THE STORY TELLER

"How would you preach to a congregation where many people have advanced degrees?" I was asked the first time I met a group of leaders from FUMCB/ The Open Door. I leaned back, took a deep breath, and observed that people don't need a lecture when they come to church but down deep most people are hungry for the Gospel. Then, I pointed to the preaching style of a certain carpenter's son from Nazareth.

Jesus was always telling stories. Some of them had a message that was as clear as a bell. You couldn't miss the lesson in the story if you tried! Some of the stories Jesus tells seem almost deliberately vague. Instead of turning on the lights that would help us see life and truth, it's as if Jesus walks into the room and turns off the lights. The Nazarene tells a story, we're confused, and find ourselves stumbling around searching for the light switch. "What did that mean? Who are the bad fish and who are the good? What in the world does a story about weeds in a field have to say to us when we're wrestling with Gaza and legalized marijuana and children crossing the border and marriage rights?"  

Truth is Jesus sometimes likes to make us work to find the truth. Like all great teachers, he wants to engage us. He doesn't want to hand us truth on a silver platter. Jesus wants us to work because only when we work to find the pearl of God's truth in a field of dirt, do we make it our own. So if you stagger out of worship and ask your neighbor, "What in the world did that mean?" perhaps we're doing our job. :)

The other thing to say about the stories Jesus tells is that he likes to use everyday moments and things to point us towards eternal, life-changing, world-healing truth. On the surface of things, his stories often seem surprisingly simple. Jesus talks about weeds in a field, a wedding party with oil lamps waiting for the reception to start, a baker using yeast to make bread, a woman who loses some coins, a small seed becoming a bush big enough to throw shade.  

I once heard about a preacher who -most Sundays- used some kitchen utensil or food item as an illustration for the Gospel truth. People, years after the pastor had moved on down the road, said they couldn't work in their kitchens without remembering those sermons! They'd get out their sharpest knife and remember a sermon based on James about how careful we need to be with our tongues...our words. Simple things from the kitchen used to point people to deep truth.

Jesus was a story teller. You see that, especially, in Matthew 13. The Nazarene goes from one parable to another, barely taking a breath between stories.

The best story he ever told, of course, was the story he told with his life.

 

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

WHY THREE SERVICES? IT'S A PARTY THING!

One of my best friends in high school was Polish. After school one Friday, he told me he was headed to South Bend for a wedding and would see me again on Monday. I said, "A wedding doesn't take all weekend, does it?" He laughed and said, "You've obviously never been to a Polish wedding. This is a three day party!"

Some may wonder why we plan on offering three worship services (8:45 and 10 a.m. in the Sanctuary, The Open Door at 11:15 a.m. at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater) beginning August 10th. It's about room, it's about creating space for us to grow where we can welcome those who come hungry for God, and it's about providing space in our morning schedule for people to connect, welcome guests, and "move" from Sunday school/small groups to worship (or from worship to classes). The primary Sunday school hour will be at 10 a.m.

There are Sundays in the Summer when we are just able to "fit" in the Sanctuary for one service, and so we expect during the school year -we're praying for this to happen- we'll have enough people that one Sanctuary service won't handle the crowd. Even if we could fit, it may send a message to new guests that the church doesn't have room for them. (Like someone approaching a table at a party, and discovering they have to pull up their own chair and squeeze in at the corner.)

The early start of the 8:45 may be tough for some, but for others it will work just fine. The 10 o'clock service has a great tradition. The Open Door is contemporary worship that is well led, and speaks a language that some persons understand better than traditional worship. We're blessed, as a young leader said to me this week, to have both kinds of worship experiences! We are one congregation, in two settings, with two worship languages.

Jesus repeatedly uses a wedding feast or party as an image for the kingdom of God. In Luke 14, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a man who prepares a banquet. He's throwing a party and the occasion isn't made clear. (Matthew 22 says it is a wedding reception.) The king is so eager to have a full house at the party, so focused on having as many people present as possible, that he sends his servants out to extend a personal invitation. Some people shrug the invitation off, but the man tells the servants to keep going, and so they invite everyone they find (Luke points out that they reach out to the poor, crippled, blind, and lame).

This is a man (a God?) who is passionate about having as many people as possible at the party. One servant tells the host, "There is still room." So the host sends the servants out again to extend more invitations.

We're not asking you to start knocking on doors inviting your neighbors, and the strangers around you, to join us for the feast of grace the living God is throwing every weekend here at 8:45, 10 and 11:15. We ARE asking you to -

• Pray for our church to be a faith community that is passionate about inviting people to come join God's party;
• Welcome those who come to God's party, helping them find their way around the building, and inviting them to your class or small group;
• If you are healthy and walking is easy/fun, leave the parking spaces closest to the building for those who have young children, for whom walking is a chore, or for our first-time guests;
• Enthusiastically support our decision to offer three different opportunities for worship so when people come through these doors they'll find room to settle, worship, love and serve! Help us make sure there is plenty of room for all! Choose the service that best fits your schedule, lifestyle and spiritual temperament, and then lift up the others in your prayers.

Why three services? It's a party thing. It's making sure we have more than enough room at the table for those who come. It's deciding that we won't just offer one entrée or one dessert, but there is a buffet of hope and truth and grace ready for those who come here this Fall.

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

WHAT'S YOUR PHRASE?

Two weeks ago I was sitting down for lunch at a restaurant in North Webster. Before our family was settled at the table, Olivia said to me, "Do you want to know my new phrase?" I didn't know we were supposed to have a "new phrase," and so I asked her what her "new phrase" was. She said, "Such and such."

Ella immediately said, "Do you know what my new phrase is?" I shook my head no. She said, "My new phrase is 'yadda-yadda-yadda.'" (We explained that would not be a good phrase to use after her teacher or other adults say something to her.)

Marilyn McEntyre in What's in a Phrase? (Wm. B. Erdmans Publishing Co.), says she was wary when members of her congregation were asked in worship to write their "spiritual autobiography in six words." Then these words came to her: "Eat the manna. More will come." To Marilyn those words were an expression of her own anxieties about "saving and spending, keeping and letting go, prudent stewardship and the practice of generosity." Her six-word autobiography reminded her of the way her mother lived - not far from poverty yet "rich in trust and stories about just the right amount of food, money, help showing up just when it was needed."

If you were to write your spiritual autobiography in six words, what would it be? I'd like you to do that this week and then, if you feel comfortable doing so, send it to me. (Your identity will be protected!)

I wonder if the six-word autobiography of the father in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15) might be, "Everything I have is yours, child." I wonder if the mother of Jesus, Mary, might write (Luke 1:37) "No word from God will ever fail." I wonder if Simon Peter's (John 21) might be, "I said 'no', he said 'yes.'"

What's your "phrase?" What's your six-word spiritual autobiography?

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark

WILL THE REAL LEADERS PLEASE STAND UP?

One of the first lessons in leadership I learned was taught by a pipe fitter in South Bend, Indiana. I was fresh out of IU, a weekend youth director at a UM church on Ewing Avenue, and our group was supposed to be getting into vans and station wagons. People were milling around in the basement fellowship hall even though it was ten minutes after our scheduled departure of 6 p.m.

Paul Rogers came up to me and asked, "What are we doing?" 

I answered, "Well, we're supposed to be going, but no one is going to the cars." 

Paul looked at me and said simply, "You're the leader.  Tell them to go get in the cars!" 

So I said, "Let's go outside and load up." In three minutes I was standing in an empty fellowship hall. Everyone had gone outside to get into the vehicles! As I turned the lights off, I thought, "I think I just learned a lesson tonight."

Leadership is a vital ingredient in human society, in athletics, in business, in education, in families, and in the church. Paul Borden, in "Direct Hit," says "The Church faces a dearth of leadership. Pastors and others, he writes, are "often unwilling to assume the role of leadership." (Because leaders are often pay a price for leading!)

Some leaders are made, he observes, but for most leadership is about learning the art of leading. Leadership is a practice, he says, and not a gift.

Leith Anderson says leadership involves a person "seeing a need and taking the responsibility to see the need is met."

Here are some of the keys Borden says are key to effective leadership: 

• At the heart of leadership is passion about God's work in our lives or a prophetic burden.

• A leader's first task is to be clear about the mission. A leader must ask if the mission is worth dying for (a willingness to lose one's job).

• Effective leaders have the courage to take on the existing culture of an inward focused, "take care of us and keep us happy" community. (Effective leaders are surrounded in the church by courageous allies and partners.)

• The world is changing quickly and so leaders require enormous flexibility. Plans change, situations change, and congregations vary.

• The most effective church leaders are missionaries at heart. They think strategically and mobilize the sheep to the "best advantage to accomplish the mission."

• Biblical leaders are wise. Good leaders understand their times, their people, and the mission. (And wise leaders know themselves.)

• Wise leaders stop dysfunction when it happens.

• Leaders are best when leaders are positive. They are always showing others what God can do and wants to do. They lead by casting vision, assuming the best, and develop new leaders and disciples.

When you think of leaders, what names and faces come to mind? When you think of leaders in the Bible and in the church, who were they...and what did they do? What do you notice about them?

Are we a community that encourages leadership? Are we developing a new generation of leaders who will work with God to change the world and shape the future?

Paul Borden ends his chapter on leadership with this paragraph: "A congregation is desperate for leaders who are filled with passion, have already demonstrated courage, see flexibility as a virtue, are missional because of their passion, are wise, really believe God expects them to win with a whole group of saints who feel the same, and who take bottom-line responsibility for what God will do through them."

What will you do to help us become a community that grows leaders?

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark