The Always God—Always Hearing 11th Church Anniversary From 2 Merged Congregations
Rick Gillespie-Mobley
Genesis 12:1-7 Luke 18:1-8
Happy Anniversary New Life At Calvary for 11 years of seeking God’s purposes here at the corner of East 79th and Euclid Avenue. 11 years ago we had a historic march leaving Glenville New Life Community Church heading west on St. Clair, and turning right on East 79th Street heading south. While at the same time there was a group leaving Calvary Presbyterian Church heading north on East 79th Street. The two groups met up with each other at Hough Avenue.
The two groups which had now become one, continued heading south on East 79th Street until reaching a crowd waiting in front of the church. The groups embraced one another with smiles and hugs and released colorful ballons into the bright blue sky. Together we went into the church, and New Life At Calvary gave birth to its very first worship service.
How many of you are left who made the march from Glenville? How many of you made the march from Calvary. How many of you were waiting to greet everyone in front of the church?
How long is 11 years. Well when we started that march, Terrence Sullivan Jr was 6 years old heading into 1rst grade, today he is a Senior in High School. For those of us who are kids, 11 years seemed like a lifetime. For those of us who are senior citizens, we’re saying “what, it’s already been 11 years.”
A lot happens in 11 years. Of the 299 names on the rolls on the day New Life At Calvary was born, 108 of the names are no longer active at NLAC. God has called many of the 108 to be actively involved in other ministries across the United States. They are leaders in other churches today and serving in various ways. The rest of them are in need of our prayers.
Of the 299, another 51 of the names have gone home to be with the Lord. We would not be the church we are today, without the contributions and service of the 51 who have graduated to be with the Lord.
Of the 299 who remain on the rolls today, we praise God for what you continue to offer in service to Christ through New Life At Calvary. For those of you who arrived after that first day in 2013, as Pastor Kellie told you last week, you are part of the reason New Life At Calvary was created. God wanted a place for you to grow in Christ and to discover his love in a deeper way. We are grateful for you as well for you are as much a part of the NLAC story as anyone else.
The theme of the next series of messages is the “Always God.” Do you know why God forbids us from making any graven image to worship him or to even to try to draw an image that looks like God? Because any attempt to picture God will automatically limit our understanding of God. Our minds can’t picture a God who is greater than the size of the universe or a God who is able to be in the past, present and future, all at the same time, or a God who can see us all and know exactly what we’re we’re thinking.
Today we look at The Always God, who is always hearing. Once again if you think God needs ears to hear our prayers, you’ve put a limit on how many prayers God can listen to at once. Our God is so amazing that God can listen to the prayers we pray today, while hearing the prayers we will be praying in five years.
To me the most difficult thing to understand, is why this great and awesome God would be interested in me, or in you, or in New Life At Calvary Church when there is a whole universe to operate. And yet this incredible God is interested in having a relationship with each of us.
For the Scriptures tell us, for God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Have you accepted his Son Jesus and believed on him?
God’s purpose is to reach as many people with His love and grace as possible and God does it through the prayers of His people. God is always listening for the voices of those who are praying for His kingdom to come. God will often plant a dream in our hearts, that should send us to pray. God called Abraham to leave his country and watch how God would expand his family and his possessions.
In our Old Testament reading, Abraham caught the vision at age 75. He prayed for 25 years before he saw the birth of his son Isaac. God was always listening to his prayers, but the time of their fulfillment were not quite right. In our New Testament reading, Jesus gave us a parable indicating that we should keep on praying until we obtain the answer that we seek
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God was hearing the prayers for the birth of the New Life At Calvary before any of us knew about it. Every child wants to know how their parents met and who took the first step. Who swept the other one off their feet. Well I want you to know it wasn’t love at first sight that gave birth to New Life At Calvary.
In the early 2000, Glenville Presbyterian Church had almost decided to leave the denomination known as the PCUSA. Everything was in place for the vote, but through prayer we felt that God was saying, don’t go. I want you to help the other predominantly Black churches, which at the time were Calvary, St. Marks and First Presbyterian Church East Cleveland.
Glenville’s leaders played a significant role in the final years of First Presbyterian Church of East Cleveland serving on a commission to help with the future of the church. The gift God gave to us from working with East Cleveland were the gifts of Jennie Brown and Susan Gillespie who became a blessing to Glenville and New Life At Calvary. God knew New Life At Calvary would need Susan to touch the hearts of Mary and John Krogness to bless the church with their gifts some 14 years into the future.
Glenville’s role at St. Mark’s was limited to moderating some session meetings and pulpit supply. We didn’t know how we could impact Calvary because we thought we were so different from each other. We thought Calvary was a liberal church that wanted nothing to do with our slightly Pentecostal/Baptist style of worship. We thought they were the rich church from midtown that looked down on us from the hood. Glenville was from the other side of the tracks in our minds. We expected them to be a little uppity in their attitude toward us.
You know, there are a lot of ways to be prejudiced against people you have never met. You may not even realize that you’re the one full of the prejudice, but you blame those folks because of what you heard. But there’s an Always God who always listens.
You see in 2010 there were a group of seasoned sisters at Calvary praying for God to send them a pastor. There was a session at Glenville praying how we could have an impact in our desire to serve God.
God had a plan to bring us together. It began with a phone call from Freddie Briskey. He asked me if I could moderate a July session meeting since they were without a pastor. I said okay, and came to moderate the meeting. The thing I quickly realized at the meeting was that my previous ideas about Calvary were wrong.
The same Holy Spirit that was present in our Session meetings at Glenville was present here at Calvary in this very room where the meeting was being held. When you are with other brothers and sisters in Christ there is a connection of bearing witness with each other’s spirit.
Now we know that Pastor Toby and Pastor Kellie are women of faith and of prayer. When I went back excited and told them, “I believe we can work together with Calvary” their response was, “You have got to be kidding.” I felt they had poured cold water on my words. I felt like I had slipped off an iceburg into the freezing sea.
But I said listen and hear me out. Calvary has enough money to pay a ½ time pastor. Pastor Kellie is working ½ time at Glenville. This could give her a full time salary and we could offer to work for Calvary on a faith basis. They warmed up to the idea and I was able to get out of the freezing waters.
Pastor Toby and I would offer to work for Calvary at a salary of $10,000 each. If they didn’t have the money to pay us, then we would work for free. They just had to make the commitment to pay us, if they got the money. We made the proposal and Calvary accepted it. I remember Emma Jackson coming up to me and saying, we’ve been praying for one pastor and God went ahead and sent us three.
Don’t you know a couple of weeks after Calvary said yes, Calvary was informed it would be receiving $300,000 from the Nelson Family estate. That more than covered the tiny step of faith God had asked of us and of the Session. The Always Hearing God, was working out salary arrangements way in advance of our submitting a proposal.
That was the beginning of our two year Partnership in which the churches shared pastors and a few ministries together. The Tuesday Hot Meal dinner really took off at Calvary as the two churches worked together. We made that meal special serving the community restaurant style with waiters and waitresses. There were four other churches and one synagogue serving hot meals. But everyone wanted to know, when our church was serving. Mary’s menu’s became famous.
Calvary Presbyterian Church began to grow in attendance and increased its giving, but as the two years came to an end It was obvious that the church would not be strong enough to have a full- time pastor and carry the cost of the building. I remember giving a report to the Calvary Session, indicating 3 possible options going into the future,
1. Sell the building and move to a smaller location, 2. Look to see if another church would like to rent space from you, or 3 possibly seek to merge with another congregation. I was surprised when Marvin Rogers and Lewis Smith, said, “we had been talking about that and do you think Glenville would consider a merger of the churches.” I said I would ask the Session of Glenville.
I knew this would be an uphill battle and a real prayer project. 1. I knew Calvary would not leave its building and Glenville had just spent nearly $300,000 remodeling its building so it would not be eager to leave either. 2. I knew Calvary was averaging 70 people a service and Glenville was averaging 200 and Glenville could control voting outcomes. 3. I knew Glenville’s utilities were about $20,000 a year and Calvary’s was about $70,000.
I also knew that God sometimes asks us to do things that we might not want to do. I knew that God is always hearing our prayers. I knew that if we understood our goal is to minister for the cause of Christ, and to reach others for Christ we’d be able to let go of things that are dear to our hearts. I also knew that not everyone would be willing to pay the cost of moving forward with a merger. 97% of Calvary voted yes to merge. 75% of Glenville voted yes to merge.
One of the concerns about the merger was the financial part of trying to have three full time pastors plus the cost of utilities and insurance cost of the building. God is always hearing what we need before we understand what God is doing. Within a few months of the merger, we received another $300,000 from the Nelson Trust all based on one word of interpretation in the Trust Document. God told Abraham to go and that he would bless him and have descendants who would bless others.
That’s exactly what has happened here at New Life At Calvary. Some of those funds from the Nelson Trust are still with us today. We have our own Isaac as a descendant in Bridge City Church which is now about the same size as Glenville was before the merger. Unlike Abraham, we didn’t have to wait 25 years to see our first child.
God blessed us to see the child started in only 8 years. Two weeks ago when Jeffrey from Bridge City Church preached and gave his testimony of being delivered from a life in shambles filled with abuse and drug addiction. How could you not feel like you were making a difference when he said, “if it had not been for this church, I wouldn’t be a changed man walking with Christ today. Thank you for having a hand in starting Bridge City Church.”
Who knows how many churches God wants to raise out of this church. I know of at least one of your members who is praying for God to use him to start another church? When he’s ready to launch, “don’t ask who are we losing,” but ask “is this what we’ve been praying for when we asked God to use us?”
A church’s anniversary is not only a time to look back and see how God has answered our prayers, its also a time of looking forward to see what prayers should we be praying in the coming year.
Who would have thought that God would send us a Tornado to help us update our building and put is in a position to do greater ministry than ever before. The love this church has received from others outside of our walls in donations has been remarkable. All because some of you started praying the moment you heard about the tornado and you’ve been praying ever since.
God is always hearing. Pray that God will give Pastor Kellie, Pastor Antonia and the Session wisdom as they navigate the new waters of ministry opportunities that are coming to this church. One of the things I’ve learned about prayer, is that prayers are answered in ways we would not have thought of on our own. You see sometimes we think we are in need of one thing, but God knows we are in need of something else.
We must be ready to receive a no, or a stop doing this from the God who is always hearing. Just because it’s a good idea, does not mean God wants us to do it. Do any of you remember our Saturday ministry to the homeless that was going to go from 8am to 6pm on Saturdays during the winter.
We were told there was a great need for people to have a safe place to go with their kids when they were sent out of shelters during the day. They wanted places that would provide breakfast, lunch and a light snack before they went back to the shelters to spend the night. We signed up as a church to be a site.
We had a schedule set up for people to come to the gym for two to four hour slots so that everything could be supervised. We set up tv’s in here for the kids to play video games. We had a section for people to watch movies. We had volunteers signed up to come prepare soup and sandwiches.
The first week we ready to go and nobody was dropped off at our church. I called the place helping the Homeless and they said they were sorry, but they would bring some people the next week for sure. The next week, we were ready and nobody was dropped off at our church. The third week, we were once again ready and nobody was dropped off.
We had prayed about this. We had planned it out. We had spent money. We had the volunteers to do the job well. But for some reason, the all hearing God was saying no to our prayers. The apostle Paul had a similar experience when they wanted to go into Bithynia to preach the gospel, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to do so.
At the time it seemed as though we were missing an opportunity. But when things don’t go your way, realize that you do not know what God may be saving you from. Sometimes a no, from the Always hearing God is the best thing that could happen to you.
Do you recall on the dark night in which Jesus was betrayed. Just before the betrayal Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times he fell on his knees and prayed, “If it is possible, take this cup from me. In other words “change the course of events that are about to take place, rewrite the script on the beatings, the crucifixion, and the death that is about to take place.”
But then Jesus must have thought about you and me and all the others who would spend eternity in hell forever justly paying for our sins. So he added to his prayer, “Not my will, but yours be done.” I for one am thankful that God said no to the request.
Are you earnestly able to pray the same to the God Always Hearing, “not my will but yours be done” for yourself and for your church. God has not ordained the 11th anniversary to be the last anniversary. God is inviting you back to Himself to use you for the next eleven years. The Scriptures tell us that we love God, only because God first loved us. God is still waiting for some of us to make the bold declaration, “Here I am Lord, Use me.” Those are the words the All Hearing God is listening to hear.
This sermon is for a church’s 11th anniversary celebration and deals with God Who Is Always Hearing our prayers.
