What’s the difference? By itself the question doesn’t make sense. What’s the difference between what? Some differences are pretty easy to see, night and day; automobiles and elephants. But others are a bit subtler such as between democracy and a representative republic. Still others are live changingly important. And these are what concern us.
Kenton is taking some pretty radical steps to reach out to our community. You’ve seen the billboard and this next week we’re sending out thousands of postcards to the neighborhood around us. In fact, many of you will be getting them yourselves. To get us ready for the potential of new visitors let me ask “What’s the difference between the world and Christ-followers who are part of the Body of Christ?”
You can probably come up with quite a list of things I know I did. But I would like for us to understand that the root for this difference is in our past. What we see in the world around us is the direct result of the difference between congregational life today and that of the 1950’s and 60’s.
There aren’t many here who remember the glory days of Kenton Church. (STATISTICS). But suffice it to say we weren’t alone. Peace Lutheran moved because of the need for more space. Other congregations built on and others like Rivergate Community was planted in the certainty that the blooming church attendance would continue. Life as part of the institutional church was acceptable, fashionable, expected and part of the great “American way of life”.
Think about this. If you were an adult back then and had you children attending Kenton or another church each week are they active in a congregation today? Why or why not? If you were one of those brought to church by your well meaning parents what kept you in or caused you to return to church? And what happened to your peers, your friends in Sunday School and youth club?
As I prayed about this I came to the realization that a major shift in the way we view our world has happened over the past decades. We moved from seeing our world in terms of an “organization” to that of an “organism”. Instead of looking at politics, education, church, medicine and everything else as mechanized, do-A-then-B-happens, static systems we started to experience our lives in terms of dynamic, fluid, ever-changing, and growing systems. This is why we talk about healing in terms of physical, social and mental not just one or the other. It’s why we insist that the public be brought into so many discussions that were the private affair of politicians 40 years ago.
The downside of this was that the institutional church ran into a wall with this change. They faced questions of “relevancy” and “integrity”. Ask those who “dropped out” of the institutional church and you may hear things like, “I out grew it”, “it didn’t seem to matter after a while”, or “I don’t need it now.” The organization called church didn’t make any practical, everyday difference in the life of people and many, especially younger people, saw it clearly.
Comments like, “church is full of hypocrites”, go the heart of the issue of integrity. It became harder and harder to accept an organization that said, “God so loved the world…” while the bylaws of the congregation wouldn’t let African American’s join the congregation. The gamesmanship played by denominations seemed to mirror those played by the military, government and unions and companies and many just didn’t want to have to play one more hand of the same old game. So they left.
I propose that for any group of Christ-followers to reach into this changing world they have to learn how to be relevant and how to live out their faith. When I say “relevant” I’m not suggesting everyone get a tattoo or that we join into the latest “fads”. Romans 12 says that we aren’t suppose to let the world press us into its mold. But, Paul also told us that he tried to be all things to all people so that he might win some. Relevancy has to do with speaking the truth of God’s word in a way that is understood.
You may not believe it but when Wycliffe Bible Translators go among a new group of people they do not teach the people the English language and hand out King James Versions of the Bible. They don’t even teach them Greek and Hebrews so that they can read the original languages in which scripture was written. Why is that? Because people have to hear, see, and understand God’s love and Christ’s death in their own language.
In the 1960’s and later the organizational church believed that the “the faith given once for all times” was equal to the organization. That faith (and I use a small ‘f’ for it) had more to do with the décor of the church, the style of dress among the people, the way worship was always done. And this faith was so strong that when fads like “rock and roll” which qualifies for AARP now came along the church ignored it. As marchers headed off to Selma and George Wallace blocked the entrance of schools to African Americans most congregations remained happily disconnected and lost in their own worlds.
In a world that is changing right now the organism we call Church faces the opportunity to grow with it or risk becoming even more mired in the tar pits of our past. We need to learn to speak God’s love in new ways so that a new generation will hear it and be able to respond to it.
Today’s world doesn’t speak the same language many of us. We don’t have to become the next 50-cents or get an I-pod to be relevant. (the fact that some of you have no idea what I’m talking about demonstrates how out of touch we are). But it does mean we need to learn how the world around us communicate and that we listen to what they are saying and what they’re not saying.
To communicate will mean that some of our long cherished ways of doing things may be tossed. Notice I didn’t say God’s long cherished ways of doing things. I’m talking about changing, reordering, rearranging our human things so that others can understand the truth behind what’s been so important to us.
Integrity means we have to live out what we’re talking about. It has to do with keeping the great commandment of loving God and our neighbors. I know of one inner city Presbyterian church in the mid-50’s whose ushers carried a copy of the church bylaws in their suit pockets so that they could show the African Americans who were coming to worship that they could come in but they couldn’t become members. Before you gasp at that even Kenton’s past has racist events that marked it by some in our community. I am not kidding when I say that as individuals we need to do five things to overcome this black mark on our name. We have to face it, admit it, confess it, repent of it, and change and all of this by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can love everyone who would walk in that door.
Let me give you an example of how this has played out in the past and how I should have seen it played out this week. Several years ago a lesbian activist writing for Ms disguised herself as a young boy and attended a Promise Keeper’s conference. What she found wasn’t a female bashing group but a group not unlike her. She didn’t agree with them but she came away with a different attitude. Why, because she saw men trying to live with integrity.
I imagine most of you saw Wednesday’s news footage as the county began to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. If you did then you saw the fantastic footage of the protestors screaming like idiots at the crowd. It didn’t strike me till Thursday morning that the way to live out our faith in Christ would have been to been present there handing out cups of coffee, sweet rolls and bottles of water to those in line.
When we were asked why I was doing it I could have said, “because I don’t believe in what you’re doing but I believe in a God who loves us and who compels me to love others, even those who consider me an enemy.”
Integrity for a Christ-follower is nothing less than loving others people. Now before you start thinking that’s easy flash back to our scriptures just before the sermon. We are to LOVE our sisters and brothers in Christ, not just the ones who go to Kenton. We are to LOVE our neighbors. Who is our neighbor? She’s the Latina single mother with six kids and four non-running cars sitting in her yard. And we’re to LOVE our enemies. Need I say more?
Who are your sisters/brothers in Christ you have a hard time loving? Catholics, other Presbyterians, emotional charismatics?
Who are the neighbors that tend to be hard to love? Latino, Black, gay, union, business owners?
Who are your enemies you need to love? Competing business, ex-spouse, parents, child, someone who hurt you.
In this next week choose one person from your list and go out of your way to do something for them that benefits them not you. Don’t do it with the attitude that “I’m better than you are” but with a sense of humility. Bake a cake for that neighbor, offer to watch a fellow Christian’s child so they can go see the Passion…etc.
For this table celebrates the fact that God came to us, Jesus became relevant so that we might discover His Father’s love for us. And that the sinless perfection, the integrity with which Jesus lived ended up sending Him to the cross.
