Acts 16:6-10
June 9, 2013
They went through the region of
Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word
in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia,
but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went
down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of
Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’
When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia,
being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
I want you to imagine that you are Paul and you have had a
dramatic dream. The dream has come in the midst of a lot of failures to your mission.
You’ve been starting churches around the land of present-day Turkey, and you’ve
been trying to move eastward into Asia. But nothing’s working. You’re
frustrated and discouraged. You have a plan, and it’s not working. Then you have
a dream that a man in Macedonia (what is now Greece) is saying, “Come to us and
do your work here.” That’s not your plan. To go to Macedonia is to go to a
place with different customs, different people, and different challenges.
You’re prepared for work in the land you’re in because you are from that land
(Paul was from Tarsus, which is a city in the same province he had been
starting churches in).
What would your response be? Would you lay aside all of
your plans and follow? Would your doubts hold you back? Would you follow, but with conditions—only if
you see measurable progress in three months, five months, nine months? Paul
wanted a sign, but what does he do now that he’s received a sign to go
somewhere completely different?
Over the years I’ve learned that most people at some
point pray for signs from God, hoping that God will show them what to do. Often
they get signs, but then they’re plagued by doubts—was this really a sign from
God or my own imagination? Doubt is the sign-killer. The Bible gives a great
example of how we search for, but struggle with, signs in the Old Testament
story of Gideon.
You may not remember Gideon from the Bible. The story of
Gideon is a small one. It takes place very early in the history of Israel, and
if found in the book of Judges. Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress so
that the Midianites, a violent tribe that keeps attacking Israel and taking
their food, will not see what he is doing. He doesn’t want them stealing his
wheat.
Covered in dust, sweat, and chaff as he threshes away, an
angel appears before him. The angel tells Gideon that God is calling on him to
lead the Israelites against the Midianites. For Gideon it’s not enough that an
angel appears before Gideon. He still has doubts and asks for a sign. He tells
the angel that if this is really what God wants, then the next morning God
should make the ground wet with dew, while leaving dry a fleece that Gideon has
placed on the ground. The next morning Gideon sees the fleece and it is dry,
while the ground is wet. He wants another sign. The next morning he wants God
to make the ground dry and the fleece wet. So the next morning the ground is
dry and the fleece is wet. Gideon is tempted to ask for another sign, but the
angel reminds him to simply have faith and trust in God. Gideon leads the vastly
outnumbered Israelites to victory against the Midianites.
We are so much like Gideon. We cry out for signs, and
even though God is working all around us, we often don’t see it. But we don’t
just have doubts about the signs we get. More often we recognize the signs, but
don’t like what they point to. I’ll give you an example from an old story. An
atheist visits the Grand Canyon and hikes alone along the crest. While admiring
the beautiful view from the edge, he stumbles and falls. Hurtling downward into
the abyss, he flails his arms, trying to grab at anything that might prevent his
certain death. As the ground rushes upward to meet him in a violent end, he
manages to grab hold of a branch sticking out of the cliff wall. There he hangs,
unable to save himself. The crest is 300 feet up, while the bottom is half a
mile down.
He can’t climb up, and he can’t climb down. He has no
hope. Not knowing what else to do, he begins to shout out into the canyon: “God!
Are you out there? Help me! If you help me, I’ll do anything you ask!” He hears
only the sound of the wind swirling along the cliff wall. “God! You are the
only one who can help me. Save me, and
I’ll do whatever you want.” Again, he hears nothing but silence.
Just as he’s about to give up all hope, he hears a
booming, thundering voice echo through the canyon, “Sure, sure, that’s what
they all say.” “God? Is that you? I mean it, I’ll do anything you ask!” he
says. “Are you sure you want me to save you?” replies God. “Yes, I’ll do
anything.” “Anything?” God asks. “Anything!”
God says, “Okay, I’ll save you, but you must do exactly
what I say.” “Of course. You know I’ll
do it. I’ll become a Christian. I’ll help the poor. I’ll go to church every
Sunday.” God replies, “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Let go of the
branch. If you let go of the branch, I’ll save you.”
The man thinks for a while. Then he looks up and shouts,
“Is there anybody else out there?”
We want to hear God, but we don’t always want to follow
what we hear. The key to discernment, to hearing what God is saying to us, is doing
what God wants us to do, even if we don’t want to. This is such a huge part.
It’s easy to follow God when God seeks what we want, but it’s hard when God
calls us to seek what God wants. It’s this very kind of discernment that has
impressed me so far with Pope Francis. I heard parts of an interview he had
yesterday with a bunch of children. One child asked, “How long did you want to
be pope before you became one?” Francis answered, “I didn’t want to be pope at all. It was
God’s choice, not mine.”
If there is one really significant thing about this
congregation, it is that we look and listen, and then we follow, much like Pope
Francis. Real discernment is being willing to listen and to do what we don’t
want to do if that is what God asks us to do. We put aside our will for God’s.
I don’t know if you all really appreciate just how
special this church is, but it’s our willingness to discern that makes us
special. We’ve done stuff that very few other Presbyterian or mainline churches
have been able to do. We stand out, even if others don’t necessarily notice.
Let me give you some examples of what I mean.
Do you recognize the names Lyle Schaller? He’s a church
researcher who has uncovered some of the most profound attributes that go into
having a church grow. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, he published a number of
books that helped many churches turn themselves around.
One of his sagest pieces of advice in terms of how to get
a struggling church to grow was this: If
you can help it, don’t try! He has said quite often that if you want a
growing church, don’t try to turn around a struggling church. Start up a new
church instead. His research showed that for a whole slew of factors—a
congregation’s fear of change, their reluctance to accept new ways of
worshiping, and the desire of different generations to be surrounded mostly by
people of their own generation—the best thing to do is to just start a new
church. If you look around Cranberry and the North Hills, you can see how
accurate his advice is. The growing churches of this area are the new churches,
not established churches like ours.
The problem with established churches in decline is that
the members often resist growth. They don’t want to adapt in the ways you need
to adapt in order to grow. If you are determined to grow as an established
church, he says that there are two tasks that are the hardest for churches to
do, and that really keep churches from growing. The hardest task of all is to
move a church from a pastor-size church
to a program-size church. This
requires a bit of explanation.
According to he and other researchers, there are four
basic sizes of churches. First, there is the family-size church. This is a church that worships between 1 and 49
people each Sunday. Typically these are very small churches that have a hard
time keeping a pastor. Because pastors come and go relatively frequently, it’s
the members who really run the church, and of those members it’s usually a
patriarch and matriarch from one or two large families who make all significant
decisions. Everyone follows their lead. Also, since these are churches that
want to maintain family dominance, they often make life tough on pastors who
come in with new ideas, especially those with new ideas who want to bring in
new people. The pattern of these churches is that a new pastor (usually fresh
out of seminary) comes in with lots of excitement and fanfare. After one year, the
members (usually of the family) start to become irritated with all the new
idea. So they start a campaign of criticism against the pastor. By the third
year the wounded pastor has moved on.
The next size church is a pastor-size church. This church worships between 50 and 99. In this
church, just like the family-size, a
very small cadre of people makes decisions. In this case it is the solo pastor
and a few members of the his or her inner circle.
The next size church is the program-size church. These churches average about 100-249 in
attendance. Decisions are made by the church leaders, and the pastor(s) are
seen as both leaders and consultants, guiding the church, but not really having
final authority. The focus is on creating programs that reach out to the
community and the congregation.
The final church is the corporate-size church. It worships 250+. These churches are run
much like a large corporation where the church council operates like a board of
directors, the senior pastor is the CEO, and the associates and program staff
are like division presidents.
According to Schaller, the most difficult task a church
can face is to grow from a pastor-size church
to a program-size church. Why?
Because it’s such a change in culture, from decisions being made by a small
cadre to being made by a large group working in trust with each other, that
most churches can ‘t make that change. We made that change with ease, and
almost no one noticed how easily we moved from one to the other. 17 years ago
we were averaging 95 in attendance. Today we average about 225 in attendance. This
church has done the hardest thing for a church to do, and we did it with ease.
The second hardest task for a church to accomplish is to
grow after 20 or more years of decline. Again, we have grown, and grown relatively
easily. This church had almost 30 years of decline before 1996, and it has now
grown from just under 200 members to just over 500. In the process (considering
deaths, people moving out of the area, and some leaving the church), we have
added almost 450 new members in that time. In essence, this church has
accomplished to two hardest tasks a church can undertake, and we did it with
relative ease.
We also have grown in a denomination of decline, and even
in an area of Presbyterian decline. Five years ago one of the pastors of our
presbytery, the Rev. Jim Boos, did research on growth in our presbytery. What he found was interesting. In 2005, of
the 87 churches in our presbytery, 17 out of 87 churches grew. That’s about
19%. Calvin Church was one of those churches. Over the prior 2 years, only 5
churches had grown during both of those years, and Calvin Church was one of
those 5. For the five years between 2000 and 2005, only two churches had grown
in each year: a church in Chippewa and Calvin Church. Between 1995 and 2005,
only one church had grown each year for that ten-year period: Calvin Church. We’ve
now grown consistently each year for 17 years.
Despite this fact, very few churches or church pastors in
our presbytery have asked what it is that we are doing that has caused us to
have such consistent growth. Ironically, we are in a presbytery that has called
itself an evangelical presbytery, emphasizing growth. Yet the presbytery has
largely ignored the one church that has consistently grown. Despite that, we
are known now internationally. We have been written about in several books, we
have been the subject of several studies, and we continue to have pastors working
on doctorates or doing grant-funded studies visit and study us. We’ve had
people from California, Minnesota, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Ohio, New York,
Maryland, and elsewhere come and study us. Included in that is a pastor from
Alabama who plans to visit this summer. We have become an internationally known
church—us in little ole Zelienople.
In addition, we have raised over $2 million in property
purchases, renovations, and expansions since 1996. That includes renovating the
sanctuary, putting in air conditioning, buying Faith, Hope, and Charity Houses,
building a labyrinth, upgrading our electrical and heating systems, and so much
more. We embarked on our capital campaign as a 430-member church looking to pay
off $1.6 million in debt. We have paid off $1.35 million out of $1.6 million in
7 years, and we added 80 members. I think that’s remarkable. I don’t want to
make it all about numbers, but the numbers do reveal a remarkable vitality in
this church.
But here’s the really big question: how did we do it? We
did it by being one of the rare churches that really wants to listen for, hear,
and follow what God is calling us to do. My vision when I came here was a very
simple, two-part vision. Be steeped in the Great Command, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor
as yourself.” Second, to be a church that is willing to ask, “What is God’s will for us?”
When I first came to Calvin Presbyterian Church, we
changed how we vote on decisions. Presbyterian churches typically vote the way
most organizations do. They follow Roberts’ Rules of Order, debating and then
voting to the question, “All in favor say
‘aye.’ All opposed say ‘nay.’” On our session and in committees, we vote by
asking members to spend time in prayer, letting go of what they want, and
asking what God wants. We then ask, “All
who sense this may be God’s will say ‘aye.’ All who don’t say ‘nay.’” Dong
this makes a huge difference. It means that we aren’t pursuing human goals.
The greatest example of how this question changes things
came about 7 years ago when we were dealing with an issue on the session. The
whole session was in agreement that we should do something in a particular way,
but one elder advocated another way. Over time he changed the minds of the
others through a vigorous debate. When it was time to vote on the new plan, I
asked the session to spend time in prayer, letting go of what they wanted,
others wanted, and what they thought I wanted. Then we voted, with me asking
them, “All who sense this may be God’s
will…” The vote was 8-1 in favor of
what that one elder wanted. Who voted “no”? That one elder. When I asked him
what changed, he said that during his prayer he realized that he was asking the
session to adopt a plan that made things easier for him, but that this wasn’t
what God wanted. He realized in his prayer time that God was really leading the
church to adopt the other plan. We voted again and the vote was unanimous for
the original plan. That’s what seeking God’s will in prayer does. It allows us
to let go of our desires to seek God’s.
When you hear of me traveling around the country and
Canada, it is to teach other churches how to do what we do. Despite my
enthusiasm for our way, the one thing I consistently hear from pastors who want
to do this is that they are scared. What if they try and the church board or
council rebels? What if they do this and God doesn’t come through? What if
people won’t pray? I have no answer other then to encourage them to try. I’ve
discovered that if we pursue God’s way, God answers and leads people to
experience God’s blessings. God wants our churches to do well.
It is very easy to be skeptical about all of this,
asking, “Does God really care about these
issues? Isn’t God too busy to deal with our little concerns?” My answer is
that God isn’t too busy because this is the stuff God cares about. God wants us
to care about what God wants, to seek what God wants, and to do what God wants.
How can God be too busy to care about the things God is busy doing?
When we are willing to truly seek what God wants, we find
that we begin to want what God seeks. That’s what all of you have done, and
it’s what we are celebrating today. We have sought what God wanted for us, and
in it we have found so much of what God has been seeking for us
Amen.
