Member Mission Newsletter #34 – Preaching on Mission During the Epiphany Season     

 

This month:

STORIES
• “Empowering the Laity Through Preaching” – Will Willimon
• A three-part vision at sermon time
• Member mission and Commitment Sunday
• Members share the preaching
• A carpenter’s mission
• Katharine and John promote “eating locally”

RESOURCES
• Is the American Dream Killing You?  How “the Market” Rules Our Lives
• Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Viewer’s Guide 2005

FOR MEDITATION
• Motivating without enabling
  

 

 

“Empowering the Laity Through Preaching” – Will Willimon

[From his “Weekly Message” of 10/31/05.  The widely published author and former chaplain at Duke University, William H. Willimon is the bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church.]

 

In his influential book, Five Challenges For the Once and Future Church, veteran church observer Loren B. Mead says that we pastors must orchestrate the Transference of the Ownership of the Church to the Laity.  Church history shows, not that we clergy have always been grabbing power for ourselves, but that the laity have been only too willing to shirk their responsibility and then give it to us.  Every great reformation of the church has been a restoration of the legitimate baptismal ministry of the laity.  At every step along the way of our ministry, we must find ways to authorize the laity to live up to the promises of their baptism.  I therefore think it a good idea for us preachers to view ourselves as the manager of a potentially winning baseball team rather than the team’s star player.  In every sermon, we ought to include some story or illustration that narrates some exemplary way some person (other than the preacher) has embodied the Gospel.  Such exemplification leads to identification and empowerment.  Or perhaps we are the coach, rather than the manager, actively developing the talents and vocations of our laity. . .
 
Mead’s final emphasis is not surprising, if one is familiar with his previous work on church renewal.  Mead stresses the importance of each church member being engaged in mission.  The time has passed when there was a generation who enjoyed simply keeping the machinery going, coming to church, going through the motions.  A new generation of activists, when they think of mission, do not think of sending their money to someone in New York or Nashville to do mission, but rather want face-to-face, self-involved service to others.  People want to have their lives caught up in something greater than themselves.  Mission begins with commissioning.  Therefore, preaching is an essential part of mission.  I suppose that we preachers ought to strive, in every sermon, to have some illustration or example whereby ordinary Christian people could sense God’s vocation.  Mission begins in the heart of God, in God’s determination to love the world, to have a people.  Mission involves individual Christians hearing their names called to be part of that mission.

 

One of the greatest hindrances for mission is lack of imagination.  Too many people in the church think of mission as something exotic, something that goes on somewhere else, something that cannot work here.  In preaching, particularly when stories of mission activity and success are narrated, people are disarmed, they let down their defenses, they come to see themselves as part of God’s gracious activity in the world.  Thus, mission and preaching are powerfully related.  I know of no congregation where there is active, bold, engaging mission, where there is not also vibrant preaching.  People are in mission, because in preaching they have heard a commission by the pastor who is the chief missionary of the missional congregation.
     For more: http://www.northalabamaumc.org
 

 

A three-part vision at sermon time

Bob Kohl, a member of St. Christopher’s Church, Oak Park, IL has been working with a visioning team in an attempt to increase the congregation’s focus on and support for the members in their daily living as Christians.  The rector saw a visioning process as a way to assess next steps after marshaling congregational energy to complete a successful building project.  Bob was asked to recruit a visioning team co-chair and members who were representative of the parish and confirmed by the vestry.  The team led parish-wide round table discussions and conducted a survey to gather input on closely held values and future directions from both adult and youth members.  When the time came to report back to the parish, the team boiled the parish feedback down to three core values – knowing each other more intimately (belonging), exploring our faith (believing), and living out our beliefs in the world (living out our beliefs).  The visioning team and the vestry (governing body) presented the core values during the usual sermon time as follows.  Fifteen presenters sat among the congregation of about 120.  One introduced the core value followed by others who cited what members had said on that theme in recent surveys.  One more ended with a summary and prayer to help the parish focus on that particular core value in the coming months and years.  The effect was to show that the core values and supporting statements came from within the parish.  Since the presentation, the vestry has attempted to organize its plans and activities around these three core values.  At this point the parish is struggling around letting go of activities that do not enhance at least one of these core values.  It is hoped that the visioning values will encourage parishioners to move beyond belonging and believing to actively supporting its members in their Monday to Saturday pursuits.  This is definitely a work in progress.  Bob comments on church growth saying, “If we can honestly say that we assist people in connecting their faith with their daily life, many of us will proudly recruit others to join the community.”
     Contact: Bob Kohl, 615 S. Wesley, Oak Park, IL 60304; 708-848-7262; kohl@msn.com.

 

Member mission and Commitment Sunday

John LeSueur, coordinator for Lilly’s Pastoral Excellence Project in the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, was asked to return to the Church of the Transfiguration in Derry, NH to speak as part of their Commitment Sunday for stewardship.  The setting: a Eucharist around the breakfast table in the parish hall where John’s presentation took the place of the sermon during the Ministry of the Word.  His theme: our ministry is part of our stewardship all year long and the church is here to support us so what portion of our income will we supply to support that ministry.   With the help of the PowerPoint slides from a draft copy of the workbook for When the Members are the Missionaries, he used member mission to help them to see they were already doing ministry.   After identifying their present ministries now underway, a man asked, “When will we do the second part on how we can expand [these ministries]?”  He was asking how can each of us make a plan for our daily ministries and follow through on them.
     Contact: The Rev. John T. LeSueur, II, 18 Gaita Drive, Derry, NH 03080; 603-216-2625; lesueurj@comcast.net.  
   

 

Members share the preaching

In parish ministry days, “sermon feedback” came through three to four members who talked into a tape recorder in my office after the liturgy.  Such a group met monthly and different members participated each time.  They discussed:
“What did the preacher say?”
“What do you think of what the preacher said?”
“What do you have to say to preachers, in general?”
Often, they seemed to answer the first question with a message worded better than my sermon!  I was indebted to a seminary professor, Reuel Howe, for the idea.

 

During the last final four months my last interim ministry, I came up with asking a different member each week to help me to prepare the sermon by commenting on the Gospel for the coming Sunday.  I sent the passage with a brief interpretation of it culled from a commentary and asked, “How does this reading connect with life as you know it?” and “How does it connect with your life, in particular?”  The answers came by email or by phone.  I asked eighth graders through retirees and was turned down only once.                      – AWS          

 

A carpenter’s mission

Craig works independently on everything from kitchens to garages to, even, setting mail boxes.  I was benefitting from the high quality of his work.  I asked, “Are you ever tempted to cut corners?”  He answered, “Never!  If something is wrong, they call and I fix it.  Doing it right saves gas, time, and the like.”  When he answered my next question that, yes, he was a church member, I asked, “Do you see God at work in what you do?”  He responded, “Sure, I feel guilty if I cut corners.”  You might ask what does such workmanship cost Craig?  He’s often works Saturdays to meet a deadline and, on short notice, will take on that extra job another has avoided – like spackling.                                                          [From a reader]
     Contact: Anonymous
            

  

Two months ago, you met Katharine and John choosing music for Sunday.  Here, they help Kristin Kimball (see MMNews #17), a local organic farmer, prepare vegetables for members of Essex Farm’s (Essex, New York) year-round "CSA ."  In Community Supported Agriculture, residents buy a share in a local farm at the beginning of the season and come to the farm to collect their food once a week.  As Katharine and John put it, “Eating food grown organically and locally is better for the health of the Earth as well as for your own body.  Just think of the carbon put into the air by the trucks transporting your vegetables from across the country! It also tastes a lot better.   Volunteering at the farm helps to build a community of people who respect and care for God's good earth so that it stays healthy for the ‘seventh generation’ from now.”

 

RESOURCES

 

Is the American Dream Killing You?  How “the Market” Rules Our Lives, Paul Stiles, Collins, 2005.  Stiles’ theme: focus on profit and loss in production and consumption have come to override the moral dimensions of what are we here for and how we should live.  The results are: a false reality promoted by the media; personal burnout; the destruction of family life; choosing short-term satisfactions over long-term goals; making nature a commodity; dishonesty and corruption in both for-profit and not-for-profit corporations; and dislike of the USA across the world as the spreader of “the Market.”  For Stiles, the Market is the source of today’s individualism, pursuit of wealth, and materialism.  “The Market is the active economic principle (p. 25) . . . the economic system, as a whole, operating upon us, as individuals” (p.27).  When Stiles gets to theology, his God-talk is untrained but genuine.  While full critical comment is still due, get a copy and comment on it yourself.  It touches each of our daily mission fields.

 

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Viewer’s Guide 2005 offers essays, discussion questions, and resources on our changing religious landscape in print and DVD.  Among our various mission fields, it works on immigration, mysticism, Iraqi elections, forgiveness in politics, faith-based social services, slavery and the Bible, and Buddhism.  Download it from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/resources/vg_default.html; or for printed copies (while supplies last), e-mail GuideRequest@thirteen.org or write to Religion & Ethics Guide, P.O. Box 245, Little Falls, NJ 07424-0245.

 

FOR MEDITATION

 

Motivating without enabling 
As we teach and preach about being on mission 24/7/365, beware of motivating without enabling action.  Once motivated, all of us need help to discern what to do in each of our daily mission fields.  For some resources that work and could serve as models, go to www.membermissionpress.org > Making the Vison Work > Basic Tools > Basic Tools 3A – Hints for Discerning Your Present Daily Missions; and Basic Tools 3B – Worksheets for Discerning Each of Your Present Daily Missions.