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