are four different areas, four quarters of this game that we all have to play in if we are going to be successful.

We need to worship together. If we don’t show up in this place to hear the story of God’s love and grace and to renew and strengthen each other, we will not reach the end zone.
We need to connect with one another. We need to reach out in love and help one another out. We need to build relationship both inside and outside of this church.
We all need to grow. Each one of us should be a part of a group that is helping us to grow in our faith and use our gifts and as we mature, we should be helping other people to grow in their faith as well.
We need to go out into the world and serve. Through financial gifts, through hands-on mission, we can only help this world experience God’s grace if we get out of this building.

Friends, this is our game plan. With our eyes fixed on Jesus, we will live lives of love, service, and prayer and this world will experience God’s healing and wholeness.

And the best news is that we don’t have to do this alone.

There is this country gospel song called “Drop Kick Me, Jesus” by Bobby Bare and Paul Craft and it reminds me that God has our back in this work:

Make me, oh, make me, Lord, more than I am
Make me a piece in your master game plan
Free from the earthly temptations below
I’ve got the will, Lord, if you got the toe.

Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life
End over end, neither left nor the right
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights
Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life

[1] http://www.hawkcentral.com/story/sports/college/iowa/football/2017/09/09/leistikows-first-word-hawkeyes-win-cy-hawk-classic-neither-team-deserved-lose/649140001/

[2] http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/sports/high-school/2017/09/09/creston-game-frayed-nerves-calls-unity-after-photo-students-white-hoods-confederate-flag-rocks-town/647639001/

[3] https://www.facebook.com/laurakennedyjaissle/posts/10154632317611986

From Everywhere to Everywhere (2.0)

Posted on April 23, 2017Leave a comment

This Sunday, I was making my way back from our bi-annual Global Ministries meeting and so took the opportunity to do a brief rewrite of the message I preached at Ingathering:

This quadrennium, I have the honor of serving on our General Board of Global Ministries:

Last fall, in our opening worship, we read the names of the missionaries who have died in the last four years, like we do on All Saints day. It was holy and humbling to think about all of those people who had spent their lives serving God wherever they were sent. But I also noticed that they almost all had very white, very Anglo sounding names.

That evening, and since then, I have met missionaries who remind me that the focus of our global ministries has truly shifted. Katherine fits that traditional model and is from California. She has served through Global Ministries in a variety of far flung places including Japan, Iowa, and now Nepal.

But Alina is a native Bolivian and she is serving in Nicaragua on behalf of Global Ministries.

Luis is from Brazil and will be heading up the new regional Mission Center in Buenos Aires.

Another leader from Brazil will work with the new regional Mission Center in Africa focusing on Portuguese speaking countries.

There is an African American who speaks Japanese who will serve in the new Mission Center in Seoul, South Korea.

And we heard about a missionary from Zimbabwe who is heading to Canada to serve an African refugee community there.

Our Executive Director of Global Mission Connections was just elected a bishop in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but last year, Bishop Mande wrote:

“Mission used to be thought of as coming from the center (churches in developed countries) and going to the peripheries (people in developing countries). But our sense today is that there isn’t a center anymore—that doing mission lies in mutuality, looking at each other as equal partners and learning from one another. Our heritage from the Wesleyan movement tells us that God’s grace is everywhere and everyone shares in it.” (http://um-insight.net/in-the-church/umc-global-nature/no-center-no-periphery-a-regional-approach-to-mission/)

From everywhere… to everywhere…

Fundamental to the shift in our global ministries is the recognition of prevenient grace.

The idea that God is moving in our lives long before we know who or what God is.

The idea that grace and truth, beauty and holiness, forgiveness and love are not gifts we enlightened people bring to the heathens, but that we can discover God’s work in the midst of people we meet… whether or not they know God, yet.

I think the shift we are experiencing in mission is paralleled in Paul’s ministry in Athens.

As we start the scripture reading today, he is preaching and sharing the good news of Jesus on the streets. And the people don’t get it and they don’t get him.

Some translations say they take him, or brought him, others that they asked him, but if you look to the original Greek the word is “epilambanomai” – to lay hold of or to seize.

The Common English Bible translates this passage… “they took him into custody.” The people REALLY don’t get him. Paul is trying to shove something foreign down their throats.

This is the same word used when Simon the Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus’ cross as we remembered on Good Friday. And it’s a word used twice to describe how Jesus grabs hold of someone to rebuke or challenge and heal them.

Paul is not taken to Mars Hill by choice.

He is brought to the council and placed in the middle of the people…

And then something in Paul shifts. His language changes.

He realizes that speaking of foreign things isn’t making and impact.

He starts to contextualize the good news of Jesus Christ.

He recalls an altar he saw, “To an unknown God” and uses that altar… in a city filled with idols… to begin explaining the God he has come to know.

“What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you… God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us. In God we live, move, and exist.”

In our Wesleyan heritage, the idea of prevenient grace is that it goes before us. God’s grace is all around us. In God, we live, move, and exist. Even if we don’t know it yet. And by grace, some of us reach out and find God.

But there is another side to prevenient grace… that God doesn’t just sit back and wait to be found, but actively seeks us.

God enters our lives and our stories.

God takes on our flesh.

God speaks our words and breathes our air and tells stories about our lives.

The incarnation was as much a part of the good news as the resurrection.

And so Paul, at Mars Hill, adopted an incarnational ministry and spoke the words of the people, pointed to their objects, entered their stories, and showed them where he saw God.

Or as he writes in 1 Corinthians: “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews… to the weak, I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” (1 Cor 9:20-22)

Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren, in “Introducing the Missional Church,” claim this is the same type of ministry Jesus commissioned the disciples for – sending them out in pairs into communities, inviting them to live deeply in the midst of strangers… eating what they eat, relying upon their customs and hospitality. It was incarnational ministry.

It is the life so many of our United Methodist missionaries take on – going from everywhere to everywhere.

In my work earlier with Imagine No Malaria and now with Global Ministries I am so proud of the fact that we do not seek to impose our ways upon communities, but partner with people and seek mutuality.

We no longer fly into a community and drop off bed nets then leave… we work with local leaders and partners and build community health workers who can help us explore best practices, share with us their customs, and ultimately be that incarnational presence on the ground long after an initial distribution of nets has occurred.

Those same community health workers were also then in place when the Ebola epidemic struck so many Western African countries and we were positioned to make a difference because of the relationships we had already established.

And now, we are applying that same model to our disaster response through UMCOR – not sending in support, but nurturing local leadership to be the disaster response coordinator in places like Mozambique.

Our Global Ministries Board of Directors only meets twice a year to evaluate and govern the work of the staff who do this ministry daily. And in these past three days when I was in Atlanta, I learned that the biggest challenge and blessing facing our work today is Global Migration.

65.3 million people today are forcibly living outside of their own country.

65.3 million.

And while about a quarter of these are refugees fleeing from conflict in their homelands, we are also seeing increasing numbers of people who are being forced to migrate because of climate change.

One of our United Methodist communities in Fiji has been forced to leave their island home because of rising sea waters.

Changing weather patterns contribute to droughts and immense hunger and poverty that cause others to flee.

But other severe weather events like hurricanes and cyclones are also increasing, both numerically and in strength, sending many from their homes.

So not only are we needing to listen to the people in local contexts, but we are also learning how to listen to the world around us and are positioning ourselves to be in place to respond and be proactive for the disasters that we know are coming that will impact our ministries.

The work of Global Ministries is from everywhere, to everywhere.

The only question I have for you is… why do we leave it to the work of our missionaries?

Why are we not living out the gospel in our communities in the same way?

Because if our call is really from everywhere to everywhere, then we become aware of the reality that our neighborhood is a mission field, too.

Corey Fields writes, “today, in the attractional model, the church expects the opposite. We program and advertise and try to do just the right thing that will compel others to come to us as the stranger on our turf. It is the church that is to go, however, taking on the flesh of its local context. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin, “If the gospel is to be understood…it has to be communicated in the language of those to whom it is addressed.” (http://soapboxsuds.blogspot.com/2013/05/taking-on-flesh-incarnational-theology.html )

Our neighborhood is filled with people from nations all across this world. And it is filled with people who have been in the United States for generations, but for whom the good news of God has become a distant and unknown reality.

Our churches need to learn more than we teach.

We need to listen more than we speak.

We need to go out into our neighborhoods more than we sit back and wait.

Like Paul, we need to start paying attention and figuring out how to speak in the languages of the people we encounter.

Because only by being present with our communities will we ever see how God is already present and how the people of this place live, move, and exist in God.

From everywhere… to everywhere… God is present, God is living, God is breathing new life and hope.

From Everywhere to Everywhere

Posted on November 10, 2016Leave a comment

My sermon from the Thanksgiving Ingathering on November 5

This quadrennium, I have the honor of serving on our General Board of Global Ministries:

Tell about opening worship – reading the names of the missionaries who have died. Very white, anglo sounding names.

But that evening, I met missionaries who reminded me that the focus of our global ministries has truly shifted. Katherine fits that traditional model and is from California. She has served through Global Ministries in a variety of far flung places including Japan, Iowa, and now Nepal.

But Alina is a native Bolivian and she is serving in Nicaragua on behalf of Global Ministries.

Luis is from Brazil and will be heading up the new regional Mission Center in Buenos Aires.

Another leader from Brazil will work with the new regional Mission Center in Africa focusing on Portuguese speaking countries.

I also heard there will be an African who speaks Japanese who will serve in the new Mission Center in Seoul, South Korea… although I didn’t get to meet him.

Mande Muyombo is from Katanga, DRC and is the executive Director of the new Global Ministries Connections.

As he wrote earlier this year:

“The theology of our regional structure is based on our sense of mission “from everywhere to everywhere”—while recognizing the shift of Christianity’s center of gravity. Mission used to be thought of as coming from the center (churches in developed countries) and going to the peripheries (people in developing countries). But our sense today is that there isn’t a center anymore—that doing mission lies in mutuality, looking at each other as equal partners and learning from one another. Our heritage from the Wesleyan movement tells us that God’s grace is everywhere and everyone shares in it.” (http://um-insight.net/in-the-church/umc-global-nature/no-center-no-periphery-a-regional-approach-to-mission/)

From everywhere… to everywhere…

Fundamental to the shift in our global ministries is the recognition of prevenient grace.

The idea that God is moving in our lives long before we know who or what God is.

I think the shift we are experiencing in mission is paralleled in Paul’s ministry in Athens.

As we start the scripture reading today, he is preaching and sharing the good news of Jesus on the streets. And the people don’t get it and they don’t get him.

What is interesting is how the Common English Bible translates this passage… “they took him into custody” like they really don’t get him. Paul is trying to shove something foreign down their throats.

Some translations say they take him, or brought him, others that they asked him, but if you look to the original Greek the word is “epilambanomai” – to lay hold of or to seize. It’s the same word used when Simon the Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus’ cross… and the same word used twice as Jesus grabs hold of someone to rebuke or challenge and heal them.

There is a sense in which Paul is not taken to Mars Hill by choice.

He is taken to the council and he is placed in the middle of the people… (again, this can be translated as either a forceful or wilful act)… and I want you to imagine a light bulb going off above Paul’s head.

Because his language shifts.

He realizes that speaking of foreign things isn’t making and impact.

He starts to contextualize the good news of Jesus Christ.

He recalls an altar he saw, “To an unknown God” and uses that altar… in a city filled with idols… to begin explaining the God he has come to know.

But there is another side to prevenient grace… that God doesn’t just sit back and wait to be found, but actively seeks us.

We are about to enter the season of Advent… a time of dual purpose where we both remember the coming of Christ into this world as a child and look ahead to the second coming of Christ into our midst.

God seeks us.

God enters our lives and our stories.

God takes on our flesh.

God speaks our words and breathes our air and tells stories about our lives.

The incarnation is as much a part of the good news as the resurrection.

And so Paul, at Mars Hill, adopted an incarnational ministry and spoke the words of the people, pointed to their objects, entered their stories, and saw God.

It is the life so many of our United Methodist missionaries take on – going from everywhere to everywhere.

The only question is… why do we set it aside as the work of our missionaries?

Why are we not living out the gospel in our communities in the same way?

Because if our call is really from everywhere to everywhere, then we become aware of the reality that our neighborhood is a mission field, too.

Our churches need to learn more than we teach.

We need to listen more than we speak.

We need to go out into our neighborhoods more than we sit back and wait.

Because only by being present with our communities will we ever see how God is already present and how the people of this place live, move, and exist in God.

In my work so far with Imagine No Malaria and now with Global Ministries I am so proud of the fact that we do not seek to impose our ways upon communities, but partner with people and seek mutuality.

We no longer fly into a community and drop off bed nets then leave… we work with local leaders and build community health workers who can help us explore best practices, learn about customs, and ultimately be that incarnational presence on the ground long after an initial distribution of nets has occurred.

These kits we have collected today… they don’t always represent Western ways of doing things, but connect with the real lived needs of women and children across this world who are eager to learn, seeking healthy births, and who need very concrete resources to maintain health.

Yet, as we go forward, we even must be willing to explore and Global Ministries is currently evaluating how kits like the ones we have collected today can be more contextually relevant… maybe even by purchasing and assembling the kit materials in the places where they are needed to boost their local economies.

In the song we share together – We’ve a Story to Hear from the Nations” we hear these lyrics:

There’s a message we need in each nation,

That God, Creator of all

Is living in Christ among us

And breathing new life and hope.

From everywhere… to everywhere… God is present, God is living, God is breathing new life and hope.

Reflections a week after General Conference… #umcgc

Posted on May 29, 20162 Comments

As Psalm 146 reminds us: human leaders and human institutions aren’t everything. They won’t save us.

We are finite and we make mistakes.

Only God is forever faithful.

Yet, any denomination or tradition comes from God’s followers attempting to live out their faith and their discipleship together.

Fully knowing that we are not perfect, we nevertheless seek to do the best we can to respond to God’s movement and calling in the world in a given place and time… based on where our forefathers and mothers have led us and based on where the Holy Spirit is calling us anew.

That is what we tried to do at General Conference. Over 10 days, we attempted to be faithful to God’s leading and yet we are not God and our plans are just that… ours.

Over these last two weeks, we very nearly split our denomination into pieces. Our differences are stark. Our life together is marred by conflict as much as collaboration. And I’m going to be honest… I’m not quite sure yet what comes after General Conference.

We asked our Bishops to help us find a way forward out of our predicament and that way forward is still vague.

So rather than making predictions, maybe it would be better to share who we are and how we got to this place. I think fundamentally, there are three key things to keep in mind as we wrestle with what it means to be the United Methodist Church.

First, I think it is helpful to understand that the United Methodist Church is a global church.

We are the only protestant denomination that is worldwide. Our churches span from Manila to Legos to Moscow. And, while the church in the U.S. has been declining, the global church is growing exponentially.

In the last ten years, the U.S. has declined in membership by 11%, while the church in the Africa Central Conference grew by 329%!

42% of United Methodists now live outside of the United States.

One of the most important things we do at General Conference is listen to one another, try to understand more about our contexts, and find ways to help ministry flourish all across the world. And that is not an easy task.

But because of our global partnerships, we can do amazing things like Imagine No Malaria and our United Methodist Committee on Relief is the first to arrive on the scene of disaster and the last to leave.

And we can learn from one another.

I remember listening to a committee four years ago debate the process for closing a church. A woman from Liberia stood and said that she was extremely confused as to what we were talking about… not because of a language barrier, but because she simply couldn’t comprehend why we would close a church. The church in the United States needs that passion for the gospel that is growing so fast we can’t build enough churches!

As we continue to debate the inclusion of LGBTQI people in the life of our church, I also heard clearly from our African delegates, like my new friend Pastor Adilson, that their contextual struggle is not with homosexuality, but with polygamy. Rather than asking if same-gender marriages are allowed in their churches, they are struggling with how to welcome and include a man who has four or five wives. Does the church ask him to divorce all but one? What happens to the other wives? Or the children? How is the entire family welcomed?

We are also learning to reframe our conversations to be more global than United States centric. One of our debates this year was about a resolution for health care that referenced the Affordable Care Act. When 42% of United Methodists live outside the United States, these kinds of statements need to be broader in scope. It was hard to be talking about a system that only applies to some of us, when so many people in that room had little to no access to care, much less health insurance.

One of the realities of being a global church is that multiple languages play a role in all of our meetings. While we have four official languages as the UMC: French, English, Portuguese and Kiswahili, we had simultaneous interpretation in Russian, German, Spanish, and many others.

An ever present reality is also that in many of these global areas Christianity arrived along with colonialism. “Most Africans teach their children that Jesus and other biblical characters are muzungu (Kiswahili, “white”) notwithstanding the fact that Jesus would likely have been dark complexioned because he was born in the Middle East.” (http://unitedmethodistreporter.com/2016/05/11/are-africans-grown-a-response-to-bishop-minerva-carcano-dealing-with-wounded-united-methodist-church/)

We, as a church, have tried to combat colonial impulses by allowing the conferences outside of the United States to adapt our Book of Discipline to their local contexts. However, that means that 42% of the church doesn’t have to abide by all of what we vote on… and that we need their votes in order to make changes to the rules only we follow.

Second, it is helpful to know how we make decisions.

The roots of our church lie in England, but we were born during the American Revolution. And our polity, our government is modeled upon our national government.

Just like the government, we have a judicial branch and a Judicial Council.

Our Bishops function as the executive branch.

And the General Conference itself is the legislative branch… just like Congress.

864 of us were elected as voting delegates to represent the worldwide church and we were half clergy and half laity.

The General Conference is the only body that can speak for the United Methodist Church and everyday people like you and me are the ones who make the decisions.

So those of us gathered there had the responsibility of pouring over legislation and making changes to our structure, rules, and positions… four years worth of work condensed into two weeks.

I believe that to discern the Holy Spirit, one has to be humble, empty yourself, and allow other voices to influence you.

The first week of conference is largely spent in legislative committees and in those smaller groups some of that discernment could happen. I had truly transformative experiences in my committee and the work felt good and holy.

But all of those relationships and trust falls apart when an item comes to the floor of the plenary session. There, the decision making process moves away from consensus building and instead creates winners and losers.

On the FIRST DAY of conference… we spent hours debating the rules that we would use in order to debate. We used and we abused Robert’s Rules of Order.

And when we were presented with an alternative decision making process (what you might have heard as Rule 44) to use for particularly contentious issues, we debated it for two days and then voted not to use it.

But we did accomplish some things. We approved the creation of a new hymnal for our church. We strengthened our process for the affirmation of clergy. We created new pathways for licensed local pastors. And we added gender, age, ability, and marital status to the protected classes in our constitution.

Third, it is helpful to understand that while it appears that our conflict as a church is centered around the inclusion of LGBTQI people, our division is deeper.

Our church is a very broad tent and the likes of both Dick Cheney and Hilary Clinton call our church home. This is one of the things that I love about the United Methodist Church.

But I think what came into focus for many of us at this General Conference is that our disagreements may no longer be sustainable.

Perhaps fundamental to our conflict is how we interpret scripture. For some, scripture is absolutely central and the only tradition, reason, or experience that matters is that which scripture can confirm. For others, scripture is absolutely central and yet we have to interpret scripture through the lenses of our tradition, reason, and experience. That shift might seem subtle, but it can make the difference between allowing women to be ordained or not in our church.

We also fundamentally disagree about whether we are a church of personal piety or social holiness. Of course, John Wesley thought it had to be both… but where we place our emphasis determines how we engage with the world and the moral stances we choose to take.

All of this difference is floating beneath the surface of any conversation about how LGBTQI people are included or not in the life of our church.

If you asked me a month ago what was going to happen at General Conference I would have been full of optimism. You see, I’m a bridge builder.

And so I went to General Conference with all kinds of hopes about how we would make decisions to benefit the church all over the world and how in spite of our differences we would find a way forward together.

I don’t think it was naïve to believe this going in.

But in the midst of our gathering in Portland, something shifted. Something shifted in my own life and in the hearts and minds of countless other delegates.

We realized that we could no longer keep doing what we have been doing together as a denomination.

We realized that our differences were tearing us apart.

And in Portland, we made a very conscious choice to avoid the end of our denomination through our votes. We voted to seek unity, to try to find a way to remain together for the sake of God’s mission in the world. But there is a phrase we kept using that I think is important. Unity does not mean unanimity.

As we look at our differences, particularly in the three areas I named, for many, we avoided the end, but are only delaying the inevitable.

Maybe our global structure is unsustainable.

Maybe our decision making process has to change.

Maybe our fundamental disagreements will only continue to allow conflict to rule our work together and we would be better to split amicably and allow each part of our church to be the most faithful it can be to God’s will.

The next four years as United Methodists will not be easy. We have asked the Bishops of our church to lead us in discerning a way forward and that might mean that in the next two or three years we will call a special gathering to decide how to move forward… on what it means to be a global church, on our structure, on our polity, and on our stances regarding human sexuality.

I have about 45 more minutes of things I could share with you and I’m happy to continue to have conversations about our work. But I want to leave you with this one request.

Pray for our church.

Pray for God’s will to be done.

Pray that we might follow the one who is faithful forever, who as Psalm 146 reminds us…

defends the wronged, and feeds the hungry. God frees prisoners— God gives sight to the blind, and lifts up the fallen. God loves good people, protects strangers, takes the side of orphans and widows, but makes short work of the wicked.

In spite of all the good and all of the mistakes that we made at this past General Conference, I take comfort in the knowledge that God’s in charge—always.

Open. #umcgc

Posted on May 21, 2016Leave a comment

I haven’t posted much of substance the past few days. Mostly because there simply isn’t energy to do so.

Two mornings ago, the Council of Bishops presented us with a report we asked them to make.

We took a break and came back to discuss it and one word expressed how it is with my soul: open.

I think emptiness has a lot to do with openness. When you pour yourself out, there is a lot of space left to be filled.

For most of the remainder of the day, we found ourselves lost in parliamentary procedure, mistrust, debate, misunderstanding, chaos, and clamor.

In the end, we adopted the Bishops’ report by 23 votes.

Some of the stages of grief include denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance.

Is openness acceptance?
Am I, are we, collectively grieving the end of The United Methodist Church?

I’m tired and not fully prepared to reflect, but here are some initial asides to explore later:

1) it feels like we both avoided catastrophe.. and like we simply put off the inevitable.

2) Unity in Christ is bigger than unity in a denomination.

3) in spite of our differences, we do incredible discipling and world transforming work!