The Joy of Including

The Joy of Including

(Ephesians 3:1-12)

10:30 am, Sun, Jan 5, 2014; Windsor UBC; J G White

As we come out of the stories of Christmas, I notice that these are tales that include strangers. Joseph and Mary are strangers in Bethlehem, and don’t even find a sensible play to stay.  Shepherds from the countryside are angelically urged to visit the holy family in their makeshift B&B.  A year or two on, strange travellers from the east come to find and worship and offer gifts. 

This Child, this Jesus, grows to be a man who teaches about life and God, who touches people with healing, who trains disciples to follow the pattern, and who faces His death in such a way that all humankind can benefit.  All humankind. 

Jesus was Jewish, after all, not of any other faith, and was the awaited Jewish Messiah.  Yet it became clear that this spiritual role extended far beyond Judaism.  Jesus is the Saviour of the world, not just the chosen people.  God so loved the world.

This is the emphasis of Epiphany, January 6, a day to celebrate the story of the Magi, and then have a season to celebrate the showing of the Saviour to everyone.  So we read from Ephesians 3 today.  The preacher here speaks of the mystery of Christ that is being shared, in former generations it was not made known to humankind, but it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 

The Jewish Messiah is not just for the Jewish people: Jesus is good news for everyone on the planet.  So we are in the joyful role of including everyone in the life of Jesus, the Gospel, the Kingdom.  We have the great pleasure of including people. But, is it a joy? 

For the Lord to use us to reach out to others, we must be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  For our minds are not always set to include people.  Most of us live in a world of insiders and outsiders; people who belong and “come-from-aways”; us and them.  

An acquaintance from the other end of the Valley posted an article from the Coast on Facebook a few weeks ago, called, “Saying Farewell to Nova Scotia for a Reason.” My “Facebook friend” moved here from Ontario less than a decade ago and is now set to leave and go back.  She prefaced the article with her own comment…

Nova Scotia can't keep young people---no surprise---but just as many of us over 50 are coming and then leaving again for reasons far more basic; the inability to get genuinely accepted by anyone except other "ex pats" a problem particularly acute in smaller communities. Something I have never before encountered before moving here: that no matter what---I will always be an outsider. I hear the same story even from Nova Scotians living here, who come from a different area of the province: which strikes me as clan thinking at its most basic level. So I go back from whence I came.....

We Nova Scotians can be known for being very friendly to visitors, tourists.  But when it comes to someone moving in next door, we are less than welcoming. 

This challenge of our own, especially rural, culture is one that I am sure Jesus would have us face.   The challenge to be welcoming, be including, be less “us and them.”  If people from West Hants, say, share this petty attitude about strangers, doesn’t the Spirit of the living God call us, in churches, to grow into a better attitude than the average person?  Is this not possible?  As one church website put it, we can be a people committed to the ancient Christian virtue of hospitality, or the love of strangers.  (www.knoxmet.org/about.html) This is a love available to us, in Christ, and much needed. 

It is the joy of welcoming strangers that Paul, or whoever wrote Ephesians, had.  Grace was given me to bring the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God…  As you peruse these long sentences in Ephesians 3, note the exuberance, the enthusiasm, the joy!  The joy of sharing what was once for one religious sect.  Now, everyone is welcome.

Is everyone welcome in our lives?  Not that we each have to be a gregarious extrovert, an in-your-face welcoming committee of one.  (One of the most helpful books I read last year was Adam McHugh’s Introverts in the Church: Finding our Place in an Extroverted Culture.  I’m sure some of this will leak out in sermons yet to come.) We each have a calling, whatever our personality and giftedness, to be part of the team that finds joy in including people.  Including them in the fellowship of those seeking redemption by the blood of Jesus Christ.   

The mystery of the Gospel that Ephesians 3 speaks of is that the Jesus events, and Jesus Himself, are available and intended for everyone.  Let this be the root of our attitudes, and our joys. 

I’ve been thinking this past week: there likely is a bit of a ladder of joys when it comes to interacting with “outsiders.”  Here’s my first, rough draft of “stages of joy” when we approach strangers…

The joy of belonging (when others don’t).

The joy of knowing what’s going on.

The joy of thinking oneself right.

The joy of knowing more than someone else.

The joy of correcting someone. (These are not good joys!) 

The joy of being nosy about others.

The joy of being curious about someone, genuinely interested.

The joy of seeing curiosity in someone else.

The joy of seeing change in someone.

The joy of learning from someone.

The joy of seeing someone start to belong.

The joy of seeing blessings for someone else.

The joy of seeing the church be better by including others.

The joy of seeing faith grow in someone.

The joy of seeing a person take his or her own faith journey.

The joy of seeing someone go father, do better than you.

It can be worth praying through our attitudes, and the sources of our joys.  The Lord longs to develop our joy.

The author of Ephesians claims, “Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace that was given me by the working of his power.”  By the grace of the God who died for us, we too can be graciously gifted to include “strangers.”  Then, we will welcome the bright, intelligent stranger who moves into the neighbourhood from Ontario.  Then, we will be warm toward the totally irreligious acquaintance we run into each week.  Then we will have joy in getting to know people like… Kevin. 

At his baptism, Kevin introduced himself to his new church family as an “ex-drug addict, schizophrenic, and — most of all — a child of God.” Here is his story, told last year in Mosaic magazine. [Home Church, by Giselle Randall]

 “There I was, living in the street.  Homeless, friendless, drugs and alcohol my only companions,” Kevin said as he shared his testimony before being baptized. “Let me tell you — winter is very, very cold in those conditions.” Some people helped him find a room in an apartment. “I lay on the bed, over the blankets, too afraid of what I might find under them. I started to have convulsions… but when the ambulance came, I refused their help.”

Feeling like he was about to die, Kevin suddenly felt God’s hand on him. He remembered the words of an ex-girlfriend: “Don’t wait to lose everything before stopping all this.” With the last of his energy, he reached out for help and went back to a detox centre.

After rehab, Kevin began attending Église Voix de l’Evangile, a small church in Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. “He’d go away and we wouldn’t see him for a while, then he’d come back and we’d receive him and just show him love,” says the pastor, Michel Martel. “Slowly but surely, by being patient with him, just being with him at times, he’s starting to really understand what it means to be a Christian.”

Kevin was one of five people baptized on Sunday, August 4, 2013 at Église Voix de l’Evangile, a church plant that started as a small group in Pastor Michel Martel’s home in 2009. Today the church meets in a coffee house downtown and has grown from 12 to 40 people on average. It is one of about five evangelical churches in Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu, a city of 100,000. Only one percent of Quebec’s population identify as evangelical Christian.

Of this gospel I have become a servant.  (Eph 3:7)

Of this gospel you have become a servant. 

Let us serve. 

By the grace of God, let us find joy in including others.  

Recount the Gracious Deeds

Recount the Gracious Deeds

(Isaiah 63:7-9) J G White

10:45 am, Sun, Dec 29, 2013 Glad Tidings Worship Centre, Windsor

It's been Christmastime... memories of Christmas past come to mind.  We've looked back to the stories of Jesus to tell and re-tell them, in lots of ways.  (I even had to wear lipstick for a play about the beginnings of Christmas!) New Year's is just a few days away; we get ready for 2014 by reviewing 2013.  Yesterday, Windsor Baptist hosted a funeral for a woman in her 80s; two people who took part in the service, of course, told stories of her life.

And we, just a few minutes ago, received the cardboard testimonies of people in our own fellowship here.  In so many ways we remember and we recount the past.  We tell it.

Isaiah 63 exclaims: Recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts, the great favour.  Those three long verses we read here are really the beginning of a longer section, that is really a psalm of communal lament, as we find in the book of Psalms.  The lyric starts with recounting the gracious deeds of the Lord, yes, but this is done in the midst of a very hard time. 

These are the words of a people who feel far from the Living God, who wonder why the Lord had their hearts hardened against them, who remember their sinful failures, who remember longingly how special they were to God who led them out of slavery hundreds of year before, and who cry out to the Lord to save them again: 'Rend the heavens and come down!” (64:1, 3)  “When You did awesome deeds that we did not expect...” Finally, the song looks for mercy with the familiar image: “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of Your hands.” (64:8)

When a community of faith recounts the things of God, it tells the whole story.  The Bible is powerful and compelling in it's honesty about the whole story.  It does not sugar-coat the followers of God: it tells their many failures and the hurts they inflicted.  Through it all, the Lord watches, waits, loves and acts.  Perhaps in these days, before your congregation will see great revival, your congregation – and mine – needs to discover how to confess our own sin, recount it together, and call on God for mercy.  I don't mean have every individual person confess and repent – though this is vital – I mean Windsor Baptist discover and face the sin we have committed as a body, and Glad Tidings know this too, and Oasis, and Windsor Church of the Nazarene, and so forth.  Read through the Old and New Testaments: you will see that people of God so often sin as one and must find forgiveness as one.  How seldom we do this today!  It's always about your sin and my sin and hers and his.  We never see and admit our sin.  The Lord needs to teach us to recount our shared failures.  And we will see the outpouring of the Lord's blessing, and be able to recount that powerfully. 

To 'recount' is to count again, to retell, to rediscover, to reevaluate...  to re-count.  Many of you know the old song, Count Your Blessings by Johnson Oatman, Jr. (1897)  The chorus sings:

Count your blessings, name them one by one,

Count your blessings, see what God has done;

Count your blessings, name them one by one,

Count your many blessings, see what God has done.

Here is another example; from my childhood, really.  Count and Cookie Monster cooperating...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l7KbMVdN7E

I like that scene because it includes a couple good things.  There is counting, of course; the Count counts.  Also, he and Cookie Monster, though they differ in their approach to the plate of cookies, come together and discover a plan that works for them.  The cooperate.  That is what we are doing today, dear churches; we have come together, to cooperate, to recount the goodness of the Lord that we all know and share. 

There are many things for us to do.  To rephrase a line by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How do I count Thee?  Let me love the ways.” 

How do we recount the gracious deeds of the Lord?

-        Cardboard testimony, and other forms of testimony.

-        Sunday worship together. “I love to tell the story;/ For those who know it best/ Seem hungering and thirsting/ To hear it like the rest.” (Catherine Hankey) 

-        The Lord's Supper: “Every time you eat of this bread and drink of this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death, 'til He come again.”

-        “The way the Church tells time” - Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, etc.  Even New Year's.  A year of telling the Jesus story – again.

-        Bible life – be in the Word... get to know the story. It is full of the gracious deeds of the Lord. 

-        Daily prayer and devotional life: inner gratitude.

-        Being in Christian community, fellowship. We remember more than I can remember and tell on my own.  This togetherness is a great thing.  And our fellowship and ministry throughout the year is valuable.  Chatting with a fellow yesterday about being a Baptist Christian in his early years, and now has served the Lord as an Anglican Christian for many years.  Good things he learned at Windsor Baptist he carries into his Anglican fellowship.

-        Tell and learn our history – from New Testament days until now.  Church history is important history.  We learn from the ways God has acted through the centuries, even as we enter this new time that is so different from the past.  When, in Isaiah 63, we read of “recounting the gracious deeds of the LORD,” we are seeing but one example of many where God's people told their story.  Their story – our story, is centuries old. 

     We have stories to tell.  I'm more and more fascinated just by  the history of Windsor Baptist, as one example, 194 years old.  What was God doing in 1819 to start my congregation?  Why did the Spirit revive things in the 1860s?  How did the leadership inspire the congregation after the great Windsor fire of 1897?  How did the people press on when their pastor dropped dead in 1965?  The Lord can use our history to bless us today. 

 “How do I count Thee?  Let me love the ways.”

Just a couple years ago, Matt Redman and Jonas Myrin composed the song 10,000 Reasons (2011).  It came together very quickly, inspired by Psalm 103.  Redman acknowledges that the “10,000 years” phrase was a nod to Amazing Grace, and like that old song, this new one is an extremely popular expression of how important and powerful, even life-changing it is to recount to gracious deeds of the Lord.

You're rich in love and You're slow to anger,

Your name is great and Your heart is kind;

For all Your goodness I will keep on singing:

Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find.

Silent Night

Silent Night

Thursday, Dec 19, 2013, J G White

10:30 am, Dykeland Lodge, Windsor

7:30 pm,St. Louise Church, Ellershouse

Coming into a church among the trees of Ellershouse is a lovely thing on a snowy evening.  Singing familiar carols and warming our hearts towards Christmas is a joy for many people in this season.  Tonight we sing ‘Silent Night.’

A few legends surround this carol, like the one of the organ breaking down at a little Austrian church, and the priest and organist composing ‘Silent Night’ to be accompanied by guitar at the upcoming Midnight Mass.  

Well, that might not be history, but it makes for a beloved story.  The tradition of this carol on Christmas Eve remains strong, in Austria, and here in Canada.  Go back to a Church where I used to worship on Christmas Eve each year, dig out the old hymnbooks that used to be in the pews, and turn to # 48.  On most of those pages you will see there red splotches of wax, dripped on successive Christmas Eves from the candles of those singing Silent Night at the close of the service.

The young priest, Josef Mohr, did write the words - six verses, not just three - in 1816, at age 24.  The organist of St. Nicholas Church, Oberndorf, Franz Gruber, who was also a local schoolteacher, composed the music - for the guitar - two years later.  It was first sung at Christmas Eve mass in Oberndorf, 1818.  

As ‘Amazing Grace’ is perhaps the best known and loved hymn in the world, ‘Silent Night’ may be the world’s favourite Christmas carol.  Like Amazing Grace, it speaks of the amazing salvation God offers us, even today.  

My German is quite rusty, but let me use an English translation of the six verses to walk through it, from the New Oxford Book of Carols.

The first stanza speaks, like our usual translation, of the silent, peaceful mother and child.  Sleep in heavenly peace! Sleep in heavenly peace!

The second stanza in German is the basis of our third verse, in the 1859 English translation we almost always hear, by Episcopal Bishop John Young.  It’s a verse about light beaming in the darkness.  I think of the Bible verse that talks of the life that Jesus give to us: it is the light: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:5)

The third stanza celebrates Christ coming into humanity from God.  
Silent night! Holy Night!

From the heaven’s golden height

Christ descends, the earth to free;

Grace divine! by thee we see

God in human form!

This Jesus is about bringing freedom to us.  It happens because God joins us, lovingly, beautifully.  The fourth verse says,  God above at that sight

Doth with fatherly love rejoice,

While earth’s peoples, with one voice,

Jesus their brother proclaim!

I like this.  Christmas is something we are doing together, with humanity and with God.  God rejoices; we have one voice of praise; we find Jesus to be our Brother, kind and good. 
The fifth verse in Josef Mohr’s original speaks of what salvation and freedom is about.

Silent night!  Holy night!

Adam’s sin damned us quite,

But the Son, to set us free

From the Father’s stern decree,

Now in mercy is born!

Now in mercy is born!

The traditional, biblical theology of God’s wrath and mercy are portrayed in these lost verses.  Lost to us who sing in English, anyway.  The birth of Jesus is God’s mercy, when we had gone astray and were unworthy.  As a Bible verse puts it, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  (Is 53:6) On this Jesus our wrong is placed, this Jesus who is born to die.  

Josef Mohr’s sixth and final verse is the basis of the second one we sing in English, about the shepherds receiving the glorious angelic message about Jesus.  Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia.  Alleluia is, of course an ancient word of praise and rejoicing.  This beloved carol, with Franz Gruber’s peaceful music, sings an Alleluia so calm and deep that it surpasses many others, even Leonard Cohen’s popular ‘Hallelujah.’  

In all the carols we sing of the Saviour, may we hear God speaking, and may we be speaking of the Saviour to others.  Sing alleluia!  Christ the Saviour is born!

Jesus, Lord at Thy birth!

AMEN.

MVP: Becoming, by 2017

Make the Vision Plain: Becoming, by 2017

(Isaiah 65:17-20, 24-25; Luke 21:5-19)

10:30 am,  Sun, Nov 17 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

Yesterday was a big day for Christmas craft sales - and Santa parades - and I did see advertized a “Christmas Party” yesterday, and other such things.  So the “visions of sugar plums” are dancing in people’s heads already, and it is only mid November! We can see that the “Holiday Season” is becoming longer, arriving earlier.  Have patience, dear people.

The sugar plum of our own vision, as believers here, is to reach with the Gospel of Jesus people of our communities.  And we want to face the particular challenges of ministry to people who are, well, younger than me, 43.  

Sharon and I got this in the mail during the week.   “There is Hope” a tract from Western Tract Mission. Has bunch of personal stories, and then a brief explanation of trusting Jesus as your Saviour.  Has a “Romans Road” on the back cover.  Not exactly the best method to reach younger people.  Other ways than a tract - a pamphlet, other ways than a list of scripture verses explained are needed.  New conversations and new approaches are needed to impact people today.  

How we get to this new place is a process.  We have given ourselves until 2017 - four years - to become focused on this ministry.  We are in a season of becoming.  We are just discovering how we can come together under a shared vision of a preferred future.

Our scriptures today paint visions of the future.  The visions of what we call Isaiah 65 look ahead to the restoration of the Hebrews and their capital city.  The words also looked farther ahead to the arrival of their Messiah - who turns out to be Jesus, the guy arriving at what we call Christmas.  And that poetic picture of a new creation of peace is also looking ever farther ahead - beyond where we are today, in 2013 - to the second coming of Christ, and the completion of this hope. So, many of the Bible prophecies  shared by those ancient sages happened sort-of as predicted, and yet we still wait for everything to happen in a deeper way.

This phrase caught my attention during the week: Isaiah 65:24 “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.”  God answers before we speak.

Natalie, our secretary, this week bemoaned the state of the failing computer in the office.  It’s no longer slow as molasses, it’s starting to enter the final stages.  It’s a dear computer in palliative care.  On Thursday, Natalie wondered if someone could get that donated computer working to replace the old one.  “It’s already happening,” I told her, “In fact, it’s better than you hoped.  The Trustees can decide tonight to procure a new computer for the office.”  And I quoted to her the old theological hope that God knows what we need before we even ask for it, and provides.  “Before they call, I will answer” preached Isaiah.

So God provides.  According to His schedule.  And our Lord provides better things than we asked or imagined.  So it is with a good vision. It must be big enough that we need God to achieve it.  At my pastor’s retreat ten days ago,  I found myself urged to explore “how much am I desperate and longing for the Lord.”  In the days since, I know I am quite desperate, thirsty, needy.  And God will satisfy me.

If we make a plan according to what we can do, it’s just our plan.  God’s plan for us is bigger than us - it can happen only with God.  It requires His grace for our lives.  And this He provides.  

We are works in progress. So ‘becoming’ is a good place to be.   To say we “will be” means we are on a journey, we are still in training, there is still hope for us greater than we have seen in the past!

Look back with me now to a sentence a bit earlier in Isaiah 65 (18).  Words of the Lord: “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.”  

I believe in Divine intervention.  And this is what our vision is about.  God taking us on this training mission to know and love and understand and reach people, with good news for them about Jesus.  

Thousands of years ago God’s message was: I will create Jerusalem as a joy.  This is a place, a city.  And, I will create its people as a delight.  This is the people.  

I claim this poetry for today.  God will create Windsor as a joy.  God will made this people a delight!  This is the loving work of the Lord among us.  Building our skills and confidence about witnessing.  Training us in the languages and worldviews of younger people today.  Challenging us to become free from serving ourselves and our Church.  Calling us to try and try again to rely upon the grace that is all sufficient to transform our lives and others.  

We can become what God is creating!  That’s my point today.  We can become what God is creating.  We shall be changed.  We are not the ones doing it.  

But we must cooperate with God the Holy Spirit.

Like the poetry of Isaiah 65, similar to Isaiah 11, we have hopeful visions of a congregation that has its eyes on the next generations, and its heart there, upon them. We visualize a constellation of communities in this area that are safe and prosperous, good to call home, good for raising a family, good to retire in, and making a difference even beyond West Hants.

We are at the early, early stages of becoming missional: a mission minded people.  I know it is an early stage because all our language is still about dreams for more people in the pews, with us, in our classrooms, being ministered to in this facility.  Later stages will have our vision on being the Church more and more when we are not here, not all in one heap.  Scatter our lives, serving and interacting for Christ in our communities, and Jesus will use us there.

The ole proverb about money can be said about believers: we are like manure. If you spread Christians around they do a lot of good. But if you pile them up in one place all the time they stink!  There are times to pile up the organic fertilizer, but the real activity happens when it’s spread all around.  

Chris read for us about Jesus in Luke 21 - another future vision.  “Look at the beautiful worship centre!” Jesus apprentices say to Him. “Look at the arches, the ornaments; see the woodwork.  Even the simple hymn-boards - they were made by Havelock Redden.  And the brass cross - in memory of our Pastor, Mr. Churchill. Ahhh.”

“It’s all coming down” says Jesus.  “Not one beam will be left standing.”

“When?! When?” The followers ask.

And today I ask the same thing.  When will our vision for the younger generations - and every generation out there - go beyond simply getting them to be Baptists who gather here?  

In God’s time and will.  We can become what God is creating!  So it is OK to be at the stage we are at - if we are relying upon our Saviour to lead us along in good directions.  Our Jesus continues to instruct and train us, by the presence of God, the Holy Spirit.

God uses our own experiences to give us wisdom.  We grow in spiritual maturity as we walk with God, make our mistakes, discover where blessings grow, and keep going.  

Our small group - we have been having some very good in-depth conversation - sharing - with one another.  We are learning about each other’s brokenness and the healing the Lord has done already. And when one person speaks of what’s troubling, someone else can admit the same thing.  One person testified about how big an issue it is to avoid embarrassment.  A light went on inside me: that’s what I do too, deep inside. I’m terrified of being embarrassed.  The Lord teaches another step, heals, transforms.  

Our little group has become a safe place for faith and fear to be shared.  From the hard times the Spirit of God heals and develops character.  Our experience gives wisdom.  

Cory Somers, Lead Pastor of Immanuel Baptist Truro, was recently interviewed by Sharon White about Church leadership, for a course she is taking. “Where have you learned the most about leadership?”  Somers said, from his own mistakes. “The more you fail the more you learn.  Failure is the best teacher.”  

Mr. Somers is becoming the leader God envisions him to be.  And he is being used by the Lord today, as he is now.  Just like me, just like some of you.  

Philippians 1:6 “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”  The “day of Jesus Christ” is the day of His return.  Everything will be completed then.  We can be incomplete now - sinners saved by grace - but we are on the way, we are becoming, day by day, we and our own personal missions are being completed.

Jeremiah 29:11 “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

Our God wills to create Windsor as a joy, Windsor Baptist people as a delight.  We are becoming the people God envisions us to be.  And when we are becoming, we are who we need to be this day!

“But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Windsor as a joy, and its people as a delight.” Isaiah 65:18.

MVP: Youth & Young Families

Make the Vision Plain: Youth & Young Families
(Psalm 145; Haggai 1:15b-2:9)
10:30 am,  Sun, Nov 10 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

     The voices of young people in Canada today…
     There is no right and wrong ever in anything, it’s what you believe in you as an individual and what you choose to do. - Elsie
     Premarital sex is not a big deal nowadays… If they changed those teachings to say, you know, it would be a bad thing to have a child out of wedlock, or I dunno, it would be a bad thing to have - to corrupt and innocent person.  Those are good teachings.  To teach against premarital sex is unrealistic. - Stan
     I felt it was somewhat hypocritical… like being in church and saying these things and then not acting, not acting in Christian ways. - Marly
     Ideally someone who doesn’t know Christ should be able to go to a church and feel welcome anyways, you know.  And I feel like that would happen in my church, I feel that, you know, people would get to know them and make them feel welcome. - Bill
     To be a community of Faith for the next generations that are coming along is a thrilling and challenging project.  It is a mission, a missionary task for a missional Church.  It is a calling from God, if it is indeed within God’s vision for us to do: to develop an intentional focus upon youth and young families.
     Last year a booklet came out that was the result of a significant study of people 18 - 29 years old in Canada, who have been in churches.  Many are now gone.  The study is called Hemorrhaging Faith: Why and When Canadian Young Adults are Leaving, Staying and Returning to Church.
Some of you have excitement this fall about our vision for these Canadian young adults.  And you picture in your own minds folk coming to faith in Jesus Christ, and coming in to be part of us who are here.  It’s a glorious vision, a beautiful hope.
     In the days of a Hebrew prophet named Haggai, the Jews who were living again in their capital city, Jerusalem, heard this good news about their worship centre, which was lying in ruins.  I will fill this house with splendor…  The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts….
     Those folk, thousands of years ago, had visions of silver and gold adorning their building once again.  We have visions of people adorning our pews and halls and rooms: young people, families, retirees, everyone.
     But, as the research  names it, Hemorrhaging Faith is what we have in younger people today: even the young who get in the churches leave in droves.
     I want us to have conversation this morning about what the Lord is showing us about younger generations today.  I want us to share what we see and know, and what we find in the Word that inspires us to have a mission to those who are of younger cultures.
     Let me start with a quotation from the Hemorrhaging Faith study, in the chapter called  Faith Drivers and Barriers (4).
     To understand the emerging generation, we have to put aside our desire for straightforward answers and learn to be comfortable with the complex and even contradictory nature of young adults. There is nothing simple about them. We must try to hear the message behind what they are saying.
     Do you get to hear what younger people are saying?

What are they saying?  What do you hear?

     I think about the perspectives we can share, across ages and generations.  As someone who has always been interested in science and nature, I am interested in that way of understanding and knowing other people.  Common awe and wonder in creation.
     Psalm 145 says to God:  Generation after generation stands in awe of your work; each one tells stories of your mighty acts.  Your beauty and splendor have everyone talking; I compose songs on your wonders.

     What experiences of younger people intersect with God, and with the Gospel?
Making a difference in the world
Helping people
Environmentalism - knowing and enjoying creation
Building community
Truth seeking, truth exploring
Common experiences of youth & young adulthood

HF: Foreword - John H. Wilkinson
However, for the larger number of youth who no longer are involved in church, this research leads us to ask how we can move the church to be more, more welcoming of their faith journey, and more willing to engage in an authentic dialogue about faith and life issues, a dialogue that in many ways will require us in church leadership to understand a mindset quite different from our own. If we are to take young adults seriously, there will be a price to pay.

What kind of price might we need to pay for the sake of young adults?

What words of scripture challenge us to reach the next generations?

     Hemmorrhaging Faith says: Listen to young adult voices. And then imagine with us the best possible responses.
     Haggai 2 says, Take courage… work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts.  My spirit abides among you; do not fear. 

MVP: Intentional Focus

Make the Vision Plain: Intentional Focus

(Habakkuk 2:1-4)

10:30 am, Sun, Nov 3, 2013, Windsor UBC, J G White

It is a joyful fascination to watch a baby observe the world.  My wife, Sharon, and I, have a seven-month-old grandson: Dryden.   He gets fussy, and the bottle is readied.  He takes it… but stares at someone and turns his head.  When he does take the bottle, he gets very focused and relaxed and starts falls asleep.  Later’ he’s playing on the floor with a toy, and his Nanna speaks to him to get his attention.  His attention stays with the toy.  When he does look at Sharon, he drops the toy and it’s gone.  He can go from a frown, to laughter, to crying, to relaxing all within 20 seconds.

So little Dryden is always quite focused, on one thing or another, but his focus is always changing.  Some people grow up and the brain keeps on working like this.  It gets called ADD or somesuch.  Many of you who are like this would like to be able to focus more.  And, others who tend to be able to focus would like to be better at multitasking.  

What does it really mean to have focus in our lives.  Not just the ability to focus from moment to moment.  I wonder about the overarching themes of our lives.  What is the focus of my whole life, or what are the few main things my life is about?

Today we remember many significant people who lived in the recent past - in our own lives - and we rejoice because of all they inspire in us.  We can see in so many people the focus they had, vision that guided their lives, various themes in their personal stories.

Today we remember men such as Reg, Bob and Cecil, whose work helped with the construction of homes, and who were focused on building their own families.  We remember those who liked to travel or drive, such as Woody, Josef and Wayne.  We are grateful for those who had a quiet and paced way about them, including Roger and the two Harolds on our list.  We are inspired by women like Elva, who valued traditional ways, and Marilyn who explored many new and creative things.  Some, like Bernie and Glenda, deeply cherished the memory of their own loved ones and ancestors who were gone.  Some, like Rollie, were focused upon service in their community.  We give thanks for those, like David and Jake, who were friendly and fun-loving.  Of course, so many whose memory we honour were devoted to their families, such as Dorothy and Ermie, and devoted to the Lord Jesus, who had saved them and gave them abundant life here.

Those who call Jesus their Lord and Saviour are gathered by God - here, and in eternity -  into the fellowship of “saints.”  In this particular place and time, we who call this congregation home are getting focused and catching a vision.  Some of those whom we lit candles for today were part of this faith community.  On the shoulders of those who went before us we stand and can see farther.  Our vision for doing good things together grows out of who we have been and what the Lord has done with us.  

But any group of people, to be a group, must have focus.  A shared vision for what the whole thing is about.   If a congregation of Christians has ADD, so to speak, our activities will be all over the map and not well orchestrated.   19th century Danish philosopher and Christian, Soren Kierkegaard, said “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”   And a consultant who has been working with Windsor Baptist this fall says, “If everything you want to do is important, then nothing is important.”  There has to be focus.  Something has to be the main thing.  Other activities and purposes fall into place under a unified vision.

So we here are trying out a vision, taking it out for a spin, and seeing how we like it. Seeing if the Spirit of God likes it. We are going to be an intergenerational group focused upon young families and youth in our area: the up and coming generations.  We don’t want to be simply upset at what is going on in our world today, and think how the younger generations are failing and falling, and entering a dangerous world.  We want hope for them.

We heard a reading from the Bible earlier, from a moment in the history of the Hebrew people, about two and a half millenia ago.  A prophet was thoroughly upset at what was going on in his Jewish society and in Middle Eastern politics.  The prophet complained to God: things were totally unfair!  

Then there was hope.  The LORD answered me and said: write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.  For there is still a vision for the appointed time… if it seems to tarry, wait for it. (Hab 2:2&3)

Put the vision up in big, bold letters.  Be clear about it.

Just yesterday I entered a 5 km run - a fundraiser for a youth mission trip to Kenya.  The 5k route was through Victoria Park in Truro.  A friend who lives near there is a very good runner, and ended up leading the way, so to speak.  He ended up leading some of the faster runners right off the 5k trail and into an extended route!  Some of them must have run 6 or 7 kms instead of 5!

Part of the problem was the marking of the trail.  At an open place where we were all to turn left and go down a hill, the pink flagging tape was scarcely to be seen.  It was not clear to the runners where to go.  

Among a group of people who call themselves Disciples of Jesus, there often needs to be a clear vision for their work together.  It needs to be clear enough that, even when busy and active with many good activities, all can still focus upon the overarching vision.  Like big block letters that anyone running could read.  So this congregation’s developing vision is to know and love the younger ages of our communities.  To be God's servants to them.

Part of the vision for the people in ancient Israel in the days of prophet Habakkuk was this statement: The righteous live by their faith or faithfulness. (2:4) The right life, the good life, the just life, the complete life, comes out of having faith, having confidence in God.

Those words of a prophet got picked up by a follower of the way of Jesus, hundreds of years later.  Romans 1:16-17 in the second part of the Bible says: For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith…  to the insiders and the outsiders: everyone.  "The one who is righteous will live by faith."

The gospel is, essentially, the story of Jesus of Nazareth, and the meaning of those events.  Jesus’ life and actions and teaching, His execution by the powers of the time, and His coming back to life.  This life and death story claims to put an end to the power of evil in our lives, and the power of death too.  The Jesus event in history is the power of God to transform human lives.  All those who have faith, confidence, trust in this Saviour, get right with God.  

Just a few days ago much of the protestant Church in the world marked Reformation Day.  One for the famous reformers of Christianity, five centuries ago, was Martin Luther.  Those words of the Old Testament, quoted in the New Testament of the Bible, were of key importance to him.   The righteous will live by faith.  

As we honour the memory of folk from older generations who have gone - and most, though not all, of these candles today represent seniors - we think about the next generations.  We want them to live right; to have the best lives possible, good life.  We, of the faith community that meets here, want them to know the wonderful faith we enjoy; faith in a living Deity whom we find we can relate to, thanks to this God, not thanks to us.  

This is our renewed focus, our vision.  Perhaps it will become for us here a vision, not so much for ourselves, but a vision what can become of the people born in the 80s and 90s and 2000s and being born today.  And we are just at the beginning of getting focused, being intentional.  

Today,  we wait with a vision of a preferred future, a hope for those who are young.  Here, we have confidence in the God who makes good things possible among us.  

Thanks be to God!