Two things you learn, if you are at all observant about churches. First, that church people do not agree on their vision of what the church should be about; and, second, that the world knows what the church ought to be about better than church people know. We who gather week by week as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ find it easy to forget why we are. But the world out there knows what we ought to be about. It knows we should be about giving life. The world demands from the church a life-giving vision. But we don’t always have it to give.
My friend John Wimberly, pastor of Western Presbyterian Church in Foggy Bottom, loves to talk about the battles his church went through when they were forced to relocate. Some of you may know that Western Presbyterian Church was originally located on H Street, in the shadow of the World Bank buildings. The World Bank wanted to expand, and offered to provide millions of dollars to move the church building. Well, you don’t just go out and build a new building without a vision for how it will be used, and the folks at Western began to create their vision. As they did so, they thought about a facility that would feed homeless people. They had already started to do that in their old space, and saw an opportunity to expand that ministry in a new space.
Almost immediately a group of church members began to protest that vision. They got really uptight about the notion of homeless people traipsing through their new, fresh church building, and this group tried to stop the plans. They got so feisty in their protests that some of them even picketed the worship services in an effort to call the church away from this kind of ministry. Focus on evangelism, they said. Focus on winning souls, not on feeding the hungry. One member even picketed on the very steps to prevent worshippers from coming in on Sunday mornings. It got to be a vicious business there at Western Presbyterian.
But wisdom prevailed, and the new facility was constructed, with a large kitchen and dining room for the homeless ministry. Soon, however, there was a lawsuit, brought against the church by the city government. The Area Neighborhood Commission tried to stop the church from opening a feeding ministry, and their argument was that church buildings are for purposes of worship, prayer, and Bible study, and not for feeding the hungry. The complaint said that churches ought to stick to their “normal” business – things like preaching, singing, Bible study, and prayer. None of this feeding the hungry business.
Pastor Wimberly was astounded that all of these protests came from Christian people – the members of the church who picketed, the members of other churches in the city government. These were people who are church members and who think they know what that’s about. But guess what happened? A Jewish trial judge listened to the argument that churches ought to stick to spiritual things and stay away from feeding the hungry. He wheeled around in his chair, and shouted, “Look, I’m not even a Christian, and I know better than that. Feeding the homeless, helping the poor, and healing the sick, that’s what churches have done for centuries. Case dismissed!”
Christians sometimes lose their way, and do not understand their own vision. But the world knows better. The world has a vision for what church should be about. And the world demands a life-giving vision.
I
In our Bible story, Daniel met somebody who had a vision but who did not know it, could not understand it, and would not communicate it. Old King Nebuchadnezzar caused quite a stir in Babylon when he announced that he had had a dream and he wanted somebody to interpret it, but he wasn’t going to tell anybody what that dream was! How about that for game-playing?! I’ve got a secret, and you have to guess what it is, and only then will I let you tell me what it means! The story says that the King threatened everybody with death if they didn’t interpret his dream, but he wouldn’t give them so much as a clue as to what was in the dream! What a horrible game to play!
But church people play that game too. Each of us comes with our own vision of what church should be about. Each of us worships with our own perspective as to what that experience should be. But we are not talking with one another; we are not communicating our dreams. We are not listening to one another’s hopes. We are playing a game of “I’ve got a secret”, and we end up threatening each other if you don’t guess what I want and I don’t figure out what you see.
A fellow pastor was deeply invested in missions. He did all he knew to do to get his church to give to the cause of foreign missions. He brought missionary speakers to the pulpit; his sermon illustrations were all stories from missionary service. He even operated a residence for visiting missionaries. And he did it all on his own. It was he who scheduled the speakers and the visiting missionaries. It was he who kept the house furnished and cleaned. He would not even let the church employ other staff; he wanted the money for missions – so much so that he directed the choir himself so as to avoid paying a minister of music. Now, let me tell you, I support missions; but heaven help Takoma if I go that far! This pastor was totally dedicated in his support of missions. And that’s wonderful.
But what he did not know was that resentment was building. People were grumbling about one and only thing being emphasized. Among themselves they asked about youth ministry and why the pastor’s approach was, “Just take the youth bowling and skating”, because they saw youth at risk. They asked about Christian education and why there was nothing beyond just plain vanilla Sunday School, because many new families had moved into the neighborhood, and most of them lacked any kind of spiritual knowledge. They saw their church building deteriorating, and wondered why it seemed to be impossible to get anything done to repair it. They even talked, behind the scenes, of how they could get around the pastor, and when was he retiring anyway? They never spoke out of their hearts either to their pastor or really to one another. Like Nebuchadnezzar, they just played guessing games and they got more and more negative. The entire atmosphere of that church was poisoned. Like Nebuchadnezzar, they dealt in death, not life.
In fact, one week before he was to retire, that pastor died. And I am told that for months thereafter that church went through absolute agony, as people poured out their frustrations and their fears. They had never learned to talk to one another about their vision of what church should be.
We do not have one single vision for our church. We have multiple visions. None of us have ever been able to narrow down what God wants Takoma to be to just a few things. I really believe we are called to do many things. I am going to ask that in this year, we work through a process of listening to each other. We really do need to speak to one another, in love, about competing visions of what church is. Over the years I have taken quite seriously the very special role that a pastor must take for interpreting the church’s vision. When I first came here, you were in turmoil, and I spent five years taking you through a rebuilding process. When that was over, we laid out a more complete idea of who we were and what we believed. We developed a statement of values and we affirm them from time to time. We spent several years exploring those. About four years ago, I felt us floundering a bit, slightly insecure and uncertain about how to move ahead; I preached both my head and my heart about risking everything we had for deepened discipleship, multiplied ministries, winsome worship, and systematic stewardship. And we have done well in many ways on all of those points.
And yet there are times when I feel that we are keeping secrets from one another – times when the pastor’s vision has gone off on a tangent that is not consistent with the your visions. And yet what are your visions, and are they consistent with the Gospel? Are we dreaming worthy dreams? If we simply dream dreams and do not tell them to each other, we are like Nebuchadnezzar, playing games. If we simply dream dreams and do not listen to one another, we are dealing in death. And we cannot afford to do that. God would not honor that. This coming year we will open up our dreams to one another and look for signs of life. For the world around us demands a life-giving vision.
II
Now as this year proceeds, and we begin listening to one another more deeply, in one critical way we must follow the example of Daniel. When Daniel heard that there was a need to interpret the vision, what did he do? What was his first instinct? Daniel prayed, Daniel prayed with his spiritual friends. The text tells us that he went home, he got his three trusted companions, and he enlisted them to pray. And when they did, God revealed the mystery of His will.
If we are to discern God’s vision for our church in this coming year, it will not come on the basis of ordinary human wisdom. It will not come from the loudest voices; I confess that I am one of those who think that I can out-talk you and surely you will agree after I have pounded you with words! But that’s not the way to the will of God. A picture of the will of God will not come from the strident sounds of tradition; I met a minister this week who told me that he could do almost nothing at his church because of hard and fast traditions – no children’s work, we’ve never done that – no bereavement ministry, we’ve never done that. Tradition doesn’t get to the will of God. Understanding God’s will does not even come from taking votes; I do not know that truth is always determined by counting noses. Discernment will come as God reveals His will and shows His way to those who have prayed and sought His face. I tell you, there is nothing more important for our church’s life than prayer. The world is not going to pray for us. Our neighbors are not going to pray for us. Not even other churches are not going to pray for us; they have too much to do on their own. We must become an intensely praying church, or else we will not see a life-giving vision.
I want to bring back to your memories a period we went through just a little over two years ago. We went through a period of grief and self-doubt and disappointment. We had called an Assistant Pastor, who had showed great promise, and we had paid something of a price to get her here, in that some did not feel she was right for us, and left. But then she in turn left to pursue other things, and we felt a little bitterness. Doubtless some of us were tempted to complain, and I know I argued that we needed to rethink the way we staffed this church. But in the midst of all of that, some spiritually discerning people called for a season of prayer. They said, “We just have to stop and pray and see what the Lord is telling us.” We stopped everything we could stop for a while, and we prayed. Do you remember? I am not talking about five minutes on Sunday morning. I am not talking about ten minutes on Wednesday night. I am talking about a week of nightly prayer meetings, and some other times as well.
Now let me tell you what I saw in those prayer meetings. I saw people who had disagreed about what sort of Assistant Pastor we should have come together and agree to seek the face of God. I saw people who had openly disagreed with me – and that is always all right, by the way. It is always all right to disagree with me; I am too old to run away and too young to get bent out of shape – I saw people who had openly disagreed with me come and pray with me and for me. I saw us come together in prayer and let God reveal His vision for us.
And when it was all over and a search was conducted and a candidate brought to the congregation – well, I’ve told Rev. Wilson, “Lady, you have set a record, because I do not remember us at any other time calling someone on a unanimous vote!” If we are united now and are to stay united in the future, it will be because we pray first and then express our views. It will be because we pray first and then act. It will be because we pray as a spiritual community and seek the face of God. And God will reveal a life-giving vision. For the world demands a life-giving vision.
III
However, I do want you to notice that when vision comes, it comes with a warning. It comes with judgment. It comes with something that will give us reason to be concerned. When God’s vision is understood, it will call us to repentance, for we will see that we have not been all that God expected us to be.
Daniel read Nebuchadnezzar the vision. It was a vision of a great statue, made of fine materials – gold and silver, bronze and iron. But it had feet of clay. It was not perfect. It had serious flaws. The wonderful statue was based on something brittle and breakable, and it would not stand up that way forever. It had feet of clay, despite all its fine materials.
Our church has feet of clay. There are many fine things that we have done; but there are many other things not yet done. And if we do not address these things, they will cause us trouble. There are some things for which we must repent. We have feet of clay.
We have envisioned a community-serving church, with ministries and programs for children and families and the aging. But then we communicate among our own and do not truly open up to the wider community. It’s nice to be close to each other; but we have feet of clay. We need to repent of our closeness and open up a larger vision, for the world demands a life-giving vision.
We have a tradition of involvement in missions. We give money to missions, we have weeks of prayer for missions, we learn a little about missions. But we have feet of clay, because we have not put ourselves on the line for missions. We have sent no one on a missions trip; we have organized no new congregations. We have let a few dedicated people carry the missions banner for us. We have feet of clay. We need to repent of our narrow focus and open up to the vision of being a church for the whole world, for the world demands a life-giving vision.
We think of ourselves as a people-driven church. We will this afternoon elect deacons and committee members to make the decisions and run the church for the coming year. I could die tomorrow and this thing would chug along and run itself just fine! But we have feet of clay, because we are not leading our newer and younger members to take on those places of responsibility. We lost two experienced deacons and a long-term financial secretary to death this month. What have we done about preparing others to serve? We have feet of clay, and need to repent, because the world will not wait for us to get our act together. The world demands a life-giving vision and demands it now!
We have a pattern of serving certain human needs. We have attended to the mentally ill, we have taken meals to the homebound, and we have provided some after-school programs for a modest number of children. But we have feet of clay, because we have not used effectively all that we have in order to serve. We have held properties and have used them only for rental. We have built a church building and have let it decline so that some of it cannot be used. We have expanded our organization so that anybody who feels called to do ministry can do ministry, but there are hundreds – yes hundreds – of us who do little or nothing for anyone else, week after week after week. We have feet of clay, for we have not used everything we have and everyone we are to do ministry. And yet the world around us, filled with all sorts of needs, demands a life-giving vision. I tell you, as surely as I know anything, we have feet of clay, and we need to repent.
But there is hope; there is real hope today. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that God would create a new kingdom. God would make a new nation, and the very gates of hell would not prevail against it. In Jesus Christ, I am utterly confident. I am completely certain that in His purposes there is a vision, a dream for our church that will never die. You will die, and I will die, but the purposes of God for Takoma Park Baptist Church will go on. He has promised, and He does not fail. There is hope today.
A few years ago, there was a man who had a vision. They called him a dreamer. He dreamed of things some thought impossible, but they were God’s dreams. He envisioned a world that was different, and it was God’s vision. On the basis of many prayers, and on the strength of much repentance, when Martin Luther King shared his dream, a nation changed. The world had demanded a life-giving vision and got it.
I do not see how Takoma Park Baptist Church can do anything less than go on and flesh out our dream, our dream of deepened discipleship, multiplied ministries, winsome worship, and systematic stewardship. We too have a dream; we have a dream today. We have a life-giving dream.
