Some January Dreaming (Micah 6:6-8, I Corinthians 2:9)
This morning I'm allowing myself the privilege of doing a little dreaming about our church right in front of you. Perhaps there will be a point or two where you may wonder, are we on the same planet?, but I trust you will bear with me.
We put at the top of the bulletin the phrase, ``we choose to look ahead with joy.'' In a world where gang violence just visited our own town (and incredibly you can see this on You Tube), leaving dead a boy known to people in our church; in a world where people from our church, Ken and Kass, have heard devastating, lethal explosions; we nevertheless choose to look ahead, into the future, with joy. And this is not because in the end we will be whisked up to heaven's bliss; but because when we live this life as citizens of God's kingdom, we can know meaning and joy in our lives, even as we live very aware of and involved with the stench of our world.
When people ask me about what it means to be a Mennonite, a person who looks at being Christian through an Anabaptist lens, I respond with what I think it means for us at FMC. It means that we are Jesus centered, that we look at the biblical record, and all of life, from a Jesus perspective. Next, it means that we practice community. We don't think that the Christian life is best lived in isolation, we need others. Third, it means that we are people of peace. We believe that, incredibly, our call is to respond to the violence and evil of the world with the active, non-violent love that Jesus taught and lived. And finally, we are people of service. We conclude that Christian faith is better lived than talked, and that we reflect Christ as we willingly give of ourselves for the sake of others, for the sake of the world.
We have already heard a few verses of scripture from Micah and I Corinthians. These verses are very precious to me. They communicate a sense of God's assurance, and they indicate what God would have of us both now, and into the future.
The 8th century BC prophet Micah asks the rhetorical question, you know, does God really want all these fine and beautiful rituals and practices that I so faithfully perform? And the answer is no. What God really wants is that we do justice, that we love kindness, and that we walk humbly with our God. That's what God requires. That's what God wants.
And if I may link these two disparate passages together, Paul's letter to the Corinthians reminds us that it is beyond our imagination the joy we can know when we love the Lord, when we do what the Lord requires.
Dreaming about FMC I look to the future of our church with joy. As I dream the future, here are some things I imagine, or dream of, and here are as well a few practical suggestions for what we might do (if these suggestions gain traction and enough people think they are worth pursuing). I have five dreams to share this morning.
1. Missional identity The first is that we grow in identity as a missional church. Now claiming a missional identity is a big buzzward around churches of many stripes today, and certainly it is an idea embraced by our denomination, Mennonite Church USA. Missional is a problematic adjective because it's not an official word in the dictionary, and because the meaning is elusive. For me, in our setting, it means this. I dream of us being and becoming, more and more, a prophetic church. I dream of us being and becoming, more and more, a church with an expansive world-view. I dream of us being and becoming, more and more, a church that appreciates history. I dream of us being and becoming, more and more, a church that is contemporary in its style and substance. I dream of us being and becoming, more and more, an honest church. Of course, we are all of these things already, to some degree, but I'm interested in the ``more.''
A prophetic church risks swimming against the tide. It is unafraid of being stereotyped, unafraid of looking liberal to conservatives, or conservative to liberals. A church with a broad world-view consistently welcomes into its story the expressions and understandings from people far away. A church that appreciates history assumes we can learn from the past, and knows that history forms and shapes us, but also knows that we can't worship history. A contemporary church is fluent in the language and technology of the world we live in. An honest church can find a way of talking across our differences, even about topics like sexuality, money, and politicsbecoming honest enough to share even when we know we disagree.
And now for some practical things we can do or encourage to happen, related to being and becoming missional, right here at FMC. Maybe this will be the year that a few of us will be led to enter into some new form of service or mission. Maybe this will be the year that a combo emerges in our church, a group composed of some combination of keyboard, rhythm, strings, and woodwinds, to enhance our singing at FMC.
2. How we organize ourselves A second dream has to do with how we organize ourselves at FMC. I am a person who appreciates organization. It has been said among us, and I am in that number, that we have too many committees at our church, that we are ``committeed'' to death. Though I have bad-mouthed committees, I am sure, let me testify that you can't really get something done unless a group of people get together in a room, an office, a living room, somewhere, and reason and brainstorm and plot together. Why, it's a committee, and at its best, it is a mighty fine tool for people who believe in community to employ in order to accomplish great things.
What is really exciting is when people start doing something because they love doing it, because they believe in it, because they have a passion. They are getting together, they are talking together, they are accomplishing thingsthey are a committeebut they are organized around passion. Passion and call bring them together and great things happen. This is my dream, that we become, more and more, in our church life, organized around circles of passion than around a dreary sense of obligation to a committee.
Now I can imagine a lot of little ``circles of passion'' (committees!) that I wouldn't mind spring up around here. A group that tackles a host of fellowship tasks we already do and imagines ones we haven't done. A movie club. A health and wellness team. But things happen best when there is a common passion bringing people together.
What is a practical step we can take? We can agree with Jerry Linscheid, and this is what I mean. We can agree in our minds and in our actions that our church structures were created to enable us to be about God's work in our world. They are not meant to enslave us. So we borrow Jerry's picture from last week and we agree that our church structures are something we hold with an open hand, not a closed fist.
3. Nurturing an authentic language of faith A third dream is that we grow more and more at ease, more comfortable, with our own spirituality. As a church we have a ``God language,'' primarily employed when we sing together, or when we pray corporately. But I think we struggle at an individual level to articulate a language of faith, a spiritual language, that we can deeply ``own.''
For some of us, the only language which comes to mind was one we learned in second grade, when we were very young. It just doesn't work anymore. But we haven't found a way to replace it. For some of us, our biblical literacy has become so weak that we really don't have the poetic language and power of the Bible to fall back upon. Sometimes we are just nervous that the way we talk about Jesus and the Christian way of community, peace, and service, will just strike our listener's ears so oddly, so awkwardly, that it's better to talk about something safe like the weather, or what's your favorite dish at El Monte's.
What is something practical we can do? I have two thoughts. A prayer room and a labyrinth. Most anyone who has traveled (I think of Europe and Guatemala, specifically) has come across a great Catholic cathedral and found it open. You can walk in and sit there, away from the noise outside. There are candles burning. There are things to look at. You can stare at a cross. You can close your eyes and be still.
At the Mennonite conferences I have attended there has always been a prayer room. And at one or two there was a prayer labyrinth. Wouldn't it be cool, I have often thought, if at FMC we had a prayer room, always accessible, and possibly a labyrinth as well. I don't know how, or where, but I think either would be concrete ways of nurturing our language of faith
4. Dealing with death Now for a fourth dream. This one has to do with life and death. Of course we all recognize that death is a part of life, and that for all of us, our day will come. I don't like to think about it very personally, but it is true. I believe we have had a good number of people at our church who have taught us lessons about how to die well. They have lived faithfully and well, but as death drew near, they accepted death with grace and dignity becoming a child of God's. I dream that we can continue to grow as a people who gracefully deal with the reality of death.
I have always been charmed by country churches with their little cemeteries situated behind the church building. Years ago the Trinity Mennonite Church in Glendale, Arizona, worked at issues of death and dying. Eventually they did the following. They build a nice casket which families can use for the viewing of their deceased loved one. And then on the church campus the Trinity folks built a columbarium, a brick wall with slots where the ashes of the loved one can be placed.
This is the practical thing we could do. If there was strong interest and affirmation, we could have a columbarium on our campus. Imagine a quiet, peaceful place on our campus. I don't know where. I don't know how. I don't know all the implications. I do think that it is something that we could explore, assuming there is enough passion around to tackle the topic.
5. More people coming to our church My final dream, for today, has to do with how many people attend church. Specifically I dream of more people being right here in this sanctuary on a Sunday morning. This is something I have prayed about. Not big long, heart-wrenching prayers but more the casual, you know God, I really would like to see more people here. Stepping back and looking at this from a broad view I suppose I should say, be careful what you pray for. Maybe I've gotten some answers already, but they were not what I was thinking.
For example, my prayer has been for more young people, and young people with families. This was part of our dream when Church in the Basement started and now it is still here, over eight years later. This group is deciding it doesn't want to be organically linked to our church. And so, part of my dream has to die for the sake of a God dream, which is bigger.
And then, all it takes is a glance at the annual reports for next week's business meeting to realize that there are more young families involved in our church. It is just not quite what I expected. More of them are sitting over in the Fellowship Hall, in our Spanish service, than here. But to this I need to say, Praise God.
There are a variety of opinions in our church as to what it would take to attract more people to our English language worship service. These range from doing what we do only better, to becoming more skillful and aggressive with our PR, to becoming more deeply involved with the deep pain within people in our community, to transforming ourselves into a more obviously contemporary church, to more deliberately listening and following the perspectives of the Latino demographic in our community. And we could surely identify more perspectives than just those.
One practical step. There are people out there who look at web sites. A church web site is a way of presenting ourselves in the public arena. We have a decent web site, which Dee manages, which includes basic information about our church, our bulletin, our newsletter, some sermons. It would be a lot of work, but someday I hope someone finds the Spirit's call so irresistible that they will want to manage, keeping current, a church web site that is authentically ours.
Finally… The new year has begun and I hope that you can also look to the future with a sense of joy. As we are a church centered around Jesus, a place where the bonds of community are strong, where the commitment to peace is fervent, where being people of service is as natural as a cup of green tea, we can be a place and a people of joy. And as we do what is just, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God, we will know the profound joy that comes when we align ourselves with God's intent for we, God's people. Amen.
