“What
are you staring at?”
May
4th, 2008
Geneseo
United
Methodist
Church
Pastor
Craig Ferguson
Acts 1:6-14 6 So
when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going
to restore the kingdom to Israel?" 7
He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the
Father has set by his own authority. 8
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will
be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of
the earth." 9 After
he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from
their sight. 10 They were
looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed
in white stood beside them. 11 "Men
of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky?
This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the
same way you have seen him go into heaven."
12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the
Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day's walk from the city.
13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where
they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and
Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and
Judas son of James. 14 They
all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the
mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.
It is 40 days after
Easter, the resurrection of Jesus, and for the last month, the disciples had
seen Jesus and followed him. He was
alive, he was with them, he ate, he prayed, he taught.
On this final day
as they met together, the question that arose was simply, “Lord, are you at
this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Here we find
Jesus’ last words before he ascends to heaven.
Basically he says, “not at this time, and it is not for you to know.”
He also goes on to say something that we have all heard many times.
He says, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the
ends of the earth.”
Something I want to
point out before I go any further is that Jesus turns around the responsibility
of restoring the kingdom. He
doesn’t say that he is going to do it, but that the disciples will be his
witnesses, we will spread the gospel to the ends of the earth.
So here we are in rural Iowa. Some
people would say that is as far from Jerusalem as you can get, Iowa qualifies as
the end of the earth. But for those
of us who live here, we know it is more like a slice of heaven.
Nebraska on the other hand fits my picture of the ends of the earth.
Either way, as
disciples of Christ who have received the Holy Spirit through our baptism, and
by faith, we are responsible to be witnesses to the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ; to be witnesses to the good news.
We know that in our
minds. But it is hard to realize what that requires of us.
So we come to church, we attend Sunday School, we sing in the choir, or
help with a Wednesday night or Women’s activity, but inside we are still
staring up at the sky.
So it was for the disciples, when Jesus floated up into heaven, they all
just stood there staring. I can
imagine them all looking up like we might if we were watching a space shuttle,
or an airliner take off. They were
amazed at the spectacle.
As they were
enraptured by this sight an angel appeared and asked, “What are you staring
at?”
Who knows how long
they had been there just staring into the sky?
It may have been one of those moments when time seemed to stand still and
everything moved in slow motion.
The words of the
angel brought them back to reality. There
they were, the disciples, all alone, with a brand new mission statement, but no
clue how to bring it into reality.
I mean, what would
you do if before you left Church today Jesus showed up long enough to tell us
that our job is to carry his good news from Geneseo UMC into the entire world,
and then he just disappears into the sky. I
think I would stand there dumbfounded too.
Sometimes I think
that is exactly what we do in Church. We
know what we are supposed to do, but we don’t know how to do it.
How do we become witnesses to Jesus Christ in the entire world?
How does it fit in our society today?
It is easier to stare into the clouds, doing the same Church, the same
worship, the same routine. It is
easier to look up than it is to: look around, to improve the way we live as
disciples, to grow in faith, and to go into the world as the redeemed Christians
that we are. Let’s just keep
looking up.
Recently we had the opportunity to take our eyes off the sky, and assess
how healthy we are, and how well we are fulfilling our own mission of reaching,
receiving, relating, nurturing and sending out faithful disciples.
This is a time in
the church when we need to be real with each other.
The church is here for a purpose, that purpose it is not for our comfort,
not for maintaining comfortable pews, not for ensuring plenty of parking, not
even for scheduling regular potlucks. The
truth is, if we are not living into our mission statement, the mission that
Jesus gave us to make disciples, then we are not being the church.
It is that simple.
Now I want to tell you that we are doing many things well, and we are very
healthy in many respects. The
results of our Natural Church Development survey are very positive and point out
that we are a strong and growing church. But
for us to continue to be healthy and to live into our mission statement, we have
to look with a measure of scrutiny at the areas that are weakest.
Before I go into
our weakest area I wanted to give a brief demonstration that gives a visual
understanding to the importance of focusing on that weakest area.
Most of you are
familiar with an old-fashioned wooden barrel with staves.
You know way back before there was plastic, wooden barrels was what they
used to use. It took many wooden
staves to make the round barrel; they were tight, held in place by the metal
circles, and then allowed to soak so that their joints would seal.
But we easily forget that there was another important element to making
them do their job. It is so simple
that we would not even think about it if it were not pointed out.
See if you can figure out what it is.
Assuming that each
of the staves represents an area of vitality in the life of a Church, NCD
identifies 8 areas as staves. These
qualities enable us to receive God’s blessing and to be filled up as a church.
Each area is crucial to the health of a Church, and every church has all
eight qualities. They are:
Empowering Leadership, Gift-based Ministry, Passionate Spirituality, Effective
Structures, Inspiring Worship Service, Holistic Small Groups, Need-Oriented
Evangelism, and Loving Relationships.
If you notice each
description has an adjective in front of it.
For example, every church has relationships, but the key to whether or
not it is a healthy and growing congregation is how loving those relationships
are. Every Church has structures,
the question is how effective they are.
To demonstrate why
each of these is important, and why now is the time for us to focus on and
improve our weakest area, I would like for you to pretend with me that this is a
wooden bucket with eight different staves. As
I pour I want you to imagine the water as God’s blessing and Geneseo as the
bucket. God wants to fill up this
church with every blessing you can imagine, but as God pours, there is going to
be a problem isn’t there.
(Water begins to pour out of the short stave area)
As a Church, this doesn’t always make sense.
We look at ourselves and we think. Look
at us, we have very effective structures, better than most other churches, we
should be growing and improving. Geneseo
also has a very good result in need-oriented evangelism.
Boy we have two very strong areas, we should be increasing by leaps and
bounds.
In fact like I
mentioned last week, all of our results were very good, we are a healthy church.
We have much that we need to celebrate.
But while we are looking up and celebrating, God is still pouring his
blessing and it is running out on the floor.
So if we want to
receive more blessing as a congregation, we need to do what? … Anyone want to
venture a guess?
You’re right, we need to lengthen our shortest stave, the quality from
which all the water is leaking out. For
us, and almost 90% of United Methodist Churches that short stave is Passionate
Spirituality.
Let me give you
just a brief description of what Passionate Spirituality is.
NCD defines,
Passionate Spirituality as the energy source that fuels every church,
providing the energy and momentum to move forward toward mission.
Where passionate spirituality is in short supply, other quality
characteristics and ministry areas will feel the impact as the fuel supply runs
short. Lay people and ministry
leaders alike will begin to feel drained, burned out, and used up.”
(has anyone ever felt that way?)
The good news is passionate spirituality is not an exhaustible resource,
and it is not expensive like gas either. It
is more like solar energy, we can be powered by the SON! (JESUS)
It is all a matter of staying connected to the source of power, and not
letting the cloudy days cut off our supply.
Passionate
Spirituality is an integration of our, inner life with God, (i.e. devotions,
prayer time) experiences of his presence in our daily life, that transform our
outward lives.
NCD points out
that, “Effective ministry flows out of a passionate spirituality.
Spiritual intimacy leads to a strong conviction that God will act in
powerful ways.”
You will hear more
about Passionate Spirituality in the weeks to come, but for now the real
question is, what can we do to increase it.
For the answer let us to return to scripture.
These disciples who
had been staring at the clouds, the ones who didn’t know what to do when the
angel called them back to reality, what was the first thing they did to fulfill
the mission Christ gave them. They
returned to the upper room and they prayed.
And just like those
disciples, we are called to pray. If
we believe we are called to love and serve our neighbors here in Geneseo, we
must start by praying for them. Prayer
is the key element in developing our Passionate Spirituality.
One thing that I
feel very confident about is the way God directed events in the life of Geneseo
recently to bring together a prayer map and our NCD result of low passionate
spirituality. It reveals to me that
we are moving in the right direction. We
noticed a need to focus on praying together and for our community.
I am committed to walking every road and praying for every family this
summer. I start walking tomorrow
morning. When I am walking I will
leave a door hanger that simply says Geneseo is praying for you.
If you would like to see a sample, there are some on the tables in back.
If you want to join me anytime this summer, just give me a call.
But if you are unable to walk because of health, or work schedule or
whatever, I still invite you to pray. Drive
by, ride your bike past, or just go over the roads on a map in your kitchen, but
pray. Five minutes a day to lift up
our neighbors and their needs is more important than the time it takes to comb
your hair. Not only that, but it is
part of our calling to be the church and to care for our neighbors.
Let me say, if this
effort is to work, it can’t just be the pastor or 4-5 people who commit to
praying in a radically different fashion for the summer, it really needs to be
all of us.
Starting next
Sunday, on your sign in slip there will be a spot to write down how many miles
of road you prayed over during the week. We
will chart our prayers in miles over the summer and celebrate in September what
God has done through the prayer map.
I know that this is
very new and different for all of us, it is something I have never done, but I
am confident that God has called us to do it, and that God will bless the whole
church through our faithful attempt at regular and focused prayer over our
community. Will you commit to
praying with me? Amen.
