And on the day of Pentecost, flames appeared above their heads, like tongues of fire

Our oldest members are even further removed from our community since most everyone they “grew up” with in the church has moved on. And since about 85-90% of our membership joined the church in the last two-and-a-half years, there isn’t anyone around to remember the days when our elderly members were the ones who taught Sunday school and kept the books and helped the homeless and the hungry who came to the door. While we love our older members, we love them for who they are now, but don’t share in the memory of who they used to be.

There are folks in our church who are committed to keeping in regular contact with our elderly members and some who make sure that those who need a ride always have one. But we can all be a part of making sure the people who stuck it out (even when it was dangerous to come into our neighborhood at night) feel loved and appreciated. What our octogenarian and nonagenarian members would really like is a call, a visit or even an actual handwritten note or card sent by snail mail. When was the last time you wrote a thank you or get well note that required a stamp?

Perhaps those of us who live our lives online can set our calendars to remind us once or twice a week to pop a card in the mail, make a phone call or stop by to say hello. You can even get Siri to send you a reminder. “Hello, reminding you to make contact with someone who is 80 or older today.”

Music from Christine Kane’s Rain and Mud and Wild and Green

10. Coming to church doesn’t mean you have no doubts about God or faith or religion. It means you have a place you can share with people who have their own doubts.

9.  Bad stuff is going to happen in your life. It just is. A church community cannot be everything to everyone in times of crisis, but when the bottom falls out of your world, it’s great to have a community to lift you back up.

8. Bad stuff is going to happen in your life, part two. The time to build a relationship with God is not when life turns ugly, and you’ve run out of all other options. Attending worship regularly helps build a relationship with God and others that will give you a solid foundation when the winds blow and the storms come.

7. Not all churches are anti-something. Most of us are for people, for acceptance, for hospitality. Really, we’re out there. We just don’t get the good press.

6. Any church worth its salt has really good food on a regular basis.

5. Churches offer paint-by-number opportunities to serve. Many people would like to help the poor, the hungry and the homeless, but they don’t know how to get involved, how to make the time to be involved, or what they can do to really make a difference. Churches offer you ways to plug in to help those who need it most.

4. You’ve got a gift. Probably two or 10 of them. Becoming involved in the ministry of a church will help you discover and use gifts you never even knew you had.

3. Not all churches are after your money. Good churches want you have a healthy relationship with money. Sure, churches need to pay the electric bill and the pastor and the youth director, but money and the church is more about you than it is about the church. It’s about your own relationship with money. World events have proven that it’s much better to put faith in God than in a bank account. Church can help you with that.

2. Taking a break from our hectic lives to come to church is accepting the gift of Sabbath. Wayne Mueller says “(Sabbath) dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.” We don’t take Sabbath and come to worship because we have time and have finished up everything that needs to be done. We take Sabbath because it is time to stop, and we are designed to stop, rest and reflect. Those don’t are destined to crash and burn.

1. Jesus is really cool. Even if you don’t know if you can believe in the whole Son-of-God thing, even if you refer to the resurrection as the Zombie Jesus event and even though those of us already in church often do a lousy job of following him, come to church to get to know Jesus. The more you get to know him, the more you’ll understand why people call his way The Way.

–Rev. Anne Russ

Thanks to all who have sent gracious notes about this article. Feel free to repost or reprint this article in other newsletters or sites. Just please include attribution. Thanks

Wilson-Hartgrove will also a retreat A Bendictine Day of Peace at Theressa Hoover United Methodist Church from 8:30 am to 3 pm on Saturday, May 5th. On Sunday Jonathan will be preaching at St. Michael’s at 9 and 11 am.

We’ll be planting a garden that will grow food to help feed the homeless served by The Van ministries.

Join us as we proclaim and respond to the Word of God through our work.

Directions and Map

From the church, take Maple to Broadway, turn left on to Broadway. Go a little over 3 miles and turn right on Lynch Drive. You’ll pass Rose City Middle School, and soon after, Lynch Drive turns in to Faulkner Lake Road. The One will be on your right.

Taking our faith to work. How do we do it in ways other than walking up to people and asking them if they know Jesus? We are not all going to be Richard Stearns(1) and leave a successful corporate career to head up an international aid organization. We are not all going to be CEOs and have the power to decide, like the heads of Chik-fil-a and Hobby Lobby, to close our offices on Sunday.

But we can take our faith to work. To do so, I think we have to make some attitude adjustments. I used to work in advertising, so I know that it takes time to change someone’s attitude or point of view, but I would like for all of you to commit to making a change right here…today. We don’t have a lot of time.

The first idea we need to change—or to simply let go of—is the idea that people who are seriously called by God become ordained clergy-type people or go into the foreign mission field. Not only is this misguided, it’s not even Biblical.

Noah was a shipbuilder, a zookeeper and a cruise director
Abraham was in real estate development
Joseph was a pioneer in food distribution systems
Esther was a pageant queen who became an actual queen
Daniel went to the King’s college and essentially became president of Iraq (2)

None of these people were clergy. In fact, you have to look long and hard before you can find religious professionals in the Bible who come off looking like Godly people at all. I suppose Eli and Samuel in the Old Testament pass the test, but all of the priests and Pharisees in the New Testament tend to be part of the problem instead of the solution—and one could make a very persuasive argument that the same is true today.

We are all called by God into mission and ministry, but that doesn’t mean we all have to or even should travel to the depths of Africa or Asia or take our place in a chancel every week and proclaim the good news from a pulpit.

So that’s our first new attitude. We are all called to ministry and mission. Whether we are scientists or school teachers, doctors or ditch diggers, students or stay-at-home parents. We are all out in the mission field.

The second shift we need to make is beyond the false boundaries we have set up between the sacred and the secular. Pastor Matt Chandler points out that there is no divide between what God likes and what God tolerates. Although we have done our best to make certain places and spaces profane, it is all part of God’s good creation. The water cooler is not a baptismal font, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t sacred space. The beauty shop is not a sanctuary, but that doesn’t hearts aren’t healed there. Any line between the sacred and the secular is man-made and not God-drawn.

Is everyone on board so far? We are all called to ministry and mission and every place we occupy and gather with others is sacred, God-created space. If we are no longer merely worker bees headed to an office or a classroom, but missionaries occupying sacred space come Monday morning, that kind of changes things, doesn’t it?

Now here is the third, and probably most difficult, change. What if…just imagine what if…your work isn’t about you. It’s not about padding your resume or building up your ego, it’s not about you climbing the ladder of success, it’s not about (sorry, parents) you making good grades or even about you making money to support yourself or your family.

What if you have been placed in your work space ON purpose and WITH a purpose? What if your work is far more about the people around you than it is about, well, you?

The Psalmist tells us that we are wonderfully formed. That God knows us inside and out. And Paul asserts to a bunch of highly-educated Greeks that God has determined our appointed times in history. What if the God who knows you better than you know yourself and has placed you in this time in history has also placed you in your work for a purpose that is beyond you? As an only child, adjusting to the idea that anything may not be about me is not an easy task. But I’m willing to make the shift if you are.

If we are called to ministry and mission, if our boardrooms and classrooms and playgrounds and workshops are all sacred space and if our work is more about the people around us than it is about us as individuals, how then do we live out our faith and our purpose at work?

We come to church and claim that we believe in a God who listens to our prayers, but do we pray for the people with whom we work?

We say we believe in a God of mercy and grace, but do we extend that mercy and grace to those who work with, around and for us?

We affirm that we are important because of whose we are not because of what we do, but do we value our co-workers and classmates because of whose they are, or do we value them for what they contribute to our own well-being and success?

We believe Jesus has done great things for us, but how often do we extend to the a co-worker who is struggling or hurting a version of the offer I make every Sunday at the end of worship? “Jesus has made a difference in my life, and if you’d like to know more about Him, feel free to talk with me about it at anytime.”

Do the people we work with know we are Christians, not because of a decal on our car, but (as the song says) by our love?

May we make these shifts in perception and attitude today. May we joyfully claim that we are all called by God to mission and ministry. May we see our offices and classrooms and boardrooms and playgrounds as sacred space. And may the work we are called to do not simply be about us and what we achieve, but about how we might serve those around us and help them become all that God intends. May we behave like people with a purpose.

Amen.

1 Check out Richard Stearn’s story in The Hole in our Gospel. It’s a powerful book.
2 Adapted from the Right Now series Work as Worship.

–Rev. Anne Russ