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Our Disruptive God
March 9, 2008 Rev. William “Buck” Day
We want to turn to God’s word right now. Once again we are going to be looking at three different passages. We are going to be looking at one from Romans, one from John and then one from Matthew. These are all probably ones that we have heard before but I think they are obviously apropos and just because we have heard them does not mean we don’t need to hear them again. So, with that, let’s turn then to Romans here and take a look at what God has for us today. I invite you to follow along. (Romans 8:28)
We know (I like that…We know). We know all things work together for good for those that love God, and who are called according to His purpose.
And then from John: (John 15:16)
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and I appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last; so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”
And then from Matthew 28 (also known as The Great Commission): (Matthew 28:18-20)
And Jesus said to them (them being the disciples and us) “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember I am with you until the end of the age.”
God’s good word for us this morning.
Would you pray with me please?
Lord, help us to fall in love with your word. Help us to know it, help us to love it, help us to let it become a part of who we are. And Lord, right now we ask that by your Spirit you would help us to hear what your Spirit has for us that we might quicken our hearts to hear as you speak to us. So Lord, speak. Your people are listening. Amen.
Well today we are going to do something a little different. We are going to have a little combo platter as part of the message. Part of it will be your typical message that we will get into in just a minute. Then there will be another part that might be affectionately called, A Pastor’s Chat; and what I mean by that is that it is an opportunity for me to just talk with you. I have heard about this idea from a pastor that I’ve respected for a long time. He’s a pastor in a church in Seattle by the name of Bruce Larson; and every now and then he would just get up in his pulpit and he would say “Folks, we need to talk.” So that is going to be part of what we do here today-- we just need to talk. And if you are visiting with us we are glad you are here, but we want to let you know that this is for the people of Faith. So we are going to get into our message, and then we’ll talk. O.K.
When you think about the word adventure, what comes to mind? What kind of images does that conjure up for you? Does this come to mind? Adventure, perhaps it is something that is risky, perhaps it is something that is unexpected that happens. Adventure always seems to be remembered, doesn’t it? Do we ever put adventure and God together? Do we ever do that? Is God an adventurous God? I think He is and I like this thought: God is our Adventure Outfitter. He is the one that outfits us for the adventure. He calls us to and if you think about that, isn’t that the case? Look at scripture. I mean all of a sudden this guy is tending sheep up in the mountains and all of a sudden there is a burning bush. He goes to kind of check it out; you kind of think you would do that -- and what happens? -- His life changes completely, doesn’t it? Or how about a guy who God comes to and says “I am going to make a great nation through you and your wife,” only he is really old and his wife has never been able to have children. And yet, God does it. The great adventure, he has to leave his home as part of it. If you think about a guy walking on the road and he gets hit be light out of the sky, so bright that it drives him to the ground; and as a result of that his life is turned one-eighty, isn’t it? And in many ways we are all here because of that event. Or you think about some uneducated fishermen who get in front of a bunch of people, telling people about God’s love. These people decide, “We are going to take them up on the offer that they are giving us, to align ourselves with this God.”
Time and time again throughout the pages of scripture we see this adventure that God takes the biblical characters on. Wonderful stories, wonderful stories. God is always up to something, isn’t He? Whether it is changing people or growing His influence in the world or just helping people understand and believe in His glory more and more. Great marvelous things happen when God’s call for adventure comes on people. But are those kinds of adventure just things of the past? Or is God’s call for adventure for us, as well? Well I think I probably kind of let the cat out of the bag a little bit already, in my thinking of that. I think God is still a God of adventure. Think about it. If God is the same yesterday, today and forever, then why would God stop doing what he did in the past now? Why would he do that? God is still in the process of restoring our world. That’s what He has been about since the fall. That’s been his modus operandi. And now He invites us to join Him on that adventure. A call for adventure with Him is the same for us as it was with the biblical characters that we read about. I think, in fact, there is even more reason for us to believe and to step out in that adventure, because we are able to look back at those stories and go “O.K. God did it then.” We can look at our own lives and see how God has been invested in our lives as well. We say, “O.K.” So what holds us back? What holds us back then from the adventure that God is inviting us to join Him on? What do you think? Do you think an aging parent breaking their hip can be an invitation to adventure? How about trying to figure out how you do normal family life in the midst of all the activities that are a part of all of our lives? How do you that? Is that an invitation to adventure? Or how about dealing with mounting sales losses in your business? Is that an invitation to adventure?
As we walk into our life as we know it, all that it is, and we look at all that happens to us, the good, the bad, the unexpected; maybe the things we call a twist of fate; or maybe we look at it as the cards we’ve been dealt. What do we do in those kinds of situations? I think our natural reaction is, well, we got to dig in. We got to work through it. We got to make it happen. We got to make the best of it. Perhaps, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, may be a thought. We got to suck it up. We got to muddle through, somehow, don’t we? In the midst of this life that we call life, I think we get so wrapped up in what is coming at us that we forget about God. We forget that God is still in charge. We forget that God has the power to intervene. It is not beyond His abilities. It is not beyond His desire to intervene. Yet I think when we live in this world that we find ourselves in more often than not, it almost becomes a closed system where it is all about us trying for us to get through our lives anyway we can; and it becomes our problem to solve. It becomes everything that we have to do and in that kind of case it is not about adventure, is it? It is about just hanging on. It’s about the struggle that is called life, more often than not. We see it in phrases like: Is this all that there is? I mean I thought life was supposed to be more than this. I thought it would be so different.
But life becomes an adventure. Life becomes an adventure when we remember that God is a part of the system, part of our world in which we live. It may be hard to believe but I think that God actually welcomes those hard things into our lives, those disruptions into our lives. I think He wants that for us. I think He wants that for us because it represents an opportunity for Him to give more of Himself to us.
God is active and God is present in our world and He is present in your life as well. Our God isn’t the great I Was – He is the great I Am. That is His name. God is present. God is active and He wants to give more of Himself to us in our lives. So when things seem disruptive, perhaps even destructive, God eyes that as a call to adventure – a call to something new. When we begin to understand that, when we grasp that from God’s perspective, I think a door opens up for us. I think a door opens up for us because all of a sudden there can be a spirit of expectancy; there can be a spirit of anticipation; a spirit of hope. All things work for good, all things – not just the fun stuff, not just the pretty stuff – all things work for good. It opens the door to say “I think God is going to do something here. I think God is up to something here.” I say that because that is what I believe is happening right now here at Faith.
This is where we kind of turn the corner now a little bit. We talked about it a little at the annual meeting if you here. I said I believe that God is stirring the waters here at Faith. What I want to do is I want to take a few moments and kind of flush that out a little bit more for you today; and I also want to address something that I know is on some of our hearts as well. I want to give you this quote that I forgot to give you earlier. It is from G. K. Chesterton. G.K. Chesterton was a follower of Christ and says “An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.” A wonderful quote. I know, and your session knows, and has heard your concerns about some of the recent layoffs here at Faith and I want to be direct with you. I want to be direct with you and say it is, and it has always been, my intention and our desire to have children’s and youth music as part of life here at Faith. I know many of you, in fact, have come to Faith for that very reason, because of the music that was here for our young people. I also know that as a pastor in a large church, because that is what I am, yes we are a large church. Average attendance at a church in the United States right now…anybody want to guess? Seventy-five people. O.K. We are a large church, folks. We are a large church and as a pastor at a large church I know that large churches require excellent music ministries across the board. That has to happen. Our worship services, the thing we do here on Sunday morning, are really our front door to the world. When people come into Faith they meet our greeters, the welcome desk and our ushers; those are our frontline folks. They play a very important, very powerful job and if you are one of them, thank you for being the face for people walking in. But once they get in here, this is kind of their first taste of who and what we are all about on a more programmatic level. So it requires excellence in all that we do, including our music ministry. It is all of our music ministry, including our children’s music as well as our youth music. Now having said that, if we believe that God is a part of this system, kind of going back to this piece here, then even with the hard knocks that we’ve taken of losing some staff, do we believe that God is up to something good here? Do we believe that there is something new that is coming out of it, something different than we have known in the past? My answer to that is “yes”. I believe Tim’s answer to that is “yes”; in fact, I know that is Tim’s answer. Will it require new ways of thinking and involvement for all of us? Yeah. But I have faith in us as a people of Faith; I believe that we can do that. I believe in you and I believe eve that God will do great things in us as we make ourselves available for Him to work through us. I think that is one of the adventures that God is calling us to as a church right now is to walk that road.
Another one of the adventures that I think God is calling us to is a little more wide ranging, a little more comprehensive; and it is looking to the future. It asks God “Who do you want Faith Church to be as we go forward? What do you want us to be about? Your session, a couple weeks ago, approved the formation of a task force. This task force’s job is to bring a draft, notice I used the word draft, of a vision for where we might go in the future; a strategy for how we might get there; and maybe even one or two of the very, very initial steps to begin to implement that. Let me say a couple things about that. The first is that this task force will not be working in a vacuum. This task force, let me give you an idea of who is on it, we have two elders—we have Dean Halverson and Andy Marlowe; then we have three lay people— we have Karol Allen, Jill Reed, and Smith McClure, as well as myself on that group. We will be working and getting input from you and working to bring a draft back to session in a few months. Then at that point the session and you will have an opportunity to work through those pieces; because this plan that we are bringing forth is not the task force’s; it needs to be God’s. It is going to be God’s vision brought through all of us for the future.
Secondly I know there have been other strategic plans here. I have been part of churches where there have been other strategic plans; and as I think I heard this past week or so, “Oh, they are all talk and no action.” I have to confess to you that, in fact, many strategic plans are just that; but that is not my desire. My desire is, as I said, that we would be able maybe to start with one or two very initial, very preliminary steps this fall to begin to move forward towards where God is calling us. Let me also say this about strategic plans and why they get sidetracked. I think most strategic plans that get sidetracked get sidetracked because when they get to the point of beginning to make implementations of that plan, it requires change, doesn’t it? It requires change, and we don’t like change because change means, many times, having to say goodbye to things and programs that have been very near and dear to some of us; that have been very successful; that have been used by God in powerful ways. But now it is at a point where we need say “Thank you Lord.” Celebrate the ministries, celebrate the fruit that was born through those ministries, but then move forward. But the problem with that is it is really hard to do. It is really hard to do so people go “We can’t get rid of that. We can’t do this.” So as a result, what happens is, change never gets implemented the way it needs to. So as a result the whole plan gets derailed and becomes all talk and no action.
And that is where we turn to this adventure that God is calling us on. God is calling us to a life of adventure and He is disrupting our lives maybe right now. Why is He doing that? So He can bring more of Himself to us individually and more of Himself to Faith Church. So I want to encourage you to look at Faith right now. Take a look at all that is going on, not as something that God is observing from afar, but something God is very involved in. He will be actively moving in us and through us for the good of all of us at Faith and for the good that God will do through us to the world. That is why I put that Great Commission in there for our scripture. God is calling us to go, to be His witness to the world, not His witness to each other. That is important, we need fellowship; but we are to be light and salt to the world, a light on the hill, so we have to go beyond ourselves to be that witness for Christ. So go. We are going to “go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” That is what God is calling us to.
Let me give you an example. I have been in a lot of places where I have seen God take me on a lot of adventures personally. I want to give you an example of what can happen when we kind of step in this adventure with God, and what comes out of what we can not possibly consider at the front end of that. The story begins June 18, 2001. Sixty-five 3rd and 4th graders were at their second full day of camp. For many of them, this was their first time at summer camp and the first time they were ever away from their parents. They were at a place called Camp Ojibway, which was a camp that was owned by a church that I worked at. I was their camp pastor and the directors of that camp were a married couple, this was their second year and they were still a little green. Camp Ojibway was situated on beautiful Lake Mudhen. We had three acres. We had three acres and we had neighbors right next to us on both sides. As you might guess, they didn’t like our noise. So we were really restricted in the amount of campers, in fact, the amount of people that we could have on site at any one time. As a part of that, we were doing the best we could. It was a camp that was owned by this church for almost forty years. It had grown up within the life of the church and many of the people that went to that camp as little children were counselors at that camp, and now had their children at that camp. Some of these 3rd and 4th graders were kids of these former kids who were at this camp. It was outside of Siren Wisconsin. If you know your history, you know what happened that night. Storm clouds began to build, and it wasn’t long before this young camp director couple were getting calls from parents saying “Watch out. There is a storm moving your way.” As the clouds continued to build, they hustled all these little kids into the basement of the lodge, into the walk-out basement of the lodge – the walk-out side was all glass. They hustled them into a back room and closed the door just as the glass began breaking. The whole lodge groaned under the wind and you could see the damage. After the F3 tornado went through the camp, not one child was hurt. The only scratches were on a couple staff people. About eighty people involved. God had His hand in that because they were right under that; the basement was right under that opening. That began a two year odyssey of what do you do at camp.
First off, we had to think about, we had the rest of the camping season, what do we do with all of the folks that signed up to go to camp. So we were able to find places where we took one week where we were up in Alexandria; another week we were in Wisconsin. We took the high schoolers to the middle of Iowa to a camp. The next two years we were able to piggyback off of another camp in Wisconsin; and, in the midst of all that time, we had to say “What do we do God? Do we rebuild knowing the limitations of what we find ourselves in? Do we move somewhere else? Or do you want us to say ‘This is enough camping ministry?’” Hard questions. Questions that required prayer. In that process, we decided to move forward and try to look for a new place. We almost bought an old fishing camp out by Alexandria. Thank God we didn’t. Then eventually God opened us and led us to the place outside of EdenVallley, Minnesota to a place that was an old girls camp that had been closed for a couple years. It was on fifteen acres on Rice Lake. Our only limitation for campers was how much of a dining hall can we afford to build? Today, it is a beautiful camp. God is doing great things through that now seasoned husband and wife camp director team. This is what he said after that. They now have a new dining hall. They have new cabins. They also have a large home for the camp directors so they can raise their growing family. David said, (this is right after the tornado) “We may be the directors of a camp that has been blown away by a tornado, but God is not done with us. He is going to bring it back.” He had no idea of what that would look like. And if you were to ask him today, he would just go “God is good. God is good.” He was willing to step out on that adventure. He was willing to risk and go with God. He had no idea.
Folks, we have no idea what God has in store for us; but I do know this, that God is not done with us and He has some amazing things up His sleeve for us if we walk with Him. So I invite us as a people of God to step out, to trust, and see where God takes us because it will be a great ride.
Would you pray with me please?
Mighty and Holy God, you are not done with us. Oh I thank God! I need that Lord. I know that you are not done with me and I praise you for that; but you are also, Lord, not done with us as a church. So Lord we ask that you would lead us that we would be willing to take the steps necessary that we need to have you take us where we need to go. Lord help us in those hard times to make visionary decisions that it might bring glory to you. In the midst of that God, we don’t want to just build a big church, we want to build people who love you; who want to serve you; who want to do whatever it takes to honor you in all they do in their lives. Lord that is my desire, that is my heart. So Lord take us on that adventure that in that we might give you all the glory and give you all the honor. In your name, Jesus. Amen |
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