So, What Brought You Here?

So, What Brought You Here?

But first, story time:

“Life-Saving Station

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a little life-saving station. The building was primitive, and there was just one boat, but the members of the life-saving station were committed and kept a constant watch over the sea. When a ship went down, they unselfishly went out day or night to save the lost. Because so many lives were saved by that station, it became famous.

Consequently, many people wanted to be associated with the station to give their time, talent, and money to support its important work. New boats were bought, new crews were recruited, a formal training session was offered. As the membership in the life-saving station grew, some of the members became unhappy that the building was so primitive and that the equipment was so outdated. They wanted a better place to welcome the survivors pulled from the sea. So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged and newly decorated building.

Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members. They met regularly and when they did, it was apparent how they loved one another. They greeted each other, hugged each other, and shared with one another the events that had been going on in their lives. But fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions; so they hired lifeboat crews to do this for them.

About this time, a large ship was wrecked off of the coast, and the hired crews brought into the life-saving station boatloads of cold, wet, dirty, sick, and half-drowned people. Some of them had black skin, and some had yellow skin. Some could speak English well, and some could hardly speak it at all. Some were first-class cabin passengers of the ship, and some were the deck hands.

The beautiful meeting place became a place of chaos. The plush carpets got dirty. Some of the exquisite furniture got scratched. So the property committee immediately had a shower built outside the house where the victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting there was rift in the membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life-saving activities, for they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal fellowship of the members. Other members insisted that life-saving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all those various kinds of people who would be shipwrecked, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. And do you know what? That is what they did.

As the years passed, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a place to meet regularly for fellowship, for committee meetings, and for special training sessions about their mission, but few went out to the drowning people. The drowning people were no longer welcomed in that new life-saving station. So another life-saving station was founded further down the coast. History continued to repeat itself. And if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of adequate meeting places with ample parking and plush carpeting. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.

Thomas Wedel, “Ecumenical Review,” October, 1953, paraphrased in Heaven Bound Living, Knofel Stanton, Standard, 1989, pp. 99-101”

Over the years, congregations experience many defining moments:

• When a leader fails morally. 
• When a costly mistake is made and now everyone has to live with the results. 
• When an opportunity to serve a people group suddenly challenges a segment of the congregation.

There are numerous examples. Moving into a new facility is another example. It’s actually a major source of upheaval for congregations. Sure, it’s exciting, sure it promises new possibilities but also true is that:

• It exposes different values about how money is used and how much risk people are willing to take.
• It flushes up past church hurts and provokes an atypical level of defensiveness about how decisions get made and ‘just who approved that’ and so on and so on.
• If there are any weaknesses in our way of handling conflict, it will surely get brought out into the light of day.

Satan sometimes has a heyday in moments like this. People who are conflict/risk adverse have a tendency to store up issues until they blow up at inappropriate moments and ways. People on the other end of the spectrum have a tendency to ramrod through ideas and become even more inflexible than usual. It can create a terrible storm of dysfunction and entirely unnecessary pain. That’e where the old, familiar, story above comes into play.

Have you recently taken a moment and re-clarified why you are attracted to West County Church? Why we exit? And if you’ve not recently done so, can you do the work of getting some clarity? We don’t all have to be on the same page at the same time. But we do need to be clear about what gives us hope in this phase of life as a congregation and, what give us reason to hesitate. We don’t all have to agree on every decision that gets made. But we do all need to be committed to unity and assuming the best intentions of those around us.

The Life Saving Station story is very clarifying for me personally. The only reason I continue in ministry as a pastor in the Church is in the hope, the Biblical-expectancy that I will continue to be part of an organization that understands it’s purpose. And as I have listened to you all about your prior experiences with churches, I certainly hope you get the punchline about how dangerous it is when a church forgets its primary purpose and slips into being a country club with a cross. That is the single most common malady facing American congregations today. We’re not there, thankfully. But it is easy to drift. To grow complacent. Forgetting and ignoring our true purpose as a church is the number one reason churches close. 

It isn’t the big bad secular society, or the biased media, or the government. It isn’t even money. The church my last congregation in Indianapolis bought its building from as they closed up shop had over $500,000 in the bank. The problem was they had forgotten their purpose, descended into never-ending in-fighting and lost the will to go on. That Church had forgot her primary calling:

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.  I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.  But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.

~ Revelation 2:1-4a ESV

In the last book of the Bible, a letter written by a man named John, the writer addresses seven churches living under the persecution of the mighty Roman Empire. The Church at Ephesus (not one congregation meeting in a nice pretty building, but a network of house churches meeting in seclusion), John notes that they have committed perhaps the worst error of any Christian group: they have forgotten their first love, the love they had at first, for Jesus and his mission in the world. What is that mission you say? Is there another way to understand the reason the Church of Jesus Christ exists? Again, scripture is so helpful in this regard:

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;  that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

~2 Corinthians 5:14-20a ESV

The love of Christ controls/guides/compels us. In place of our Love for Jesus, many American Christians have substituted their first love (again, Jesus to be clear) with arguments over doctrine, or politics, or simply a desire to gather with like-minded people away from all those we disagree with.

We, personally, and corporately, are ambassadors for Jesus. Extending the offer of life with God to others. Full Stop.

We are a life saving station. We have been given the gift of reconciliation with God. In other words, saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. The obvious purpose of the church according the same apostle who gave us our cherished Lutheran doctrine of salvation by grace through faith (St. Paul), is to offer this reconciliation ministry to others. We are on a life saving mission. The degree to which we internalize this and begin to pursue it. The degree to which we make that our focus when it comes to what we do with the facility etc. Is the degree to which we have a bright future. We are here first, for the next person who hears and responds to the Good News of Jesus. A good news we have already responded to, only because someone else shared it with us. 

We are only Christians because someone else, probably several someones, extended to us, the ministry of reconciliation.  

My invitation is simply this: to repent of any idea you may have of what our congregation is for that is less than what 2 Corinthians 5 (see above) outlines. And embrace the deeply satisfying mission of all Christians: participating in the reconciliation ministry of Jesus for everyone. In Christ and in His mission, we will find our future. And it’s a bright one!

Blessings!

Pastor Mark