A New Starting Point

If a group of people planning to start up a new church are asked the question, "How do we create and sustain a sacred community in a secular world?  the answer is likely to include a demographic study, a neighborhood survey, determining the available people niche, looking at the financial, physical, and personnel resources needed, and making some projection concerning the success of the venture.  In many cases the projected success is determined by the ABC criteria of successful churches which is Attendance, Building, and Cash. 

 

While it is always important to take our head and common sense with us to the planning table, it sometimes seems that the kind of planning we do may create successful institutional churches, but what is judged to be a successful institutional offspring does not always translate into a sacred community.  If our starting point is something which comes from the secular society around us, what is likely to be created is something which bears the mark of the secular instead of the sacred.  What goes in determines the end result.

 

Perhaps, asking that the second chapter of Acts be the starting point for creating and sustaining a sacred community in a secular world is a bit unrealistic, too impractical, and lacking what we call around here "horse sense."  Maybe it is.  But, then again if we want to see churches become sacred communities, communities that are set apart for holy purposes, then, perhaps, something as unprecedented as using the second chapter of Acts might need to at least be included in the answer.  A look around often raises the possibility that the churches around us might be less than sacred communities.  

A Sacred Community

A Texas pastor who was a member of my ordination group back in 1973 and who has become a good friend in these older years recently wrote some notes in response to some young clergy who asked him what he would do differently if he were a pastor today.  His thoughts sent me to thinking.  Those of us who wear the mantle of retired seem to have plenty of time to think.  Ruminate is what I like to call it.  Anyway, my reflection about my friend's response put a question out there that I have chewed on all day.  "How do we create and sustain a sacred community in a secular world?"

 

My first inclination took me to preparing my own list of things which would be different.  I quickly realized, however, that my list was more about how I would offer leadership rather than how the church might be different.  Maybe such is really all I could truly do.  But, after a time, I found myself wondering if there was a model already in place that I might take and use.  As I started allowing myself to think in that direction, I finally came to the account of Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts.  Is that scriptural account not a model for creating and sustaining a sacred community in a secular world? 

 

The only problem is Pentecost cannot be duplicated.  It was not about what men and women like you and me could do, but about what the Holy Spirit could do as folks wait for Him to act.  Is the beginning point of creating and sustaining a sacred community in a secular world an attitude of waiting on the Holy Spirit?  It sounds like a reasonable conclusion to reach, but, of course, the trick is figuring out what that means and fleshing it out.  Sounds like there might be some more thinking to do.

Anticipation

Worship requires a certain amount of energy, or all who gather are likely to be put to sleep.  This energy required for real worship to take place is not frantic activity, jumping and dancing, clapping hands or raising them in the air; although, there is nothing wrong with our bodies becoming instruments of praise and worship.  Instead, it seems that there is an energy derived from anticipation.  Worship experiences becomes lifeless not just because the leader is lifeless, but because those who come to be involved as participant come with no real expectation of encountering a living, powerful God who is likely to make Himself known in some surprising and unexpected way.

 

When there is no energy derived from anticipation, worship is mundane and people are in danger of falling out of their pews when asked to close their eyes for prayer.  Actually, mundane worship will cause such to happen when eyes are wide open!   Perhaps, the anticipation begins with the preacher in the pulpit.  Or, maybe it begins with the worship leader who calls the people to gather themselves and their expectations.  What is true is that a lack of anticipation on the part of those who serve through leading is a contagious thing.

 

Sometimes a single person will rise up in such a way as to energize the people with their holy anticipations.  When it happens it is indeed a wonderful thing to behold.  But, like a wave that crashes on the shore line, the moment passes and everyone applauds and goes back to sleep.  Too many worship moments that offer the promise of holy power to those who come die before the clock has time to tick away even the briefest of moments.  Holy power and energy is brought to the worship moment with contagious power only when it has gripped the preacher or the leader or the pew sitter long before the first note of the service sounds.  In it is those quiet moments before the worship begins that the anticipation grows into something that has a life of its own which is always something to share with the people of God.

An Unknown Preacher

With an autobiographical narrative Charles Spurgeon, a great 19th century preacher known as the "Prince of Preachers, tells of a Sunday morning when a blinding snowstorm sent him not to the church of his choice, but to a Primitive Methodist chapel.  On that day he marked as the day of his conversion he wrote,  "The minister did not come that morning, he was snowed up, I suppose.  At last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker or tailor or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach.  Now, it is well that preachers should be instructed, but this man was really stupid.  He was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was 'Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth!' (Isaiah 45:22)...

 

... When He managed to spin out ten minutes or so,   he was a the end of his tether....fixing his eyes on me, he said, 'Young man, you look very miserable...look to Jesus Christ.  Look!  Look! You have nothing to do but to look and live!'  I know not what else he said.  I did not take much notice of it, I was so possessed by that one thought...When I heard that word 'Look'...I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away...There and then, the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away..."

While it is a great conversion story, what really struck me was the Primitive Methodist lay preacher.  He bears no name in the story and is written about in a rather uncomplimentary fashion, but God used Him to cement the transformation of a young man's search.  The young man who happened into that place of worship that day would preach to untold numbers, have a powerful widespread ministry, and his life and sermons would have a life span far beyond the years he lived.  I wonder about that preacher that launched Spurgeon in his ministry.  Did Spurgeon ever go back later in his life to find him, or did he become one of those who did an extraordinary work for God, but never knew it. 

Have a Blessed Day

It seems that the new word of departure is no longer "Have a good day," but "Have a blessed day."  It is not something heard only on Sunday, or in church, but every day and everywhere we go.  Whenever I hear it, I always receive the words as a religious blessing.  Unlike "good day," "blessed day" is received as a word with spiritual overtones.  I wonder sometimes if it is  meant in such a way by the ones who speak it to me, or if it amounts to nothing more than casual words between people who need something to say.

 

The Beatitudes use this word.  The first one begins, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:3)  And, of course, this is only the beginning.  Each of the beatitudes which follow begins with this same word.  Some of the more modern translations, or versions of Scripture have changed the word "Blessed" to "Happy."  And while the alternative is a suitable change, it still does not quite measure up to the word originally associated with these beginning sentences of the Sermon on the Mount.

To speak of being "blessed" carries with it the image of something good coming to us from outside of ourselves.  It speaks of being gifted by God as the heart of His Son is shaped within us by the Holy Spirit.  We allow our heart to be open to the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit does a work in our heart that speaks of the heart of Jesus.  And, as all of this holy work is taking place within us, God chooses to gift us with spiritual blessing.  We are blessed not because of what human determination can do, but because of what the Holy Spirit can do with a heart that is eager to be shaped in the image of Jesus. 

Something Worth Writing Home

I have been reading Oswald Chamber's  "My Utmost for His Highest"  right at fifty years now.  I started using this daily devotional classic my junior year of college and it has always had an easy-to-get-to place on my bookshelf.  He seems to have a way of bringing a word into my life that resonates with my own faith journey.  A recent reading on the Beatitudes had me reading, "The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of rules and regulations; it is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting His way with us."

 

Too many times we approach the Beatitudes as well as the entire Sermon on the Mount as a way of life that is possible for those who decide to simply live by those words.  Certainly, there was a time when it seemed to me that I could take those words and flesh them out in my own strength.  Determination and commitment would surely be enough.  Of course, like many others who have walked that road before me, I discovered it was a fool's journey.  I could not do what I thought I could do.  What I wanted to do was not possible simply because I decided it would be so.

 

Chambers is right as he speaks of the spiritual possibilities available to us if we allow the Holy Spirit to get His way with us.  What the Holy Spirit can do with us and through us if we give Him the absolute go-ahead is nothing short of extraordinary.  The impossible becomes possible.  But, it is never because of what we can do, but because of what the Holy Spirit can do with us when we allow Him to control completely our heart.  The spiritual life we are going after is never about us so much as it is about Him.  Depending on the Holy Spirit is the key to a spiritual life that gives us something worth writing home.

The New Absolute

In our day it is not kosher to talk about absolutes.  What the Apostle Paul wrote about the church being, "...the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth," (I Timothy 3:15) is more likely to raise a disbelieving eyebrow than a hearty "Amen."  First of all, there is a basic distrust of the church, a too prevalent thing today, and, secondly, the idea that the church would be the keeper of the truth is beyond any possibilities.  The church and the truth it proclaims is regarded as irrelevant, out-of-touch with the real world, and mostly an anachronism. 

 

What is interesting is that those who declare the church irrelevant and the truth set forth in the Scripture as anything but absolute have embraced a new keeper of truth and a new absolute.  The keeper of truth is common consensus and the new absolute is inside the secular doctrine of Relative.  Nothing is absolute anymore.  Everything is relative.  Relative is the new absolute.  And, who has a grip on this new absolute?  A society that has chosen to delegate the Word of God to second rate status has taken the place of the church as the source of understanding.

 

We live in a time of trendy fashionable thinking and midst a culture that questions the authority of what has always been known as the Word of God.  The truth is that the Word of God continues to be what it has always been.  It has not changed.  It is still an authoritative Word which "...is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work."  (II Timothy 3:16-17)  One thing which is overlooked in this word is the word "righteousness."  It is not a word which speaks of some super spiritual state, but a word which speaks of humanity living in a right relationship with the Creator God and those who share life with us.  Nothing can take the place of this word of absolute truth as we seek to live as we were created to live.