facebook was created to help us share and connect with the people in our lives. One of the ways people share and connect on facebook is through their status. The status is simply a post of what is on your mind or what is going on in your life. There are not requirements for what you post as your status. Some people will update their status every five minutes. Usually not that much, but sometimes it feels like it when people post everything they do on there like what they ate for lunch, who they ran into at the mall, or where they are at the moment. Other people like to be creative with the status and post song lyrics that they like, quotes from people, or funny comments. I liked this from one of our church members this past week, “the UPS man scared me half to death twice…so I guess I should be only one fourth alive right?”
I do not change my status on a regular basis. Sometimes I will do it several days in a row. Other times I will go for a week or more without changing it. I mainly share significant events or thoughts. Like first day of school or a time I feel God doing something special.
With this idea of updating your status, I thought it would be a good time for us to think about our status. That is, who we are as a Christian Church. What is God doing? As I said you change your status from time to time, so I wanted us to think about how our status has changed. This has been a focus in our leadership committees and teams this year. So I have asked Carla Brinkman who is a co-chair of our SPRC, which is the group that works with our staff. So let’s listen to her thoughts on our status.
SHOW VIDEO (video taped a lay person sharing about our growth and changing from pastoral size to program size.)
Carla mentioned several updates to our status, and if we asked each person here you each may have a different idea for a status. In this message I want to discuss how our status has changed from a pastoral sized church just five years ago, to a program size church today. I was going share some history and statistics that show this change. For instance in 2004 when facebook was started we averaged 112 people on a Sunday morning. Today we average around 240 in our three services combined. Then we had a couple hundred people connected to our church. We now have around 500 people connected to our church. And because this church has never had that many people before we are still learning what it takes to be the church with this many people.
The leadership of this church continues to study what this means because other churches have done this before, but it is new for us. I personally have been talking with and learning from several pastors who have experienced growth like we have. I am learning that being the pastor for a program church takes very different skills as leading a ministry staff. So the status I see for us is learning to be a program church.
Our leadership teams and committees have been thinking about what our status is as well. As they have prayed and discussed this question of who God is calling us to be as a church, they have been guided by some thoughts. I want you each to be aware and get to know our guiding principles, which are in your message notes.
First, we have a mission as the body of Christ. Jesus gave us this mission at the end of the book of Matthew. Our mission and the mission of the United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. This is our calling and always will be our calling. This is our goal, to make disciples.
One change that will be coming and is in the process is a change from Christian education to discipleship. Pastor Helen is working on leading this plan to change our wording to show we do not want to just educate people, but we want to teach discipleship, for our children, our youth, and our adults.
Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We will accomplish this mission through our vision. St. Paul’s UMC where you can SEE Christ. This means we want to allow Jesus to live in us for others to see and take notice. We allow Jesus to live in us through service, through experiences with Jesus, which is discipleship, and by embracing Christ in prayer and worship. This vision leads us as we continue to be the body of Christ.
A final piece guiding us in being the body of Christ is our Core Values. These are things that will not change, while our vision and the way we live out our mission may change. These values were brought together by the Administrative Council, which is made up of the leaders of each of our committees and teams. They have spent over a year talking, listening and praying over these core values and this is what they came up with.
We have four core values. 1. Relevant worship. This church has always valued worship that meets you where you are. We do not all worship God the same way, but that is okay. Our worship needs to be authentic and inspiring. 2. Supportive Faith Families. This congregation has always valued people supporting one another. We are here for all family members to be a part of our congregation. 3. Grace-filled Service. This congregation has always had a desire to serve others. This is grace-filled because we do not want to just serve those we think are worthy, but all people. And finally, 4. Welcoming All. This congregation as Carla mentioned has always welcomed all people.
I wanted to put these before you to help us remember that we have a mission, a goal to reach. We have a vision, a guide of how we will fulfill our mission, and we have core values, that will not change as we move towards our mission. These are printed in your bulletin and they are always on our website. If you are ever wondering where we are going as a congregation, this is it. This is the direction we are moving. We want to be the best church we can be at fulfilling our mission. We are doing it a little differently than we use to, but it is still where we are going.
I was reading Paul’s take on the church in 1 Corinthians 12 and he reminded me that the church is many things. The church is like a body that has many different parts. The body needs hands and feet and eyeballs and ears. If we were just one big nose, things would smell great, but we would not be able to see the beauty around us or hear the sounds of nature. All of the parts are needed to create and complete the body.
As the body of Christ here we are not all the same, yet each of us are a part. Is one part more important than another? We might think so, but Paul says in the body of Christ we all suffer together or we are all honored together. Only when the individual parts come together does the body of Christ do what it is meant to do. We need each and every one of you to be the Body of Christ.
This reminded me of a powerful story I heard this summer about a Jewish family back around World War II. They heard that the Nazi’s were coming towards their town. This family had a new baby girl that was just one month old. And they also had a grandfather living with them who was 74. They only had one night to get out of town and over a neighboring mountain to save their lives. The grandfather told them to go on without him. He was too old to make the trip. He would just slow them down. He said he would stay behind and distract the Nazi’s. They said, either we all go or none of us go.
The grandfather did not want to keep his whole family, so he agreed to go with them planning to drop out as soon as he could. They grabbed what they could and began the hike over the mountain. After a little while the grandfather said he could go no farther, but they said we all go or none of us goes. So he kept going. He tried to drop out a few more times because he felt he was slowing their progress, but he got the same response each time.
Finally they were half way over the mountain and the grandfather really felt like he could go no farther. He said he had gone far enough. They had to keep going without him. The father who was holding his one month old daughter, turned to his dad and said, I have been carrying this baby the whole way and I am tired and he handed that little girl to this old man. The grandfather looked down at this child. Then he said, let’s go and he carried her the rest of the way to safety and their lives were saved.
God is calling us to update our status. We do not want to leave anyone behind. We all go. We can only make it with all of you.
But there is more to take from this story. You see, in the pastoral size church as you might guess from the name, it can be carried by the pastor. Now this is a metaphor, I am not saying I did carry the church, but I was included in most ministry and decisions making within the church. I can no longer do that. I cannot care for 500 people by myself. If we are going to live our mission as a program church I need to place the church in your hands.
The only way this church will continue to make disciples is if each and every person understands this church will only serve God if each of us are willing to serve God. We can’t leave the church just in the hands of the pastors or the staff. All of you together have to carry this church, it is in your hands. If you choose to do nothing or just participate from time to time, then that is all we will be. If you choose to carry this church by serving God with your time, your talents, and especially your prayers, then this church will be fulfilling its mission. I encourage you to know what our mission, vision and core values are. Ask questions of our leadership groups. Share with them ministry ideas that match with these and participate as fully as you can. This church will only be what God makes of it through each of you.
I hope our status will always be that we are a church that is the Body of Christ, diverse in its parts, but with one focus, and that is that each person serves God fully as we make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
