The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for October 14, 2007

Texts: Joshua 24:14-15/Acts 2:37-42

Title: “Our Best Foot Forward”

              We may well read our Bibles differently, emphasize different moral and social values, expect different things from our members, and commit ourselves to different mission emphases, but I doubt seriously that there is a single church in Christendom that doesn’t wish to grow. Indeed our Lord Jesus Christ established growth as the church’s primary mission object, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” 

              Having made disciples what did Jesus say we are to do with them? He said we are to care for them and help them mature in faith.  Christ taught us to think of ourselves as the stewards, or caretakers, of God’s estate---people upon whom certain expectations rest. 

              What are his expectations?  God expects a return on his investment. Jesus addressed this issue in one of his most memorable parables. Three men were given a certain amount of their master’s property to oversee.  One was given five talents, (a talent was worth fifteen years of a laborer’s wages) one two talents, and the other one.  The man given the five talents went to work and traded with them, doubling his master’s investment.  Likewise, the man with two boasted a 100% return on investment.  Came time to disclose his stewardship, the man who had been given the one talent returned to the hole in which he had buried his master’s talent, and handed in back it to him without a dime’s worth of interest.  Very unwise stewardship.

              When all is said and done pastors and the congregations we serve are no more than stewards of the gifts God has apportioned us. While various churches may embrace that calling with more or less vigor and integrity, virtually all congregations will acknowledge that God expects a return on the investment he has made in us.  To bury his treasure is unacceptable.

              We are collectively stewards, but you the congregation, the session that represents you, and I, exercise great freedom in deciding how this portion of God’s estate, Lakeview Presbyterian Church, will be managed.  No, God did not give us a manual of operations to consult on how that task would be done. Instead he sent his own son to us to show us. 

              What he “showed us” is revealed right here [the Bible], it is the closest thing we have to a manual of operations. While the Bible may in some respects resemble a manual of operations, the Jesus revealed there doesn’t give the church a program for accomplishing God’s will, instead Jesus challenges the faith community to emulate the life he lived, and apply the lessons he taught, to the end that the whole world know his name and enjoy the freedom and hope he guarantees.

              Jesus’ mission on earth was an audacious undertaking from the start, particularly for one who derived no pleasure from the rewards after which so many of us strive. He lived in the world, but its riches, and the esteem it could confer, meant nothing to him. Not so the people among whom he lived, or the twelve he chose to join him in his ministry.      

              How he lived and what he taught didn’t jibe with the culture surrounding him, in fact he made most of his friends among those the culture marginalized, the poor, the alien, and the sinner.  Yet for all that there were people who bought into his program sufficiently that when he said “go out and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” that is exactly what they did.

              People bought into his program, and that is really saying something for his program got him killed. People bought into his program and it got many of THEM killed.  Yet even while they were being hounded and killed, Jesus’ program got bigger and bigger, this despite the fact that his program basically called for his followers to surrender the basic assumptions they maintained about themselves, their neighbor, and life itself.

                Example from our second lesson.  Jesus was now gone, and Peter, his right hand, was in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit moved him to speak.  I commend the speech, really a sermon, to you.  What that sermon did was to affirm unequivocally that the risen Jesus, denied by the Jews and crucified by Romans at the instigation of the Jews, was the long awaited Messiah of the Jews, who would establish God’s never ending reign on earth.

                Our lesson tells us that upon hearing Peter’s words many of the Jews “were cut to the heart,” not knowing how to react to the news.  Peter was only too willing to tell them how they should react.  “Repent [he declared] and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

                “Repent and be baptized.” Not a new program, Jesus’ program, and Peter and the other disciples, human flaws and all, bought into it.  Not only did they buy into it, they spent the rest of their lives promoting it.  “Repent and be baptized for the forgiven of your sins.”  “Disavow your past and be baptized into Jesus.”  What remarkable expectations to levy.  Yet, yet, three thousand in the gathering Peter addressed bought into it and were baptized.

               The number of believers grew, and how do we explain that growth? It must have had something to do with God.  Lives were changed. What’s more people couldn’t stop talking about how their lives had changed, and what was more important, living in such a way that all who formerly knew them were forced to acknowledge that their lives had changed.

               Have you ever been around someone whose life, for whatever reason, had undergone a significant change?  Take for instance a marriage.  Your friend is married now. The accustomed way you related to that person must change, because her life, or his, has changed.  The way that person orders her or his priorities and time will not remain as they were. There are new realities that must be taken into account.

                  Three thousand people in the Jerusalem square were added to the rolls of the baptized. Now assume that baptism for nine tenths of that number, 2,700 persons, was not a life changing event, but something forgotten by the time they reached the Jerusalem city limits.  That would still leave 300 hundred changed persons who went back to their families, their jobs, and their communities the mark of their baptism visible in all aspects of their daily lives.

                 Three hundred changed people loosed on the world for God could do a lot. Scripture gives vivid testimony to the power changed people can exert in the world, even when we happen to be talking about a single changed person.        

              The Christian movement grew for one reason.  People changed, and that change had everything to do with the power of God directing that change.  As stewards, or caretakers, overseeing God’s interests here on earth, it might be reasonably assumed that the church would have some pretty good insights into how God orchestrates change in the human life. But for all appearances what happened in the Jerusalem square on Pentecost was an isolated phenomenon, at least insofar as many of the today’s churches in North America and Europe are concerned.

                 Has the Holy Spirit abandoned the church to decline? People who study church trends offer all kinds of reasons to explain why the church is losing influence in the world, but one fundamental reality must be taken into account.  Lives are not being changed, at least to the degree that anyone might notice.

               Growth is a goal upon which all churches across Christendom can agree. Growth is a goal to which we aspire at Lakeview, a goal that has loomed ever larger in light of the contraction we suffered as a result of the storm. That growth occurs as a result of lives changed, however, is a reality we have generally overlooked.

              The standard practice here at Lakeview has been growth through assimilation, rather than growth through a commitment to strategies that might foster life changing results. Let me be quick to add that the strategies we use here at Lakeview are very similar to practices favored by churches like ours across America. 

               Our strategies to grow the church basically focus on one thing, putting our best foot forward. Now mind you, we can only really put our best forward when someone, the visitor, comes into our building.  If you happen to be a visitor here this morning I will tip you off.  We have made putting our best foot forward a priority in relating to you. 

               What that means in fact is that we make the effort to provide a clean and comfortable place to worship.  Putting our best foot forward means that the choir, liturgist, my assistant in the service, and I, will do our best to present a worship service that satisfies the expectations you brought with you this place. As the preacher I accept the challenge to put our best foot forward by delivering an interesting, non-confrontational sermon that will not exceed fifteen to seventeen minutes in length.         

               Putting our best foot forward our members will be hospitable without being intrusive. We will ask you to sign our attendance registry, offer you the right hand of fellowship, and we won’t be put off if you decline.  We won’t block the door when you leave, even if that happens to be in the middle of the service. We will invite you join us for coffee after the service but will not strong arm you into accepting the invitation.

              Putting our best foot forward means offering a clean, well supervised nursery if you happened to bring an infant with you. If you arrived early this morning or plan to come again, putting our best foot forward means providing Sunday school opportunities for children of all ages, and adults.

            Putting our best foot forward means sending along a note to you over the signature of Elaine Christoph, chair of the committee responsible for hospitality.  The note will thank you for attending our worship service, and invite you to worship with us again.

               Putting our best foot forward demonstrates that Lakeview Presbyterian Church cares about the impression we leave, takes seriously our commitment to make the stranger in our midst feel at home.  Unfortunately, putting our best foot forward cannot, when evaluated on the basis of results achieved, be viewed as a successful church growth strategy.  While our worship service and hospitality may well encourage the visitor to visit a second or third time, our worship service and our hospitality will rarely, if ever, change a life.

               To change lives, and grow the church is our calling as a church, our very purpose for being in the first place, but this church like many, many other churches does a much better job assimilating members than changing lives and growing members. Assimilating is bridging the gap between the visitor and the culture of the church.  It is to put our best foot forward by planning worship, hospitality, Sunday school and fellowship with the needs of the visitor in mind.

                 To assimilate is to make the visitor one of us, to add his name to the membership rolls, to identify a place where his gifts and talents and the church’s needs meet. To assimilate the visitor is to make him a regular financial contributor.

                  The storm, and a recent experience that I will tell you about in a moment, has challenged me to take another look at the church’s calling to grow the church.  It has challenged me to reassess my own calling as a servant of the church. The storm robbed us of many of the prerogatives we enjoyed as a church, and has forced me to reallocate my time as your pastor. The storm decreased our ability to function by more than half, raising serious questions about the church’s future. Growth is a necessity, but I have come to realize that it must be growth of a particular kind. The kind of growth I am talking about is a byproduct of institutional and personal honesty.

                  It means honestly asking ourselves why we want to grow.  It means looking beyond such motivations as appear on the following list: We want to grow merely to assure our survival.  We want to grow so that we will be more attractive to the right demographic, young families with children.  We want to grow to build up our Sunday school and other church programs. We want to grow to firm up our bottom line.  We want to grow because growth encourages more growth.  We are motivated, but are our efforts rightly directed?

                 Last Saturday six of us participated in a day long church consultation on the issue of church transformation and growth. I will note here that the entire congregation was invited to participate. The conference leader gave us as a great deal to think about, but one message came across loud and clear, growth in the church is not a reward for technique, not a reward for putting our best foot forward, growth is God’s reward for faithful stewardship.

Assimilation is not the principal calling of faithful stewards.  God’s stewards are motivated to honor God’s call by presenting the gospel to the world in such a way that those persons God sends our way who are undone by setback, beset by doubt and confusion, or simply adrift and looking for a hand hold on life, may be welcomed and empowered by our example and actions to become the persons God created them to be. 

               Called to be agents of change, we ourselves fear change, and are often angered by it.  We come to the church to be inspired and to be cared, but not to be changed. Many of us are becoming more and more convinced, however, that the growth of this church will not come by putting our best foot forward, however well-intentioned, it will come through earnest prayer and a better acquaintanceship with the Bible---our personal efforts to grasp what God is doing with out lives.

             Our presbytery has offered this church, and the other churches of greater New Orleans, an opportunity to re-examine our roles as God’s stewards, an opportunity to re-assess our ways of thinking and doing in light of Christ’s great commission to “go and make disciples.” You will hear more from your session and I after we have considered our response to the opportunity.  In the meantime we encourage your prayers for us and for our church.   

                There exists no easy or pain free to change minds and cultures.  The process can only begin when the changes proposed promise greater return than what is currently being realized. If it is indeed our choice to review our mandate to make disciples and grow the church, we will as a consequence be forced to reassess some of the base assumptions we maintain about ourselves as followers of Christ, and the church as a discipling community. This will challenge us, but it also possesses great potential, with God’s help, to transform this church that means so much to many of us, into a more vitally alive and vibrant community, welcoming all who come here to join us in a deep encounter with the living God.   AMEN.

PRAYER

                 As the two disciples pondered their meeting with the risen Lord the two said to each other, “were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he opened the scriptures to us?” O Lord Christ, we pray that you will come to us as you came to those two disciples putting a fire in our hearts to serve the world just as you came to earth to serve us. Occupied as we have been with putting our best foot forward, O God, we have often failed to understand that it is your mission we serve and not our own. Grant us clarity, O Lord, as we ask ourselves what we believe and why we believe, and may we use that information in our personal efforts to share your Good News with the world.       

               God of the ages, the age in which we live is subject to a bombardment of messages that undermine the message you would have us embrace and live.  Forgive us when we hear and heed those messages over your own.  Forgive us when we, by our silence or complicity, allow agents of materialism, smut, and injustice to pursue their selfish ends. While there is much talk about moral and social values, O God, much of it is self-serving.  It is our neighbor’s failure to display values we most care about that arouses us, conveniently ignoring other values where we show up less well.

                Lord, uphold all the faithful stewards in your kingdom who labor to bring light and hope to their fellow man.  We praise you for those in the mission field whose joy is expressed in inoculating infants against disease, in helping farmers acquire new skills in raising their crops, whose joy is expressed in constructing schools and hospitals, and whose joy is expressed in preaching your word. Empower your church in this land to be for the citizens of this land, the beacon of light that our brothers and sisters laboring in African, South Asia, and elsewhere, are to the people they have been called to serve.

                  O Lord, you came as the Prince of Peace but the budget of this nation, and many other nations in the world community is directed to armament and other defense expenditures.  O Christ, have pity on us for perpetuating wars and violence. Though greed and lust for power are entrenched in the human heart, we know that you have overcome all that is alien to your will, may that reality help us embrace new possibilities for world peace that for now can’t even be imagined.

                 Abide with all who gather here with a heavy heart, who come have come here seeking help, not knowing in what possible form that help might come. No stranger to any thought or emotion we maintain, you know our need, O Lord, before we voice it.  In the confidence that you can be trusted to walk with us, to address the longings we maintain, we open ourselves to you now, knowing that your grace is always open, always accessible, if we but ask.

                  Lord, even as we near completion on the restoration of our buildings, we know that ministry is not to be localized within our buildings, but to engage the neighbor beyond these walls with the message of hope and reconciliation.  Grant us courage to make changes in what we are doing to accommodate your holy purposes.

               We continue to petition you on behalf of ….