A sermon preached at Old South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Hallowell, Maine, January 15, 2012.
The Rev. Susan M Reisert, Pastor
Texts: Psalm 139 and John 1:43-51
Last week and this week, we are focusing on the very super glamorous subject of the [I wish we had a drum and then we could have a drum roll] church budget. I hope you are just as excited about exploring the church budget as I am. While you may not find yourself quite at the place of using the word “excitement,” I hope that you will find in all of this a renewed sense of who we are as a church, and your place in this church, and all that is still possible as we gather as the church of Jesus Christ, in this wonderful place in the world, where it may be a bit cold outside, but inside it is warm—and not just because the heat is on, but because we gather in the midst of warm people, who wish to travel this journey of life and faith in this gathering of God’s people.
We are focusing for two weeks on the church budget because it does contain some important changes for our life together. The most significant is that the pastor’s time, my time, has been reduced from full-time to three-quarter time.
This change has been proposed by the Trustees after many hours of work and deliberations, reviewing everything on the revenue side and everything on the expenditure side. I’m not going to go over all of those details now—there was considerable discussion about a variety of issues and options. But, it is important to note that this church has been remarkably easy to predict when it comes to pledges and donations, and we have a set procedure for determining what we take from our endowment portfolio (although we will need to begin some discussion about moving that to a smaller number, but that’s for another day), and then we have the smaller numbers with rentals and fundraising, etc. So, the Trustees have fairly clear information about what will likely come in during 2012, and all of those numbers are smaller than in 2011.
In the end, the Trustees voted to propose a budget that reduces my time to three-quarter time. The Minister’s line on the budget, after all, is by far the largest line.
I know it comes as little comfort to many of you to hear the information that Old South has been the smallest church in the area to have a full-time minister for so long, and that a number of other UCC churches are going through reductions as well at this time. In fact, the Conference has organized a meeting for pastors who have gone through or are anticipating a move in this direction; that will happen here at Old South next month.
Last week, I raised the question that I’ve heard from several people, wondering if the reduction in the pastor’s time means that the church has failed.
I offered a simple answer: it can if you want it to.
Does the reduction of the pastor’s time from full time to three-quarter time mean that the church has failed? It can if you want it to.
Last week, we reviewed the strange kind of place in which we find ourselves. Obviously, one of the ways of changing our circumstances is by attempting to bring in more members and friends into the church. But, that idea is a whole lot easier said than done.
We live in an area that experienced a sharp decline in population not too long ago, especially among children and youth, and there’s not much of a sign of that changing any time soon. The consolidation of schools and the hospital offer a stark reminder that we are not the only ones feeling the pinch of a declining population. And, a population that is older. Maine is the oldest state in the country.
We also must face the reality that some of the values that we hold dear are not shared. Last week, I mentioned the trend that people tend to gather with like-minded people. And, that means the value that we place on not only being moderate, but a rather mixed group, may make us less attractive to those who might be searching for a place to call a faith home.
But, still, we could do a much better job. In terms of trends that put our state at one end or another of measures of the population, as in the census number that tells us that we are the oldest state in the union, well, when it comes to being a church-going crowd, Maine is about the least-churched of any state in the land (depending on which survey you believe, that lovely distinction goes to Maine or Vermont). There are people out there, and lots of them, who don’t go to church.
As I mentioned last week, and have before, the glory days of the 1950s and 60s, left us, actually, with a very big problem. When the culture of the United States was helping to push people into our sanctuaries, we became lazy evangelists. We are unfamiliar and hesitant about sharing our faith and talking about our life in the church—especially out there, in the real world.
One big of evidence for this is that when you look those people who have joined Old South in the past few years, almost every single one of them had some connection to the United Church of Christ—either they moved here and transferred their membership, or we adopted them from the Gardiner church when it closed, or they moved back after years of being away.
This should make us all stop for a moment. If we are going to rely on brand loyalty, we are not likely to grow—especially given that we exist in a place that doesn’t enjoy a lot of new people moving into our community.
So, about now, a few of you may be wondering about where the excitement went. Didn’t she say something about being excited when this sermon started? I’m not excited. I’m depressed.
Well, this is exactly that point where we find ourselves facing a very important reality for us—in all of its plain, unavoidable reality.
If we want just to go that path, shrugging our shoulders, enough already, then we can admit that the reduction of the pastor’s time is a failure of the church.
Or, we go in the other direction and see it for the opportunity it is. We have an opportunity here, and we can take it or leave it.
To take the opportunity is first and foremost—and I’ve mentioned this before—is to get ourselves re-acquainted with our mission. One of the most significant aspects of getting re-acquainted, and perhaps even to revisit or embrace our mission as if for the first time, is that our mission helps us get one thing straight right from the beginning and that is that numbers don’t matter in how we determine our success or failure. Numbers don’t matter in how we determine our success or failure, as a church. Numbers matter to other places—like Kodak, and Twinkies—but for a church, numbers don’t indicate, they don’t tell us anything, about success or failure—because churches are different, entirely different.
Our success or failure has nothing to do with how many people gather in this church. While the number of people does have something to do with our financial bottom line, we must embrace the knowledge that’s not the most important thing.
The most important, and the test by which we determine our success or failure, has nothing to do with how many people call this their church home.
What really and truly matters most of all is our faithfulness to the gospel.
And that is where we find ourselves this morning connecting with our scripture, especially the scripture passage from John. When Jesus’ public ministry got going, after he was baptized in the river Jordan by John, he went about looking for disciples, or more specifically, he went about looking for followers. “Follow me,” he said to Philip and the ball got rolling.
Jesus says the same to us, “Follow me.” Follow.
This can be a bit of a puzzling command to us, in the twenty-first century. We tend to be more interested in leadership. Everyone talks about leadership.
But, our faith also calls to us and asks us to consider prayerfully and live in the midst of followership, the path of and way of life of following, of following our Savior.
This speaks to us in a new way today, and calls to us—and we ought to be excited about that. Never mind your leadership skills. How are your followership skills? How well do you follow? How well do we follow, as a group?
The message of following leads us just as it did Philip, and that is to recognize that we’ve been invited into something wonderful and we are called to share it. “Come and see,” he said. Come and see.
It’s an invitation, and invitation to follow and to be led to a place where we learn in the depths of our soul what it means to be created in God’s image: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and you are acquainted with all my ways. . . . .I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.”
It’s an invitation, an invitation to follow and an invitation to share.
And the world out there could use a little of the message of what we have found. I don’t know about you, but as another presidential campaign season heats up and there’s a lot of talk about the “Christian” vote, I find myself at odds with the Christian message that is assumed to be held by all Christians. I don’t share the beliefs of those Christian leaders, for instance, who gathered in Texas this weekend, and endorsed Rick Santorum for president.
And, aside from primary politics, I can’t say that I especially agree with Tim Tebow, when it comes to Christian theology (and I’m not sure what kind of conclusion the losing quarterback came to last night, after the trouncing he experienced at the hands of the Patriots—was God sending a message or was God simply busy doing something else, like trying to solve world hunger?).
But, I will say this about Tim Tebow: I do admire his ability to share his faith.
In his sharing, though, I am mindful of the fact that the world needs to a hear a lot more from Christians who have a different way of understanding what God is up to, and what Jesus preached. Now, the world may seem too big a goal, but what about our community? They should hear a different Christian message.
We have a place and a purpose. We have a mission.
And, that’s exciting.
Follow me. Come and see. Follow me. Come and see.
It is exciting.
Amen.