Having had our Annual Meeting a couple Sundays ago and in anticipation of our first Church Council meeting of the new year, I want to recap the gist of my Annual Meeting report which covered our focuses for 2012.
We've made huge strides as a church in the last couple of years. Anybody who doubts that should come and chat, because I can mention several dozen ways in which the Spirit is alive at the Genesee Lutheran Parish in ways I haven't seen before in this or any other church. What we're doing is both revolutionary and freeing. The amazement on people's faces as they experience it tells the story. We're on to something wonderful here.
In order to do that we've had to unlearn several things about being a church...ways of doing things that seemed "normal" but led our focus away from God's intent instead of towards it. The ways we define ministry, measure success, interact with each other and the world are all changing. We've not completed this process yet, if indeed we ever will. We still have plenty of work to do. But we're far enough along now, solid enough in our practices and goals, and different enough in our intent that we're ready to take two critical steps.
1. We need to think about how to sustain this process beyond just this week's ministries. We need to make sure we don't backslide into old habits or simply replace one less-than-ideal system with a new one through complacency. We also need to figure out how to bring this new Spirit into full flower, which means taking risks and dreaming dreams we wouldn't have dared to before.
2. We need to share this Spirit with our friends and neighbors, both locally and throughout the greater church. People who have never seen God in a way they could accept will need to see and hear what we do. People who have tried to seek God through "normal" ways of doing church and couldn't find satisfaction will also need to experience what we're experiencing right now. We're doing things that make people slap their heads and say, "Why in the world did we never think of this before?" Nobody is going to get a chance to ask that question or experience the difference unless we figure out how to share it.
The first item on the list requires discussion of good stewardship. The second item requires discussion of evangelism. These need to be our main focus in the coming year. That's in addition to exploring and continuing to grow in God's Spirit together, of course. We just need to have the courage to look farther and dream bigger than we have so far as we've been turtled up, trying to figure this out.
In order to pursue these focuses we're going to have to repeat the familiar process of unlearning. Most of the language I've heard surrounding stewardship in our congregation has revolved around, "Give more money so we can pay the bills." That's exactly backwards from the Spirit that's guiding us and the goal we're getting people to look towards. But many people will shy away from this conversation because they expect to hear exactly that. Before we can take even the first step towards good stewardship we need to repent that this was ever our message, cloaked in fear and selfish demanding as it was, assure each other that those are not our motives, and find a new, good language to use when talking about sharing our time, talents, and resources. We have to get over the fear of stewardship talk the same way we've gotten over dozens of other fears in the past two years and come out of it for the better.
And speaking of fear, no conversation makes people more nervous than discussing evangelism. Again the message has been rooted in fear and self-concern. "You need to go out and get new people for us so that we can have more members, feel good about ourselves, and keep the church open!" It's so hard to undo decades of that message being repeated. But somehow we have to unlearn this, get over our fear that this is what our faith amounts to or that our church is going to manipulate us into manipulating others, and adopt a Spirit-filled way of sharing God with our community and world. To not do this would be its own form of selfishness, either making "good for us" our entire definition of goodness or making "as long as it's not too much trouble" our criterion for serving the Lord who sustains us and has given us these gifts.
This process of unlearning and then moving forward together is going to take plenty of trust followed by plenty of dedication. We're all going to have to decide if this church and God's Spirit are worth it or whether we just want to be satisfied with everybody else's norm, succumbing to the gravity of doing it the same old ways, hearing the same old messages, wearing out the same old faith. A door has been opened here. A brilliant light shines through it. This is the year we decide whether we walk through that doorway or retreat, only to see it close and our vision return to dull gray. That decision will depend heavily on how well we engage these two issues.
I look forward to this conversation with all of you in the coming months. I pray that we can walk together in faith to the bright tomorrow that awaits us.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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