How to (begin to) Save the World

In the film, The Neverending Story, a young boy, Bastian, reads a book.  But it's no ordinary book.  It's a book in which the reader becomes a part of the story.  For most of the movie Bastian sits up in the attic of his school reading this book from cover to cover.  It's a fantastic story of the Nothing, a warrior, a princess, a Rock Eater and a Luck Dragon that very quickly draws Bastian in.  In the midst of his reading, however, Bastian realizes that the characters in the book seem to hear what he's saying.  In the scene below Bastian reads of the young warrior, Atreyu, and his quest to save Fantasia.  It is in this scene that Bastian comes to the full realization that he is a part of the story.

What I love about that scene is Bastian's response once he realizes that he is part of the story he's reading.  He throws the book across the floor!  The mere idea that he and the story are one frightens him.

The same might be true of our relationship to our Story, the Bible, as well.  If we read it, we might discover that we are a part of it, and that might frighten us a bit.  In one sense, there is something frightening about finding our story in God's Story.  Suddenly, we may discover that our plans are not big enough, our worldview is too small and our courage is insufficient for the task.  The Story asks too much of us!  In another sense, however, nothing could be more refreshing, encouraging, comforting and worth the investment.  For as you and I find our stories in God's we find ourselves recruited into God's great redemptive passion and plan to restore and save the world from all that corrupts and degrades it.

This weekend, during worship, we will launch our 31-week journey through The Story.  If you haven't done so already, please pick up one free copy of The Story per household from our lobby and join in the journey with us.  Also, please check out other resources for our journey at the West Counter after worship.

How do we save the world?  Well, that's a much bigger question than we have time to engage in here.  But I do know this: the answer begins as we get to know God's Story.  I hope you'll join us.

- Pastor Stacey Littlefield

Jesus, the Two-Kegger Cul de Sac and Us

I've shared this story before but it bears repeating.  Several years ago, back when I pastored in Cleveland, I was at a meeting in a Covenant Church in Columbus, Ohio.  The pastor of that church, John, told me that when his church made plans to build their new building he and his wife, Jen, wanted to move into the neighborhood where the church was located.  They found a house and moved in.  Only after they moved in did they discover that their cul de sac was known as the “two-kegger cul de sac” (so named because of the amount of beer they consumed at block parties).  John discovered that the two other streets in the area had begun to hold their own block parties separate from the street on which he and Jen now lived.  Why?  Because there were some Christians on the other two streets who disapproved of some of the goings on at previous block parties (“unmentionable” behavior is what John called it).  John said to Jen, “This is exactly where we want to be!”  Within a year or so of moving to the neighborhood, John and Jen began to host a weekly investigative Bible Study in their home, made up of people from the “two-kegger cul de sac.”  John also shared with me that he sometimes referred to that Bible Study as “the cussing Bible Study” because all of those who came had no faith and were simply free to be who they were.  John and Jen saw themselves as “sent” among the people of their neighborhood.

In the John 20.21, the Resurrected Jesus says to his disciples,“Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  I don't know about you, but it is so easy for me to forget my own “sent-ness.”  The Father sent the Son; the Son and the Father sent the Holy Spirit; the Father, Son and Spirit have sent us, me, you – the Church.  The word “apostle” means “sent one” or “messenger.” In that sense, we are all apostles; we are all sent into the world in which we live.

What does it mean to understand ourselves as sent (apostles)?  How ought I to be living my life if I understand that God has sent me to where I am?  What about you as you read this post?  What does it mean to be an apostle in your 97%?  Among whom are you and I sent?  What is your two-kegger cul de sac?  Or, to put it the way the teacher of the law put it in Luke 10, “And just who are your neighbors?”

- Pastor Stacey Littlefield

The "Great Secret" to Loving Your Neighbor

The quote below came to me from C.S. Lewis' classic work, Mere Christianity. It's been years
since I read the book, but, thankfully, an ECCer emailed me the quote in response to our worship on Sunday.  To the question of how we are to love our neighbors, Lewis writes:

The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for anything like showing off, or patronage.) But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less. (Mere Christianity, p.131)

I've said for years that loving our neighbors (or our enemies, for that matter)  is not about how we feel.  It's about how we act.  Biblically speaking, to love our neighbors is to do the loving thing for them, whether even like them, or not.  When we act lovingly, we begin to feel what we could not have imagined feeling before.  That is "one of the great secrets" Lewis writes about.  

On Sunday I quoted a line from the film 42.  It was a line where Branch Rickey stated that the command to love your neighbor as yourself is one of the most repeated commands in the Bible.  I'd like to finish with one more quote from the film.  In this scene Herb Pennock, General Manager for the Philadelphia Phillies calls Branch Rickey about an upcoming game with Rickey's Brooklyn Dodgers.  After you watch the scene, consider this: If you were to meet God one day, what neighbor have you failed to love enough? And if God asked you why, would your reply be sufficient? I'll let you know that there is a bit of brief, mild language in the clip.

Peace,

Pastor Stacey

Paying Attention, Being Blessed

For this week's blog post, I want to invite you to watch a 10 minute video and reflect on one

person's life.  When sister Margaret Gaines was 19 years old, after only one year of Bible College, she felt called to go on the mission field, but no one would allow her to go as a single woman.  She went anyway.  After many years in Tunisia she ended up in a Palestinian community where she established a church and a school for Muslim children, simply showing them the love of God.  In recent years she has had several health problems and now, at 80 years of age, is no longer serving overseas.  She is an ordinary person who simply tried to do what God gave her to do.  And while she isn't specifically using my language from Sunday about learning to pay attention to God, that is what her story is about.  Currently, though she is frail and old, she serves a small, rural church in Alabama as their pastor.  Hear her story and reflect on the ways she has paid attention to God's work in her life.  You'll be blessed!

Margaret Gaines Story from John Schroter on Vimeo.

Stewards

“Authority is not given to us to use all God has given us for our own purposes.”   We are not kings but we are stewards of the King!!  Last Sunday we discovered the fundamental principle of biblical stewardship is God’s ownership of everything including us and

all that he has given us.  This includes our treasure, our time and our talents.

In the Crown Small Group Study, we discuss that acknowledging God’s ownership often requires a transformation in thinking and it is contrary to much of what we are bombarded with daily in the media and elsewhere.   Crown offers a 30 day challenge to help transform our thinking including:

• Meditating on 1 Chronicles 29:11-12 each day
• Be careful in the use of personal pronouns: consider substituting “the” or “the Lord’s” for “my,” “mine,” and “ours. 
• For the next 30 days, ask God to make you aware of His ownership.
• Every time you purchase something, acknowledge God’s ownership of the item.

The Apostle Paul states in Philippians 4:11b-13 “for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”  Paul describes the diversity of his living situations throughout his life refers to discovering the secret of being content in his relationship with Christ.  Contentment is a strong indicator of whether we are being transformed into stewards and it is clear that Paul went through this transformation.  

When it comes to recognizing God’s ownership of all that I have, one of the biggest challenges for me is when something happens to one of my possession.  Many times when something new or something I like is broken or misplaced, I can easily become frustrated or angry and my family often has to experience the brunt of my frustration over a thing…a thing that I truly don’t own but rather is something I steward over for God.  This part of my life is being slowly transformed. 

Contrast this with the following illustration from the Crown small group study:  Shortly after a man named Jim came to grips with God’s ownership, he purchased a car.  He had driven the car only two days before someone rammed into the side of it.  Jim’s first reaction was “Lord, I don’t know why You want a dent in Your car, but now You’ve got a big one!”    Lord may we all continue to be transformed to the point that we would see all that we have been given the way Jim does.  Everything comes from You Lord and everything belongs to You!

Pastor Kurt

The Birds, the Bees, the How and the Why

In one of my favorite episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond Ray tries to explain "the birds and the bees" to his daughter Allie.  He does this, of course, because he is trying to prove to his wife Deborah that he is a good father and husband and really wants to help out with their kids. The problem is that Deborah and Ray thought Allie was asking about how we are born, when her question was really about why we are born.  In other words, Allie wanted to know why we are here on earth in the first place.  What is the meaning of life?  

This, of course, is even more difficult for Ray to talk about than the birds and the bees, so he fakes a sneezing fit and leaves the room! Thus begins a hilarious and intriguing conversation with all adult members of the family on what exactly the answer to Allie's question is.

Like Allie, at heart, we all long for purpose. We all want to know what the meaning of life is, or at least, what the meaning of life is for us.  As those who have been created in Christ Jesus to do good works God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph 2.10), we are God's workmanship and we have a mission.   Sometimes, however, we can get a little too hung up on mission statements.  Now, of course, we at ECC do have a mission statement, so permit me to talk out of both sides of my mouth for a moment or two.  Our mission statement is:

To Know God, Follow Jesus and Pursue God's Purposes in the World.

Years ago, however, church consultant and author Len Sweet said that he didn't think we really needed to put a lot of time into mission statements since Jesus has already given one to us.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it, in other words.  And, for the most part, I agree.  However, our intent in the mission statement was (as I think most good ones are) an attempt to abbreviate Jesus' statement, to shorten it while still calling to mind the mission on which God in Christ has sent us in its fullness.  At ECC we believe Jesus gives us three parts of our mission in two great statements from the gospels, the Great Commandment and the Great Commission:

"The most important [commandment]," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'  The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12.29-31, NIV)

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."  (Matthew 28.19-20, NIV)

Love God, love people and make disciples.  The call to make disciples flows out of the commandment to love God and love our neighbors.  It just doesn't get any simpler than that.  Our mission statement, quoted earlier, is an attempt to boil Jesus' words down into different language, but we are trying to say the same thing.  Knowing God, following Jesus and pursuing God's purposes in the world is one way to express what loving God, loving others and making disciples looks like in the world.  There are other ways to say it, of course, but this is our way of summarizing Jesus' Great Commandment and Great Commission.

In this week's Mission Briefing you were invited to write your own mission statement in paragraph form.  This was not an attempt to get us to memorize our own "mission statement" and get us all "hung up" on mission statements, as I mentioned above.  It was an attempt to get us thinking about Jesus' mission for each of us in practical ways, day in and day out.  If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to give 5-10 minutes thinking about why God put you here in the first place.  Perhaps you might try to write your statement by considering how you would answer the question if one of your children, future children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews asked you about the meaning of life.  What would you say to them?  How would Jesus' mission statement take shape in your life in a way that even a child could understand what is most important? Would you have an answer or would you have to feign a sneezing fit and leave the room?

Peace,

Pastor Stacey

Marriage and the New Creation

In the sermon on Sunday, we noticed that Jesus roots his teaching on marriage based on the creation story in Genesis 1-2. But that’s not the only thing Jesus had to say about marriage. Jesus also gives his own revelation on marriage in the age to come. As we said, people were always going to Jesus to see what he would say about hot button issues, and in every generation, marriage is a hot-button issue. Sadducees came to him and asked him a question regarding marriage, but it actually was more of a test to see what Jesus would say regarding life after death.

Sadducees believed that people died and that was it. Based on their interpretation of scripture (the Law of Moses), they rejected the notion of life after death, which they regarded as a pagan influence. They were the ruling party in Jerusalem, and their teaching was official Jewish doctrine. As much as people see Pharisees as Jesus’ enemies, they were the party he had most in common with theologically. Both Jesus and the Pharisees believed that at the end of this age, God would physically resurrect the dead and bring them to judgment (Daniel 12:2).

The Sadducees had a good question regarding how that was to work practically. They brought to Jesus a scenario of a women who had seven different husbands die. In the resurrection, would she be married to seven men? That seemed like a wicked way to live forever. God would surely not be the author of that kind of existence, would he?

Jesus replied thusly: “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:34-36).

Marriage is for this age only, this age which is frequently characterized as that time of refining and testing in preparation for the age to come. In this age, marriage is bound up with our mortality, our need to have children, and our own psychological needs. For Christians, it teaches us how to live in a small, divine community of love, refining our character and allowing us to live a life of love for which we were made. In the world, marriage is fraught with difficulties and social inequalities, with women traditionally viewed more as property than as mission partners. (Christians ought not pretend to be immune from this.) Whether for character refinement or for social arrangements, neither of these will continue into God’s new age of perfection and new life.

If we do not experience marriage in the age to come, what will fill that void in human experience? As much as we know, God and community will be there, family seems to make life “complete” here and it’s hard to imagine happiness and fulfillment without it. Another picture of the future is John’s vision in Revelation, where he sees the holy city Jerusalem (representing) God’s people, coming down from heaven to earth, “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Rev. 21:2). This is what I mean when I say that we are to find our completeness in Christ. Many churches are a bit more comfortable in worship than ECC with the idea of Jesus being our husband and using language of intimacy in worship of him. It is uncomfortable to think of that sometimes, but it’s very much true. Our missing piece, the one to whom we say, “You complete me,” is Jesus Christ. That’s the primary relationship we’re called to foster now and for eternity. And Jesus says we also find him in other people, especially “the least of these” (Mt 25). Digging into fellowship with other disciples, whether we’re married or not, is a way that Jesus has designed that we work on our intimacy with him. I’ve heard some say that in the coming age, it’s not that we will be married to nobody, but in a sense, married to everyone, experiencing the deepest and purest love and devotion with all God’s people.

Because of this, Paul says to go ahead and get on with living as though we’re already in that age, because, in a sense, we are. Because the kingdom of God has broken into the world through Jesus, and because he will be coming back soon (yes, Paul was living in this hope even back then), why bother with secondary matters? Paul says that single people ought to stay single, and that “those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away” (1 Cor 7:29-31). There is nothing wrong with marrying, but we ought to be focused on higher things – building for the kingdom. How do those with wives live as though they didn’t? I wouldn’t think that it would mean to abandon one’s spouse, but together, the couple are no longer to structure their marriage according to the age that is passing away, but find that they now live in a different story and are a part of a new family in Christ. Together, their primary call is to build up the family of God rather than their own bloodline. Together, they focus on growing into the loving character of Christ rather than preserve traditional social arrangements. The breaking in of God’s new age takes away the status and stigma the world associates with being married, single, divorced, widowed. We are all one family together, finding our completeness in Christ, loving each other and treating each other as family members with dignity.

May this week bring many opportunities to grow in selfless love, and may you boldly seize those opportunities.

strength

The wonderful thing about the cloud of witnesses that surround us, is that we are all gifted and called in our own unique ways.  We all have our own unique gifts and talents and abilities that support one another, and fill in the places where we individually fall short.  The body of Christ can be compared to a lot of things, and one of the most powerful images for me is one that you may not expect: an ant colony.  

Picture ants, each carrying what they are able to carry and playing their part to work together to take a piece of food back to the home to feed the colony.  Where one ant would physically fall short of the goal, a group, working together, is able to accomplish much more.  

God desires you.  He has given you the gifts and talents that you have, and in the places that you fall short, God will come in with other brothers and sisters in the cloud to support you, pray for you, encourage you, and love you.  While we fix our eyes on Christ so that we don’t grow weary and lose heart, we also lean on those who come alongside us in the journey.

No servant is greater than his master.....so as you live a life of that proclaims the gospel in the face of hardship, remember that our Savior has walked that path already and sympathizes with our every need.  

No servant walks the path alone....so seek out one another to pray for each other.  Find others who you know are in places of hardship and pray for them. 

As we walk together, let’s watch as God turns our weakness into strength, for the glory of His kingdom.

Pastor Ara

More Than Red Shoes ...

Thanks again Katie Han for the inspiration to free my red shoes from closet captivity.  It brought much discussion and laughter in the lobby after worship last Sunday and got me thinking …

I remember another woman who had a rockin’ pair of red shoes … Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  Dorothy was led to believe those shoes would make her invincible in the midst of her trials journeying down the Yellow Brick Road.  That was until Glinda the Good Witch revealed to her the truth: 

You’ve always had the Power, my dear, you just had to find it for yourself.

We hear this message all around us.  We are told that nothing is out of our reach if we just work hard enough it.  But in my almost 50 years of living, I have come to see this as misleading.  And this is especially true with with objectives that matter most like becoming more Christ-like, reflecting it to others, and impacting a world with acts of justice and mercy.   

Accomplishing things of the Spirit – requires the Spirit.  And as I said on Sunday which bares repeating:

The Spirit works best through the person with the humbled and receptive heart rather than the person standing in the rockin’ red shoes or whatever the male equivalent of that might be. 

My prayer is that we all grow in the humility and receptivity needed for the Spirit to enter in.  For with it comes the release from playing God to self and others, and ultimately our best chance for witnessing His transformative work around us and in us. 

Your Fellow Journeywoman,

Pastor Dawn

How Not to Conquer the World

Fellow Citizens! I hope this note finds you encouraged in your quest to change the world, or to put it more correctly, encouraged as you live more and more by faith into a world that has already been changed by the coming, the death, the resurrection and exaltation of King Jesus. I, like many of you, am getting ready to celebrate July the 4^th (while on vacation) and I think my sermon said about all I wanted to say on the topic.  But I leave you these words from NT Wright to ponder further on the topic of our heavenly citizenship and our role on earth:

This is the point at which a great deal of Jesus’s own kingdom agenda comes into its own.  His great Sermon on the Mount opens with the Beatitudes, which are normally read either as a special form of “ Christian ethic” (“This is how you are to behave, if you want to be really special people”) or as the rules you must keep in order to “go to heaven when you die.”  This latter view has been reinforced by the standard misreading of the first Beatitude.  “Blessings on the poor in spirit! The kingdom of heaven is yours” (Matt. 5:3) doesn’t mean, “You will go to heaven when you die.”  It means you will be one of those through whom God’s kingdom, heaven’s rule, begins to appear on earth as in heaven.  The Beatitudes are the agenda for kingdom people.   They are not simply about how to behave, so that God will do something nice to you.  They are about the way in which Jesus wants to rule the world.  He wants to do it through this sort of people—people, actually, just like himself (read the Beatitudes again and see).  The Sermon on the Mount is a call to Jesus’s followers to take up their vocation as light to the world, as salt to the earth—in other words, as people through whom Jesus’s kingdom vision is to become reality.  This is how to be the people through whom the victory of Jesus over the powers of sin and death is to be implemented in the wider world. 

The work of the kingdom, in fact, is summed up pretty well in those Beatitudes.  When God wants to change the world, he doesn’t send in the tanks.  He sends in the meek, the mourners, those who are hungry and thirsty for God’s justice, the peacemakers, and so on.  Just as God’s whole style, his chosen way of operating, reflects his generous love, sharing his rule with his human creatures, so the way in which those humans then have to behave if they are to be agents of Jesus’s lordship reflects in its turn the same sense of vulnerable, gentle, but powerful self-giving love.  It is because of this that the world has been changed by William Wilberforce, campaigning tirelessly to abolish slavery; by Desmond Tutu, working and praying not just to end apartheid, but to  end it in such a way as to produce a reconciled, forgiving South Africa; by Cicely Saunders, starting a hospice for terminally ill patients ignored by the medical profession and launching a movement that has, within a generation, spread right around the globe (N.T. Wright, Simply Jesus, 218-219).

- Pastor Bo Bannister