BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND
Isaac Butterworth
The Installation of a New Pastor
November 21, 2010
John 15:1-8 (NIV)
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Not long after I got out of seminary, I decided I needed more training. So, I applied for a pastoral residency position at one of the largest churches in our denomination. It was the Village Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. As it turns out, the selection committee asked me to come to Kansas for an interview.
When I got there, they took me out to eat at a really nice restaurant. There were about nine or ten other people and me. And they must have asked me as many as a dozen questions, but I only remember one. ‘What goals do you bring to this program? What do you want to accomplish here?’
I almost choked on my food -- which is one reason I don’t like to do interviews over a meal! I’m ashamed to admit this to you, but I didn’t have any goals. I guess I thought they would set the goals for me. In any case, I had never thought explicitly about goals, so I didn’t have an answer to the question. I felt foolish and unworthy of this group’s attention.
I was to meet with them again the next morning, so that night I worked as hard as I could inventing goals. I mean, I just made them up. When we were together again -- this time at the breakfast table -- I must have had some ten or twelve goals. The day before I had none; now I had too many, way too many. For whatever reason, the committee invited me to come anyway. I guess they thought, maybe, I needed the program. In any case, one thing I learned there, starting that day, is to formulate as clearly as possible in my own mind what my purpose is, what I’m trying to accomplish, whatever I’m doing.. And over the years since then, I have tried to make sure I had some idea of why I was doing anything I was doing.
In a best-selling book that first came out in the late 80’s, Stephen Covey identified what he called the ‘seven habits of highly effective people.’ Perhaps you’ve read it. I was first introduced to the book by Jeff Ritchie, who at the time was on staff at the General Assembly. Jeff and his wife had been missionaries that our church helped to support. And I have to admit, he was one of the most engaging people you would ever want to meet. Jeff recommended the book, and I thought to myself, ‘If Jeff thinks it’s a good book, then it’s probably a good book.’ And I went and got my own copy of it.
If you know the book, you know that it discusses, well, seven habits or practices that will make a person more effective. The second habit the author lists is: Begin with the End in Mind. The idea is: Before you ever start anything, consider where you will wind up -- or where you want to wind up. We do this when we take a trip. In most cases, unless we’re just out for a drive, we have a pretty good idea of what our destination is. We also do this when we cook.Before we ever pull out the pots and pans we’ll need, before we even collect all the ingredients, we have a mental image of people we care about gathered around a table, enjoying the food we have prepared. We even do it when we play a game. We’re in it to win it! Isn’t that what we say? Or, at least, we’re in it to have fun.
But when it comes to the church, I’m not sure we’ve given much thought about what we want our results to be. We start things all the time. We begin projects, recruit people to serve, launch programs, schedule events, plan activities.... We do all sorts of things, but often we don’t know why. We just do the things churches do. And we’re not sure what results to expect.
Is it our ‘end’ simply to have a certain number of worship services a month or just to have a class for every age group or to have fellowship for nothing more than the sake of having fellowship? Are these the great purposes for which we expend so much time and energy? Maybe they are; I don’t know. But let me ask this: What is the purpose behind worshiping together? What is the goal that lies behind offering a class for every interest? Why do we gather in this place or another? Is there a goal greater than just keeping ourselves busy with church work?
I think this is a difficult question to answer. And I think it’s difficult because -- to use a phrase coined by Andy Stanley -- we’re not sure exactly how to ‘define a win.’ Whatever ultimate ‘ends’ we might have in mind when we start out to do something, how do we know when we have achieved them?
Here’s where I think our Gospel reading can help us. In John 15, Jesus presents us with a metaphor, a mental picture of a vine and its branches. And he use this analogy to talk about our relationship with him. He is the vine, he says; we are the branches.
We all know, of course, what grapevines do. If they’re healthy, they produce. They grow grapes. Grapes is the end which the grower has in mind when he plants his vineyard. If a branch here and there is dead or unproductive -- if it’s not putting forth grapes -- what does Jesus say? The Father, who is the gardener, cuts it off. Isn’t that what Jesus says? ‘He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit’ (v. 1). And if a branch is putting forth grapes, the Father prunes it so that it will be even more fruitful.
Grapes, you see, is the thing. Fruition is what Jesus and his Father are looking for in your life and mine. Jesus even says in verse 8, ‘This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.’
Two times in John’s Gospel Jesus talks about how others will know that we are his disciples. One of those times is in chapter 13, where Jesus says, ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ (v. 34). The other time is here, in John, chapter 15, where Jesus says, in so many words, ‘Others will know that you are my disciples if your bear much fruit.’
It’s tempting, I suppose, to ask what the fruit is that we are expected to bear. It’s not grapes; we know that much. But what is it? Is it something more intangible, like love? Is it possibly the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ that Paul describes in Galatians 5 -- qualities like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?
Well, yes, to some extent, I guess. But actually, it’s something different from that, something more basic, something more precisely ‘organic,’ you might say. No fewer than five times in the short space of these eight verses in John’s Gospel, Jesus talks about remaining in him. ‘Remain in me,’ he says, ‘and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me’ (v. 4). ‘If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing’ (v. 5). ‘If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you’ (v. 7).
What does Jesus mean when he says over and over that we are to ‘remain in him’ and, if we do, he will ‘remain in us?’ Could he mean that this describes the fruit we are to bear? that, when it comes right down to it, the fruit is him revealed in us? that it is the fruition of his character in our lives? This is how we show ourselves to be his disciples: by exhibiting Christlikeness in every aspect of our lives! And this is exactly how God is glorified: when our lives replicate Jesus! when we become like him! When we remain in him, he remains in us -- and there is bleed-through. If Christ is in you, it’s going to show.
This is the end, I think, that we must have in mind when we begin anything in the church. Our destination must be a congregation filled with people who are filled with Christ and who are filling the world with his love.
We are at the outset of a new beginning here. Pastor Dave Crawford and his wife are beginning a new ministry in our midst, and we are beginning a new relationship with them. My question is: To what end? And my answer is: Dave is here to help us prove ourselves to be Christ’s disciples by being like Christ in this world. And we’re here to help him do the same thing.
How can that happen? Let me make just one suggestion, a possibility that can be looked at from several directions. I think it was Vince Lombardi, the great football coach, who said, ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.’ That’s certainly ‘the main thing’ in the church, isn’t it? Or, at least, it needs to be. We Presbyterians easily get bogged down in maintaining the institutional machinery. We joke about the proliferation of committees and boards, and I’m not saying that we don’t need them. No doubt, we do. But, let’s be honest with ourselves. We don’t often see much fruit from them, do we? We agree or disagree with each other, and we hope we do so amicably. And sometimes we do, but sometimes we don’t.
We have this wonderful opportunity with Dave’s arrival to focus on the big picture -- to become more nearly what the church is called to be and to become more nearly the people we are called to be. We can’t afford to be poor stewards of the future together that God has given us. We want to be in a position some day to show a return on God’s investment -- or, to stick with our guiding metaphor from John 15 -- to show the bushels and bushels of the fruit we have produced in our own lives and in the lives of others.
We need to ‘define the win’ for the church. And I believe the nature of the win for us is this: that we produce evidence of more and more people becoming more and more like Jesus in their attitudes, in their actions, and in the thoughts of their hearts. Whatever we do -- whether we hold worship, or offer Sunday School, or provide fellowship opportunities, or send people out to serve, or whatever -- before we even begin, let’s do so with the end in mind. Whatever we do, let’s do it to produce the character of Christ in the lives of others.
Then people will know who we are. They’ll know that we’re his. And God will be glorified.
