5/17/23

I’m always blessed to be your pastor. You all bring great joy to my heart, but Saturday was something special!  From the moment I arrived at DeAndre and Anabelle’s home, I saw the church in action, doing what it was created to do. What I saw all afternoon was a family, working together, buzzing around, helping to create a beautiful and memorable event for two young people we dearly love . . . a bunch of us working together, exercising the particular gifts God has blessed us with. 

And God smiled (and I grinned a lot). 

Saturday was a beautiful example of the church being what we’re called to be: a family – one family, brought together from all sorts of different backgrounds, united by the love of God . . . and the love of one another.

The New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, when asked what he thought would surprise the apostle Paul the most if he were to visit the church in the 21st century, said, “That the church is so divided and that it doesn’t seem to bother us.” 

But if we look at the New Testament, it’s pretty clear Christianity is a team sport. In the world of the New Testament, the Greek philosophers tended to look inwardly, and as modern Americans, we pride ourselves about individualism and pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps . . . but Christianity is about forgiveness and generosity and taking care of the needs of others – it has a very outward focus. When we get too self-focused, with too much spiritual navel-gazing, we end up like the old  cliche “too spiritually minded to be of any earthly good.” 

Actually we need one another to get stuff done. 

That’s why Paul gives us the analogy of the Church as a Body. In Romans 12, Paul writes: “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us . . .”

The Greek word for “gift” is charisma, which literally means “thing of grace” (I wrote a little about this a few weeks ago), and grace is the bridge between who we are and who God wants us to be and what God wants us to do. 

You might think, “I can’t do anything; I’m not a super-Christian.” Well, who is? 

Think about the people in the New Testament – say, the church in Philippi. As far as we know, there was one congregation that met in someone’s home (maybe Lydia’s). There were about as many people as we have on Sunday morning. The Philippian church would have been made up of a few prominent people, like Lydia’s family, but mostly it would have been slaves, women, and just average people like the jailor’s family – insignificant people, by the world’s standards, but people who nonetheless lived their lives as candles in the darkness. 

They were just ordinary people who we’re still talking about 2000 years later. Why? What made the difference?  Despite any outward differences or limitations, each person was exercising his or her own charisma, performing the function each had as a member of the body. United. One body. A  family.

What does that look like for us? We see it in the life of the church all the time in bright flashes, like Saturday, but we really need it for the long-term.

As the church, we have areas we believe God is calling us to serve in order to be the church God wants us to be: Outreach (responding to the needs of those outside our church walls), Nurture (caring for those within our congregation), and Witness (evangelism, lay ministry and communication). We need people who will step up and lead those areas and to be the advocate for them in our Administrative Council meetings (Remember that leading doesn’t mean doing all the work! A big part of leadership is enlisting others to be involved and making it possible for them to do the ministry as well). 

If God is calling you to be an advocate for our Outreach ministries, and you say to yourself, “I can’t do that” . . . well, so what?. In your own strength, it might be impossible.  Through the charisma, that “thing of Grace,” God makes it possible for us to do what God needs us to do.

As Paul writes in Philippians 2, “for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” God enables you to want to do it, and if he enables you to want to, then he’s going to give you the ability to do it.

As I said, Christianity is a team sport;  everyone has to play their part.  

Is God calling you to serve? May 29 is Pentecost Sunday, the day we celebrate God sending the Holy Spirit down upon the church. Between now and then, be praying and listening to what God is saying to you. And be prepared to say, “Yes, Lord.” Who knows what God has in store for us! 

Blessings,
Pastor Terry