Waiting to be Fed

A sermon preached by Dr. Harold Henderson, Senior Pastor,
at First United Methodist Church, Gainesville, Florida on Sunday, July 31, 2011.

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First, I would like to present A Personal Statement.

Last week I advised the Staff Parish Relations Committee, and this past week the Church Council, and now I am advising the congregation that I have decided not to continue as Senior Pastor beyond the term of my present appointment that concludes on June 30, 2012.

It goes without saying that it has not been easy to bite the bullet that will bring to an end the very fulfilling chapter that Ruth and I have enjoyed serving this wonderful congregation at such a strategic time in its 154-year history. I was appointed initially by Bishop Whitaker to serve an interim appointment of six months from January 1, 2007. By June 30, 2012, when my ministry concludes, I will have served longer than all but three of my predecessors, and all three were here only six months longer. No Senior Pastor has served this church for longer than six years in a century and a half of history.

It has been my privilege to share in the turn-around of this historic congregation from 25 years of numerical decline to the growth possibilities that, by God's grace, we have begun to glimpse and that lie ahead of us.

To maximize our response to those future possibilities, I believe that now is the time for a sustained ministry (say, 10 years) of fresh, vigorous and creative leadership to ensure that strong growth patterns have a chance to be firmly established. Obviously, I cannot be the person to provide that leadership – I don't have the years left, or the sustained energy levels, or perhaps even the ideas or the gifts to take it from here. That is not so much a statement of disappointment as of realism.

Within two months of my initial appointment, I was asked by the (then) District Superintendent, Dr. Geraldine McClellan, to write a report on how I saw the future of First Church. It was, even at that very early stage, a positive report that nevertheless included the prediction that it would take 3-5 years for the church to turn around from steady decline to the growth possibilities that could be realized thereafter. I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but we are on course with that prediction.

The earlier-than-required announcement of my decision is designed to clear the way for the Staff Parish Relations Committee, chaired by Dr. Jim Knight, representing the congregation, to be in dialog with the District Superintendent, Rev. Annette Pendergrass, to initiate the established processes for the eventual appointment of a new Senior Pastor as from July 1, 2012. I appeal to all of us to support the SPR Committee, the District Superintendent, and the Bishop in our prayers as they work towards a new appointment for First Church.

We are fortunate that both the District Superintendent and the Bishop are well-informed about the present vitality and the future potential of First Church, and about the strategic nature of this new appointment, and that the appointment will be made before Bishop Whitaker retires later in 2012, to be replaced by a Bishop who will not, according to established policy, be a Floridian and who will, therefore, have no knowledge, at least initially, about the needs and possibilities of First Church.

Waiting to be Fed.

Now, let me turn to the theme of the sermon, Waiting to be Fed, taken from the miracle story of the feeding of the 5,000+ (Matthew 14:13-21), and in particular from Jesus' response to the disciples request that Jesus send the crowd away, because they were in an isolated place and it was late in the day, so that they could go into the surrounding villages and buy food. “They don't need to go away,” Jesus said. “You give them something to eat.”

There are people all around us who are waiting to be fed – physically, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, people who are traumatized by all kinds of occurrences – and Jesus is saying to us as a congregation: “They don't need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

In this context, I was fascinated by Tom Wright's application of the story (Matthew for Everyone, p.187):

“This is how it works whenever someone is close enough to Jesus to get a glimpse of what he's doing and how they could help. We blunder in with our ideas. We offer, uncomprehending, what little we have. Jesus takes ideas, loaves and fishes, money, a sense of humor, time, energy, talents, love, artistic gifts, skill with words, quickness of eye or fingers, whatever we have to offer. He holds them before his father in prayer and blessing. Then breaking them so they are ready for use, he gives them back to us to give to those who need them.

“ And now they are both ours and not ours. They are both what we had in mind and not what we had in mind. Something greater and different, more powerful and mysterious, yet also our own. It is part of genuine Christian service, at whatever level, that we look on in amazement to see what God has done with the bits and pieces we dug out of our meagre resources to offer to him.”

Friends, this is a time to dig the bits and pieces out of our meager resources to offer them to Jesus so that he can offer them up to God, break them open, and give them back to us to meet the needs of those around us who are waiting to be fed.

There is Work to be Done!

Very early this morning, I read this insightful and relevant thought in a spiritual memoir, Called to Question (p.55), by Joan Chittister, a well-known Benedictine sister:

“I have come to understand that it is not protesting what we do not like that counts. It is choosing what we do which, ultimately, changes things.”

It occurred to me to ask: What might we be choosing to do in the next 11 months to prepare the way for a smooth transition to new leadership and maximize the possibility of sustained growth? It is important to understand that growth is not just a matter of numbers; we need to grow spiritually as well. Nor is our growth motivated by a desire to be big, or to show up in a good light in the annual Conference statistical tables. We need to grow because there are people all around us who are waiting to be fed! And Jesus says: “You give them something to eat.”

How to Grow the Church.

Recently, I read a blog on the website of the Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church about growing and declining churches that said, among other things:

“...you won't discover your answer in any lame”best practices” workshop, either. Turnaround churches almost all agree: They knew what they needed to do before they did it. It isn't ignorance that fosters decline; it's apathy. Churches that truly want to grow do so.

“ Churches that want to serve do so. Churches that want to climb out of financial hardship do it. For every declining church you can name, there is a growing one like it in most ways. The key difference? Declining churches expect their answers to come from the outside; growing churches take responsibility for their own solutions.”

I have said so many times before that you are probably tired of hearing it, that church decline is not inevitable, even for a downtown church that has experienced demographic change. Nor is growth automatic. It depends on attitudes we adopt; it depends on priorities we put in place; it depends on actions we take or don't take relying always, of course, on God's guidance and grace.

The Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church in recent times has developed what it calls “Five Missional Signs” of a healthy, growing church. In fact, from this year, each congregation will be required to report to its annual Charge Conference under these headings. The Missional Signs are:

1. Passionate Worship. I don't know about you, but I find the worship we experience in this sanctuary Sunday by Sunday and on other special occasions inspiring and energizing, as it should be, because the worship of God is at the heart of all we do as a church.

2. Intentional Discipleship. As we have often said the root meaning in the word “disciple” and its derivatives is to learn rather than to follow. Of course, the early disciples had to follow Jesus but it was in order to learn the ways of the Kingdom of God from his teaching and ministry. So for us, discipleship is about learning, and it needs to be intentional and on-going. Discipleship doesn't happen by osmosis or fall from the sky. We need to be intentional about it ourselves and the church needs to create the context in which others are encouraged to learn the ways of God. That's why our all-age Sunday School is so important. So are our Wednesday night classes which, this Fall, will be enriched as we join together with our friends at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

3. Radical Hospitality. I was with a friend yesterday evening who has very little time for organized religion but with whom I've always had a good pastoral relationship. I had received word that the end of his life journey was rapidly approaching. He was in and out of consciousness when I arrived at his home but I was able to offer him a benediction in one of his infrequent moments of lucidity. A family member commenting about him while I was there said that “he'd never met a stranger.” He was an interstate truck driver and the simple acts of kindness he has extended to all and sundry along the way are legendary.

One of the most important considerations for people who come new to a church in deciding whether or not to come back a second time is how readily they are made to feel at home by rank-and-file members of the congregation Radical hospitality is a gift of the Spirit that everyone can exercise.

4. Salty Service. This is a term that I don't like very much because it sounds too slick, but I like the idea. It is about service rendered outside the framework of the church. It doesn't mean that service rendered within the church is unimportant. On the contrary, this church could not survive without such service. What it means is that, to be truly Christian, our service must reach and embrace those outside our church circle who are waiting to be fed.

5. Extravagant Generosity. This church has a great tradition of generous support for a wide range of local, national and overseas causes. Sometimes we may be a little tardy in relation to our own operational budget, but generosity is one of our hallmarks. And why shouldn't we be extravagantly generous when the God we serve has been so extravagantly generous to us? The Gospels are full of parables about the extravagant generosity of God. That's what the Parable of the Prodigal Son is all about, so much so that it's more correctly the Parable of the Loving Father.. In Middle Eastern culture, it was unheard of and most undignified for a father to “run” ever, let alone to greet a wayward son. Such action would have been the object of criticism, even ridicule. An extravagantly loving God is ready to risk ridicule, even shame, to embrace and welcome his wayward children. Isn't that precisely what Jesus actualized on the cross?

6. Genuine Catholicity. This is the sixth Missional Sign that I like to add. This one is unofficial but I think it needs emphasis because the word is so misunderstood, and the richness of its meaning so undervalued in practice. Many Protestant Christians are offended by our affirmation in the Apostles' Creed that “I believe...in the holy catholic church.” I know of at least one couple who have left our church over this issue. The word “catholic” is an Anglicized form of the Greek word katholikos which means so much more that the alternative rendering “universal” suggested by the asterisk in our hymnal.

It captures the idea of the unity and universality of the whole church across the centuries as well as across national, cultural, and ecclesiastical boundaries. When Jesus prayed shortly before he was betrayed that we “might all be one” as he and his Father are one, I think we can assume that he meant us to be serious about our unity within individual congregations and across denominational barriers

The Meaning for Us.

What might these Missional Signs and the challenge of Jesus - “You give them something to eat” - translate into as we prepare to transition into a new chapter of numerical and spiritual growth under new leadership?

As it happens, our Staff Parish Relations and Finance Committees have been, and are, doing some very serious work as part of the answer to that question. At this stage, the following emphases are emerging:

* We will operate on a balanced budget.

* As far as we can tell at this stage that will mean reducing staff costs by down-sizing and re-structuring so that we can do more with less, and open up even more serious opportunities for volunteer leadership and participation.

* We are committed to caring for our own - especially the older members of our congregation who are getting older and need, and deserve, adequate pastoral care.

* We will place renewed emphasis on children, youth and family ministries.

* We will continue to serve our homeless and working poor neighbors, learning from our experience and with more targeted focus on what we can do well that others are not doing.

* We will introduce a new level of administration and management to free ministry staff to concentrate more on ministry, and to achieve greater efficiency and cost control in all areas

Friends, there are hungry people all around us, waiting to be fed. As Jesus said: You give them something to eat, even if from meager resources.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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First United Methodist Church     419 N.E. First Street    Gainesville, Florida 32601      352-372-8523