Metaphorically Ready
Luke 12:32-40
How many of you use email as a primary means of communication? I do. You and I are now as passé in this as much as we snort at the idea of sitting down and penning a letter to someone in longhand and taking it to the corner post box. We now live in a world where the prime means of communication for a whole new generation requires a message of 140 characters or less. It’s called Twitter. (OMG, LOL, BFF) We live in a world where instant access and instant entertainment and instant messaging means we get really impatient about anything that stresses our time; where the multitude of options makes it difficult to choose one thing. Into this world our scripture text tells us that when God presents us with an opportunity, we must be ready to respond.
Luke uses several metaphors to talk about what being ready looks like. It is like, Luke says, servants waiting on a wedding banquet to begin. When they are ready, the most amazing things can happen – like the boss putting on an apron and serving all of them. That never happened in their day so that would have been an outlandishly crazy example. Then Luke uses the metaphor of a homeowner protecting the home from intruders. We have lots of metaphors we can use to illustrate what it means to be ready. (A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. A stitch in time. The early bird catches the worm.) We have a million of them. The reality is that when God opens an opportunity for us to step into the Promised Land of new possibilities, we need to be more than ready metaphorically. We need to be ready.
Last weekend Rev. Elder Lillie Brock led us through a process as a congregation to help us be ready for the next adventure God is leading us toward. For the last year many of us have looked at our situation and the prospects before us and all we have seen has been wilderness – the economy was dismal, the snipping was debilitating, and the future looked pretty bleak at times. We could not see the Promised Land because of the fog of our wilderness experience. I want you to know that the fog has cleared. The Board has arrived at a breakthrough that will not only carry us to the next level of our growth, but prepare us for the level after that. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but this is really exciting. We now have a clear idea of how organizationally a congregation of our size works. We now have a sizeable portion of our congregation that has experienced the size summit and so grasps the concepts of how churches function in different ways at different sizes and what that looks like for us specifically. We now have a clear path forward for what kinds of staffing we need have in order to accomplish our vision. We now have a clear understanding of how the Senior Pastor, the Board of Directors, Ministry Teams, Programming and Outreach function in a dynamic organization like ours. And your Board has come up with an ingenious plan that allows us to accomplish all of our structural changes within the next 17 months. That is amazing! I want to ask Board Secretary, Dana Badgerow, to come up and briefly give you an overview of what is coming up.
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Following the mini size summit last Saturday, the Board met both Saturday and Sunday, to develop plans to address the recommendations of our elders. Led by Rev. Elder Lillie Brock, our sessions were intense, but exciting and very productive.
We have developed a Project Plan that spans the next 17 months and that we believe brings our church to the brink of greatness. More importantly, it puts a halt to the systemic process and organizational deficiencies of the past years….that led us to growth, followed by a depressing period of decline, and characterized by a large number of people walking in the front door, even becoming members, but not sticking with us for the long haul. It addresses the reasons so many people have left this church because they could not find a sustained commitment to their spiritual development, or to outreach in our community.
We need to realize our potential as a Program Church, as defined by the church size theory we have learned from our elders, and given credibility by the esteemed Alban Institute. Our project plan has three phases, the first of which can be implemented as soon as October 1 of this year….right around the corner, when we would add a Director of Outreach to our permanent staff.
So many of you have told us, and the assessment confirmed, that we need to get beyond the four walls of this church and start making a difference in the community. To do this effectively, we need an experienced professional who can lead this effort fulltime. Touching our community in the areas of benevolence (charitable works), programs where congregants can get more involved, and concrete social justice programs will be the charge to this new staff member, who we will start recruiting for right away. Pastor Paul will hire this individual but will rely on a team of congregants yet to be named to advise him in the selection.
So how will we pay for this given our budget crisis? We have an approved line of credit that will more than pay for this much needed staff addition as well as restore the unfortunate cuts in the salaries of our key and committed staff, and restore at least some of the ministry team needs that have been curtailed because of our budget woes. We intend to tap into that line of credit and take advantage of the substantial equity in our building that you as a congregation have so faithfully funded over many years. There is no reason for All God’s Children to wither on the vine when we are sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity in our building.
We realize however that this building, as beautiful and majestic as it is, may be draining so much of our giving resources that we should consider alternatives. During this first phase, we will also ask the Property Team to form a committee to assess the building….its marketability, its cost needs for the coming few years (including the critical need to make it accessible), and make a recommendation in 2011 as to the future of our facility and what will best serve AGC in fulfilling its mission.
There is so much more to our plan….and even the fact that we have a plan should be encouraging to you all. We also intend to add a Pastor or Congregational Life as well as a fulltime Director of Administration within the plan’s period.
In the meantime, we know that we have not actualized our potential for stewardship….largely because no single team or individual has been charged with that responsibility. We will be seeking to form…as quickly as possible…a Stewardship team who will make our financial need and the compelling case for our mission very real to each of you. We will also be asking for a Nominating Committee to be formed to ensure that our next slate of candidates for the Board is fully qualified and ready to serve you.
We know that we need to make some By-Law changes….the denomination has pointed out a number of shortcomings in our current by-laws. We intend to bring those before you in the next month or so, with a special congregational meeting. At that same meeting, we are excited to be presenting you more details of our Project plan. We have identified for each of the three phases: the scope, purpose, resources required, timetable, staff expectations, and expected outcomes (yes, we will be measuring results) and we will lay all of those out for you at the congregational meeting in just about a month.
Thank you all for sticking with us, and for your faith in our Pastor and in this Board. Much like the Allstate commercial, we are determined to prove to you that you are “in good hands.”
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Here’s what we need from all of you: Firstly, a willingness to be part of the solution. This includes being willing to use your expertise and experience when called upon to lead or participate in pieces of this plan. When I come to you and say, “I believe you have the skills to help us accomplish this part of the solution here or there,” I hope you will prayerfully consider offering yourself. I’m not just blowing smoke up your shorts or skirt or kilt. If I say that I believe you are part of our solution, I mean that. Secondly, we need your faithfulness. I know times are hard for all of us but the scripture is clear, where our treasure is, there is our heart. I need your heart to be here. I need you to back up your heart with your regular support – financially, prayerfully, enthusiastically, and with your participation. Do you know the major difference between churches that accomplish their vision and churches that don’t? Rev. Lillie showed the Board a compilation of her research from the churches that have gone through the size summit process. The ones succeeding average $38 per capita. The ones failing average $18 per capita. Our per capita last month was $21.1. $20 more a week makes a huge difference. This is not about shaming those who can’t do $20 more a week. That’s the beauty of per capita. Some of us can do lots more than that and that raises the average per person. You see, it takes all of us doing our part to make it happen. That’s just one part of the solution.
The final way is that we are learning to be much more intentional in how we access the giftedness of our congregation. We are a blessed group of people. We have lawyers and businesspeople. We have entrepreneurs and artists. We have people who know how to motivate and bring out the best in others. We have a wealth of experience of what it means to live in this world and not be destroyed by the challenges that life presents. We are blessed. We are structurally and systematically becoming more intentional and better able to identify those resources among ourselves and to help us to be used by God for the greater work of making this world a better place for all of us.
In the midst of all these changes there are some constants that will remain. This will be a place known for great worship. This will be a community known for having a welcoming spirit. And this congregation will be an example of God’s faithfulness with us through all the changes of life that we experience. That is the treasure we have discovered in the process of living lives faithful to the call of God’s grace. For that we are ready.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Twit-schatology, August, 2010.