May 17, 2015 Heb.11:29 – 12:2,
Matt. 28:16-20
There is a Charlie Brown comic strip where
Lucy asks, “Why do you think we’re put on earth, Charlie Brown?” Charlie
replies, “To make others happy.” Lucy says, “I don’t think I’m making anyone
very happy… Of course, nobody’s making me very happy either.” Then Lucy screams
at the top of her lungs…
“SOMEBODY’S NOT
DOING HIS JOB!”
Prayer
We’re in the 3rd
week of our 4 week series titled; “Facing the Road Ahead” of which we are
reflecting biblically on Good Shepherd Lutheran’s transition process. We’re
doing this to help the congregation be engaged in understanding who and what
Good Shepherd is and how she carries out her ministry… not only for today but
also into the future. While the road ahead might be uncertain, it is a road we
must take if we are to engage our past so that it can inform our future. We are
also doing this to learn something about ourselves and about what God has
called us to be.
If you recall… I
asked you to keep these three things in mind as we go through this transition
process…
Good Shepherd’s Past… where have you been?
What have you done?
Good Shepherd’s Present… is this a reflection
of the past or the future?
Good Shepherd’s Future… What are your God
Size dreams for the future.
Over the past couple
of weeks we've learned to never give up.
If we stay connected to Jesus, then there is hope &no reason to give
up. Last week we learned not to fear because the Holy Spirit
empowers us to focus on the abundance of God.
And today our
reflection will focus on Finding Purpose.
“Finding Purpose”
The way to over-come
the road of uncertainty is to discover or perhaps to re-discover your purpose. The
bishop’s message yesterday to the assembly was about this very thing as well. He
used the Luke and Acts stories which tells of the ascension to make his point
that we in the church need to be about sharing the story. The ascension story
has the disciples looking up to heaven and two guys who magically appear asking
the disciples why they’re staring. Why are you here??? Jesus of course wants
his friends to go and share his story. Jesus wants us to do the same… but we’re
dumb founded just like Jesus’ friends are as they stare upwards.
Please keep in mind…
Jesus’ purpose is not about hopes and dreams… Hopes and dreams are the
excitement of our purpose. Hopes and dreams
bring enthusiasm to the purpose. Purpose is the over-arching reason we exist as
a community of faith. Hopes and dreams change… purpose not so much. Do you know
that you do have a Purpose? It’s in your constitution!
Statement of Purpose: “the Church is a people
created by God, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and called and sent to witness
God’s creative, redeeming, and sanctifying activity in the world.”
It’s too long… but
there it is… Is this your purpose? It
goes on to spell out how you will carry out this purpose. Is this your purpose?
I want to caution you… think about this before you answer. Virtually every ELCA
congregation has this purpose statement because it’s the model constitution of
the “church”. You also have one on your web site… it’s titled Vision & Mission
…
Good Shepherd is a congregation that is Alive
in Christ… Faithful to Christ… Welcoming to All. Is this your purpose?
Are you living this
out in any significant way? Often purpose statements tend to be elongated with
good intention, but carry little meaning for us. Vision and Mission get all
kinds of attention today. For the most part we come up with nice sounding
statements, but often have little connection to.
Vision & Mission
and Purpose & Objective are often used interchangeably… You will find P
& O used in the business world and Vision & Mission in the religious
world… both have the same meanings.
o
Purpose or Vision = The Why You do what You
Do.
o
Objective or Mission = The How You do what
You Do.
So… what is Good
Shepherd's purpose?.... Before we get to far… Let’s look at what Jesus says our
purpose or vision needs to be.
Essentially, I
believe Jesus tells us our purpose is to
“Go to all nations, Make Disciples, Baptize, and Teach.” We know this
passage well, yet we tremble when we hear it or we conveniently forget it. Essentially… in shorter form says what
your constitution says. But even
more simply… there are really only two imperatives our church purpose needs… they are GO!!! And
MAKE!!! Let’s look at these.
First… GO! What does this mean? The Greek word used here literally means “To
Pursue”. Jesus by His authority tells us to Pursue ALL people. Go… is the
purpose Jesus is calling us to… by which we… “Actively Demonstrate Love, Mercy, and Grace”. Jesus taught his
friends to actively demonstrate Love, Mercy, and Grace…. These are action
words…
Jesus didn’t say Go
to a place, or to only Christians, or to people like us.
Jesus said to go to
ALL people…. In Acts it’s Jerusalem, Samaria, Judea, and everywhere in the
world. So… the first part
of the churches purpose is to GO!!!
Second… MAKE!
Some
of you just got really nervous…
We
are Jesus followers… Right!
We
are the hands & feet of Jesus… Right!
We
all proclaim Jesus is Lord… Right!
What
does Jesus say??? …. “To Make Disciples.”
To Baptize them, and teach them to do everything I told you”.
I was sharing this with a congregation and a
person came up to me and said, “I can’t do this.” I asked why? They told me,
“That word disciple scares me to death because it means I must go knock on
doors.” I asked who told them that… they told me former pastors over the years
told them that knocking on doors evangelizing made them disciples.
Is that something
you’ve heard or been taught?
I believe the bible
tells me that being a disciple of Jesus means to practice these 6 elements or
practices… Simply discipleship or as
I like to refer to it “Followership” is about these 6 elements or practices Prayer, Worship, Learning, Serving,
Relationships, Generosity. Simply… these practices demonstrate how purpose
gets lived out…
Simply I believe
Good Sheps purpose… the churches purpose… that is never changing are these
simple two words…
GO>>>> MAKE…. This is God’s church purpose for all churches… all faith communities.
The BIG question for
us is….
Is this God’s church
or a social gathering of like-minded people?
A story is told of a community of people who
lived on a stretch of dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occurred.
Eventually, some of the townspeople decided to put some time and effort and
money into a rescue operation. A small life-saving station was built and the
devoted members of the rescue team kept an ongoing watch over the sea, ready to
use their little boat to search for survivors in case of a shipwreck. As the
result of this volunteer operation, the town became famous because of the many
lives that were saved.
More and more people joined and became part
of the team. Soon a new building was erected. It was much larger than the first
little building and it was beautifully furnished and decorated. And as more and
more amenities were added for the members' pleasure and comfort, the new
building was slowly transformed into a kind of clubhouse. As a result, some of
the members began to lose interest in the rescue operation.
But then a shipwreck occurred and many
survivors were rescued and brought into the clubhouse for first aid. During the
period of the operation which lasted for several days, the frenzied activity
caused the attractive "clubhouse" to be considerably marred by such
things as bloodstains on the lush carpeting. At the next meeting there was a
split in the membership. Most members felt that the life-saving operation was a
hindrance to the social life of the organization. Those who disagreed were told
that they could build another little station further down the coast. And, as
the years went by, history continued to repeat itself. Today, so the story
goes, that seacoast has a number of exclusive clubhouses dotting the shore – but
no one in the area seems to be concerned with rescue operations.
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