SERMON - September 4, 2011
Rev. Kevin E. Johnston
"Wherever"
The Message
“…wherever two or three of you are together because of me,
you can be sure that I’ll be there.”
For nearly four decades, the Alban Institute [in Herndon, VA] has been consulting with … congregations, and their leaders. Alban consultants are recognized as people who know how congregations really work and how to help them become the centers of grace and transformation that make a difference in their communities and in the world. I trust the Alban Institute.
One of their consultants, N. Graham Standish, is pastor of Calvin Presbyterian Church in Zelianople, PA, …[and] the author of several books …and… numerous articles on spirituality and spiritual direction . Becoming a Blessed Church: Forming a Church of spiritual Purpose, presence, and Power is one of the resources I have read over the past three years. I pulled it off my bookshelf a couple of weeks ago in preparation for this morning.
Another person I have great respect for and trust in is United Church minister Bruce Sanguin from Canadian Memorial United Church in Vancouver. Bruce is also the author of several books and articles, as well as the founder and contributor to the website Evolutionary Christianity , to which I subscribe. In 2008, Sanguin released his book, The Emerging Church: A Model for Change and a Map for Renewal that has also held an important place on my bookshelves. I actually had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Bruce and his wife, Dr. Ann Evans, in 2009 at Calling Lakes Centre in Fort Qu’Appelle, SK with two other persons from a former congregation I served.
I will be referring to and borrowing from both Standish and Sanguin’s wisdom this morning.
All churches are started for a purpose…in response to God’s call. … But over time churches forget. They forget that God created them for a specific reason. When churches forget, they lose their sense of connection with [the One in whom we live and move and have our being].
Whenever we lose a sense of connection with our purpose as a church body, we lose our connection with [Source] as Purpose. We can try all we want to be a place of Christ…, but if we have lost our purpose, we drift and suffer. Many churches are adrift because they have no real sense of what [Spirit] is calling them to do or be. [But] this is not just a contemporary phenomenon. Even the first …churches lost their purpose. In the book of Revelation, we find a clear example of churches that have lost their sense of purpose. In Revelation 1:17-3:22,…angels[, however we might image them,] deliver message to seven churches. Five…are sharply criticized, two are praised.
For centuries, the church spire towered into the heavens. At best, the spire was a symbol of human yearning to be connected with the transcendent divine. At worst, it acted as a lightning rod conducting the revelation of God directly down to the pulpit, whereupon the preacher would deliver the unchanging, infallible truth. The true believer was the repository[,or warehouse,] of a set of unchanging values, which would serve him or her for life.
According to Sanguin, “it’s possible now to articulate our…value systems within the context of a much more comprehensive understanding… . “The truth is” , he writes, “that value systems evolve along with the rest of the universe. When it comes to value systems, the church spire is giving way to the spiral…an archetypal symbol emerging out of natural processes. [The spiral] is associated with both the energies of destruction and creation.”
Over the past few weeks, there has been an ongoing email conversation between myself, our current and incoming board chairs, as well as several others in the congregation about where we see Fifth Avenue Memorial going – or perhaps are being called and invited to go – over the next while. Are we to continue as we are, in the way we’ve been “church” the past few years? Are we sensing a new direction in which Spirit dreams us to explore and open up to? Who are we? What are we here for? What’s FAM all about, anyway? And I, as well as the other conversants, am sensing that we just may be on the brink of ministry that could blow the doors and our “image” wide open. At least that’s how I’ve been reading the situation.
Graham Standish observes,
If I were to pinpoint the biggest problem in the mainline church today, it would be that the modern church has succumbed to treating God as a theological ideal, as an abstract concept, rather than an experience, an encounter, an embrace of One with whom we can have a deep and transforming relationship. Too many churches never emphasize the encounter with God that leads to an experience of [the Holy], but instead emphasize knowledge of [that one] that leads to – well, where does it lead? [And b]ecause we too seldom ground our understanding of [Other] in a relationship with [the Divine], we don’t truly understand the teachings of the Christian faith. [But t]he odd thing about Christian beliefs and doctrines is that they don’t really make sense until we experience their truth through an encounter with [Reality].
Hmm…..I wonder what that might mean for us?
Standish continues:
Many of today’s mainline churches are wandering aimlessly in the desert, wondering what to do to inject new life into their congregations. …[M]any pastors and leaders of these churches…struggle painfully as they try to find the right approach, the right program, the right system to get their church moving and growing. … Why? … They’re wandering for the same reason the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years: they weren’t grounded in God’s purpose. The Israelites were called…to serve God. But]nfortunately, during their years in Egypt they forgot their calling. They became a timid and oppressed people, crying in their misery but unwilling or unable to follow [Divine’s dream for them]. They believed in and worshipped [that One], but they weren’t truly ground in God’s call and purpose and so they became disconnected from their purpose – to be a people of god who lived according to [that One’s] …grace.
And again, I wonder…..have we become like the Israelites? Is their story our story too?
In chapter five of his book, Sanguin remarks that throughout human history
worldviews and value systems evolved in a developmental fashion. As new challenges and life conditions confront a culture, new worldviews and value systems emerge in order to help the culture adapt and evolve. It turns out that human societies…also “escape to a higher order”…like a spiral staircase that circles back on itself. With each revolution, these new value systems or worldviews ascend, reaching a higher level in an effort to resolve the challenges created by the previous stage.
Beginning with what he calls the “Survivalist Value System” , people have progressed through Tribal, Warrior, Traditional, Modernist , and finally Postmodernist Value Systems . Sometimes – or maybe in most scenarios – each progression leads to the next. However, there have been, and continue to be, places and situations where we fall back, or get stuck in the current system – for many reasons, both good and bad. And this hinders our evolutionary process from becoming all we could, all that Divine dreams and invites us, to be. This is not only in societies and cultures. It is very real in congregations as well. Perhaps some of you have been in churches where this is apparent. I know I have. And I wonder what Spirit must feel, and think about that? Any ideas?
Referring to twentieth-century’s late “Dr. Clare Graves, a pioneer in the field of Developmental psychology”, Sanguin notes that “a small percentage of people (two percent) who [make] their decision-making at a much more complex level. They [think] differently” , he writes.
Those within the Yellow: Integral Value System…[act] out of enlightened self-interest…[and] are interested in the health of the [whole]…,[are] inner-oriented…embrace flexibility and flow…[and] see the potential in an evolutionary philosophy that imbues the universe with a sacred bias toward increased complexity, beauty, and consciousness. … Life is therefore about aligning oneself with this evolutionary impulse to transcend and include, and about expressing one’s creative gifts.
Persons who live with the values of the Turquoise: Mystical…System…experience all of life as an expression of a unified whole…at a gut and heart level, as well as conceptually. The self…is part of an evolving whole in which everything is connected to all. … Within this stage, humanity has evolved from me…to us…to all of us…to all that is… [T]here is a willingness to give oneself in service to an organic whole, but the motivation is not for some future reward in the next life. It is to make this one better. Allegiance is…to an inner hidden wholeness. As Jesus affirmed, the kingdom of God is within.
Yet “[we] can only interpret our experience through the lens of the value system that we are operating with at that time of our life” , Sanguin writes. And there are different “Christs” he observes, which are, in large part, what influences and determines who, and where, we are, and how we live out our identity – whether as individuals or as community. Be it Tribal, Warrior, Traditional as in a Divine Scapegoat, Modern Demytholized as CEO, Egalitarian,Integral/Ecological/Cosmic , or Mystical , who, and what we are and live out of, come from these points of view.
And again, I’m wondering – from which “Christ” am I – are you – are we living out of? Is our “Christ” the one Divine would dream for us? Or is there perhaps a richer, more whole, one that we might want to not only explore, but also consider transforming into?
In being and “becoming a blessed church” , Standish writes,
we must communally ask a basic question that lies at the heart of the life, ministry, and mission of a church: “God, what is your call for us?” … [E]very church has a DNA, a kind of genetic code created by [Source], at its core. Every church is a living, breathing organism that lives according to its DNA: “When churches know their DNA and individuals use their genes to enhance the DNA, growth just happens. Just like grass grows and fish swim, organic churches grow.” … [T]he church’s DNA “defines who we are without making us all exactly the same. It allows each part of the Body of Christ to be different while focusing on the same God-given mission.” … The more we ask, “God, what is your call for us?” and patiently listen for the answer, the more we become a blessed church. The less we ask this question, the more God’s blessings are damned up. … [S]eeking [that One’s dream] is like divining and drilling for living water. [And we] have to make sure that we are drilling where the water is – not where we want it to be.”
Tomorrow evening, I will be meeting with some of the folks with whom the aforementioned email conversation has been taking place. We will be exploring “how we will plan to plan” a way in which we as the whole, entire community of FAM might find a way to explore and seek out Divine’s dream and call and invitation through the next few years together. According to Roy M. Oswald and Robert E. Friedrich, Jr., also of the Alban Institute, a congregation ought to revisit their identity and be in a process of visioning – or re -visioning “at least every four to five years. Congregations change over time… If a congregation develops a new strategic plan every four years”, as they suggest, this process will help keep “congregational members focused as they go about making… decisions.” For as the wise writer observed, “ Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
If you remember our story from last week when an old man named Moshe encountered Mystery in what appeared to be a “burning bush”, inviting him into something new and unimagined, he was promised that I AM…I WILL BE would be with him.
In our story Helen shared a few minutes ago, Jesus, symbol of I AM…I WILL BE in the gospel story of God’s good news to all, he said to his friends and followers, “wherever two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.”
And we too can be assured of, and hold on to, that promise, as we continue our journey into becoming and being, through and out of whatever wilderness we may have been, or will be, wandering…wherever.
And may it be so.