One spiritual principle shows up over and over again in the Scriptures. One theme is repeated endlessly: and that is that the way to go forward is to go back. The way to move ahead with your life is to go back, to go back to its roots, go back to its foundations, where you discover what is valuable and discard what is hurtful. The way to move forward is to go back.
And so the psychotherapist, when he works with an emotional disorder, will often ask you to go back and talk about your childhood. He will lead you to explore those formative years in which so much of your emotional life took shape. He does this because he knows that before some of us can do any kind of personal growth, we will have to go back and either appreciate or discard the “stuff" that was given us at an early age. The way to move forward is to go back, to go back and find out what is truly valuable and what is not.
This is as true for a whole church as it is for an individual. We as a church must now chart our course for the next few years. In fact, it’s quite a challenge. We must get ready for the 21st Century and the third millennium! How do we do it?
We go back to our roots, we return to the things which have brought us thus far, and evaluate each one of them. The way to go forward is always to go back.
To find out where we ought to go, let’s go back, then, and rediscover God’s original intent, not just for the church, but for humanity. What was God after, going back to the very beginning?
Genesis 2:7-9, 15-18
In this lovely creation story Genesis we learn that God placed us in a garden. "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man who he had formed." God placed us in a garden, and then placed us into relationship, both with Himself and with one another. "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." God’s intention for humanity, from the very beginning, is that we should live in fellowship with Him, in creative partnership with one another, and in responsible relationship to our world. That is the garden of delight into which He has placed us.
And, I would argue, that gives us a clue to the purpose of His church. We have over and over again violated God’s intent; we have broken fellowship with God and have distorted our relationships with one another, and we have been irresponsible stewards. So God has given the church to His world. The church is here to recreate the garden. The church is here to restore the beauty and the harmony of fellowship with God and with one another. The church does not exist as an end in itself. It exists to restore the garden. It exists to redeem human life. The way to go forward for us, the church, is to go back and remember God’s original intention for the church.
I stood before you in January of 1987 and offered a program to redevelop Takoma Park Baptist Church. At that point, as a new pastor, I had heard from you your heart-cry about your church and all that it needed to become. I felt it was my responsibility to work with you to put into place those things which you said you needed and which, in fact, were essential for a successful church.
You may remember that we adopted the image of building a building to describe what we hoped to accomplish. Do you remember?
Do you remember that we began by "securing the foundations"? That is, we rebuilt the staff and put into place procedures to help us get properly organized.
Next, in 1988, we "opened the windows". We tried to improve our work in education. New Sunday School workers were enlisted; new classes were organized.
Third, in 1989, we opened not just the windows, but the doors also. We wrote an evangelism strategy, we organized an evangelism committee and a Sunday School outreach team. We prepared ourselves to reach out and touch others’ lives for Christ. Do you remember?
The following year, 1990, knowing that we would have a number of new members in place, our focus was on "sanding the floors". That image reminded us that training new leaders and preparing them for their work in the life of the church involves some sacrifice. But when I look over our leadership roster now and see how many persons are giving us their talents who were not even members of the church six or seven years ago, I know that this emphasis was right on target.
Then in 1991, we asked those who were charged with developing our ministries in the community to lead us in "extending the walls". We talked about widening the embrace of our church to include the lonely, the hurting, the abandoned. And we also began to work very literally on extending the walls. We began to plan a renovation for an aging collection of church properties.
When 1992 came, because it was an election year, we said that as this rebuilding process continued, it was time to "raise the roof". That is, it was time to look carefully at the great moral issues of our society.
And then this past year, 1993, a number of committees were asked to "polish the woodwork", Some 30 different ideas were offered that were intended to put a gleam and a joy on our worship life.
Now, here we are in 1994. We’ve built a building, at least in our minds. We’ve put it all together. But we lack one thing. We have a well-constructed framework, lacking only one thing: furnishings. It has no furnishings.
Quick review: You’ve built a building. Foundations, windows, doors, floors, walls, roof, woodwork. Is it ready to live in? Almost, but not quite. In 1994 the task will be to furnish the rooms. What do I mean?
By furnishing the rooms I mean that it is time to put real substance, real living, working substance into everything we have planned for. By furnishing the rooms, I mean that in 1994 we must put real muscle, real thought, decisive action behind all of the things we have talked about during these past several years. When I speak of furnishing the rooms I mean that we must now work to give full expression to every facet in the life of the church. We must look at every organization, every tradition, every leader, every program, and we must make them work. We must make them work – not for ourselves or for our own satisfaction. We must make the church work toward the goals which our God had in mind from the very beginning.
Let me be specific about the need to furnish the rooms. I am afraid, if the truth be told, that we have been very easy on ourselves during these past several years. We have done a great job in theory but not so great a job in actual hands-on ministry.
For example, we speak continually of the need for evangelism; but few of us evangelize. We speak of poignantly of the pain of the residents of this community, but offer few ongoing forms of help. We utter fine sayings about the power of prayer, but we are unable or unwilling to support Noonday prayer or Wednesday night prayer meetings in significant numbers. We shake our heads gravely over the plight of children and youth, but when Sunday morning comes there are ample rooms and well-prepared teachers serving only a handful of young people.
Do you see what I am saying? We now have the framework. We have built the house. But now we must furnish the rooms. We must do the job.
But one more time, the way to go forward is to go back. The way to be the church is to rediscover the garden. The point is not so much the house, but the garden. The purpose of the church is not to build the church, but to build fellowship with God. The church is not an end in itself; it is the Kingdom we are after. The church is not an end in itself. We are about the business of redeeming people. The way we are organized, the traditions we have grown up with, who the leaders are, what feels comfortable to us – ultimately none of that matters. What matters is we do what God wants. What matters is not the building of the church just to build a church; what matters is the creation of a church that focuses on people and wants them to be restored to the garden of fellowship with God and with one another.
Bill Clinton had his campaign reminder, "It’s the economy, stupid!" let the church have its campaign reminder, "It’s the garden, stupid!"
The prophet Hosea, when he came to the end of his prophecy, called on Israel to return to the Lord their God. He called on God’s people to cry out, "Take away all guilt; accept that which is good, and we will offer the fruit of our lips. We will say no more, ’Our God’, to the work of our hands."
Let me translate that for you. We will not make an idol out of our church; we will not make an idol out of our policies, our building, our tradition, our anything. O God, "take away all guilt; accept that which is good, and we will offer the fruit of our lips.
And then Hosea lifted up, as the closing verses of his prophecy, a glorious vision of what God wants to do for His people. Hosea shared a lovely vision of God’s desire for his people. It’s exactly like the vision of Genesis. Hosea saw our God in a lush and fragrant garden, a garden of delightful fellowship:
Hosea 14:4-6, 7b
What does God want for us? God wants this church to flourish. He wants us to be a fragrant garden, in which fellowship with Him and creative partnership with one another is possible. We’ve got the framework in place; this year all we have to do is furnish the rooms, pay the price of being serious about the church, and then we can have the garden. From furnished rooms to fragrant gardens.
Let me tell about my wife’s employment history. Let me share with you the reasons why my wife went to work when she did and why she stopped when she did.
It started with a young woman who loved growing things, green things. If it’s green, she’s interested in it. If it grows, she wants to help it grow. I guess that’s why we’ve done so well together. When she married me, I sure was green. And as you can see when I get this robe off, I’m still growing!
Now when we first married, Margaret was the breadwinner. She taught school while I finished seminary. But the overall plan was really to make a home. And so when we went to my first assignment in Berea, Kentucky, and settled into a little house, we didn’t have much to furnish the rooms with, and we couldn’t afford to buy lots of things. But we did have a back yard, and it soon began to sprout everything from the edibles: tomatoes and cucumbers and blackberries and the like … everything from the edibles to the beautiful, particularly eastern Kentucky wildflowers: Solomon’s seal and lady-slippers and jack-in-the-pulpit and so on.
It is true that in those days, even with a new baby, Margaret did a little work, both in the local school and at home, in order to supplement the paycheck and start furnishing the rooms. But gardening was her real love.
When we moved from Berea down the road to Lexington, along with the baby and the books and a few sticks of furniture, we took quite a few of those plants. That next house was going to have a garden. Never mind the furnishing of the house. Fill up the garden first. That’s just who she was, and is.
In Lexington she gave art lessons at home, once more trying to help us pay the bills and add a few pieces of furniture. But, as I’ve said, even with a second baby, the garden was the thing.
That brings us to 1971 and our move to Silver Spring. We traveled through the snow, with a moving truck carrying almost all our worldly goods in only one third of its capacity; we still didn’t have much with which to furnish the rooms. And then two cars, each with one parent and one child and bucket after bucket of Kentucky wildflowers. The Solomon’s seal, the lady-slippers, the jack-in-the-pulpits, all you may now see in the unlikely soil of Maryland. Why? Because the lady is a gardener, that’s why. That’s who she is. That’s part of what defines her.
But after we had been here a couple of years, as some of you know, the leadership of our D. C. Baptist Convention asked her to do some of our campus ministry. She consented to that, not only because, of course, she felt attracted to the work, but also, in all honesty, because this is an expensive place to live and she knew she could help pay the bills and furnish the rooms.
Did the rooms still need furnishing? Well, let me put it this way. Some of you have your homes furnished in French revival or early American? We had ours furnished in grandparents’ repainted or early orange-crate! We did need to furnish the rooms!
And so for twenty years, mostly part-time and for a while full-time, Margaret did campus ministry. Of course it was to minister to young adults, but it was also to pay the bills and furnish the rooms. We would say, "Now, we’re going to save up for a living room suite". And then we would say, "Next, we’ll put something in the basement family room." Finally, finally, the rooms were furnished.
And when they were, Margaret said, "I want to get back to my garden". I’m going to leave my job and get back to my garden. Some of you said to her last spring, "Aren’t you interested in earning the money?" And she said, "The money is not all there is. I’d rather at this time in my life do some other things, and get back to my garden."
What is my point? What am I saying? Remember my premise: the way to go forward is to go back. In our lives we find it necessary to do a lot of things in order to pay the bills and furnish the rooms, but we ought never to lose sight of the things that excited us in the first place, way back there. You may invest a lot of time and energy and money getting done some things that need to be done; but if you really know who you are, when the time is right, you go back to the basics, you go back to your real source of power. You finish the furnished rooms and then return to complete and enjoy the fragrant garden.
God says, "I want my people in the garden. I want them to be redeemed. I want them in fellowship with me and with each other."
"[They] shall blossom like the lily ... they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom like the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.”
How do we get there? The prophet Hosea’s words are clear: "Return, 0 Israel, to the Lord your God ... return to the Lord and say to Him, ’Take away all guilt, accept that which is good, and we will offer the fruit of our lips.’"
It’s 1994. Let’s go ahead. Let’s finish what we have started. Let’s furnish the rooms, putting real substance into the framework we’ve built. But let’s not forget that our God wants to take us beyond furnished rooms to fragrant gardens.
