A Vital Church

A Vital Church

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 21, 2017

Scripture: Acts 17:22-31

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We’ve talked a lot about church vitality around here the last couple of days. We’ve had some good discussions. This morning is my chance to talk, and I’m going to talk about church vitality. I trust you’re not quite sick of the topic yet. I’ll start with this observation: I’ve noticed something about people that seems to be pretty universal. Maybe you’ve noticed it too. We don’t like not knowing things. When we don’t know something it bugs us. It bugs us so much that we speculate about possible answers to the things we don’t know. We speculate about things we can’t possibly know. I hear people doing it all the time. Say we see someone do something, and we don’t know why. So we try to figure it out. We say: “Maybe they did it because ­­_______.” Fill in the blank. Or “maybe she thought ________.” Again, fill in the blank. We can’t possibly know the answer to our question. We aren’t inside the head of the person who did the thing we observed, so we can’t possibly know what that person was thinking; and we can’t stand it. We need to know. We feel driven to understand. So we guess. We speculate. “Maybe they _____________.” We just can’t stand not knowing. We need definite answers even in situations in which no definite answer is possible.

So as a general rule we need answers to any questions we have, but I’ve noticed something else in my years of working in the church. There’s one area of our lives where it seems to me that we are so content to live without answers that we don’t even know that there’s a question. That area is the life of the church. Oh sure, we ask a lot of questions in church. Who’s bringing the food next week? Who’s going to lead worship in three weeks when the pastor’s away? Maybe even at times, how are we going to find our next pastor now that our former pastor has left or how are we going to make budget this year? Yes, we ask questions around the church all the time.

All of those questions I mentioned and an almost limitless number of others are important; but still, most of the time there are questions that we are so comfortable not answering that we don’t even know they are questions, and these are the most important questions of all in the life of any church. They’re a whole lot harder to answer than one about who’s going to do the coffee hour next week. Maybe that’s why we so rarely ask them and even more rarely answer them. Those questions are questions like these: Who are we as a church? What is our identity? What is our mission? Why are we here, and would it make any difference if we weren’t? What is God calling us to do in this time and place? Who is God asking us to be right here and right now? Who is God calling us to be in the future? Sometimes churches ask big questions like that and seek to discern answers to them, but in my experience most of the time they don’t. Most of the time we go on being church the way we’ve always been church. We don’t stop to think that there are deeper questions before us. Deeper questions we need to ask. Deeper questions we need to answer. But those deeper questions that we so regularly ignore really are before us, and we really do need to seek answers to them if we are going to be a vital church.

What do these questions have to do with church vitality? Here’s what. Vital churches ask those questions. Churches that lack vitality usually don’t. Vital churches seek to discern answers to those questions. Churches that lack vitality usually don’t. Put another way, vital churches know who they are. They have a clear identity. Vital churches know what their mission is, why they are there, and what God is calling them to do. Churches that aren’t very vital usually don’t. So let me say a bit more about what questions vital churches ask and the answers they give.

First of all, a vital church knows that it is not there for itself. It knows that it is there for God, for Jesus Christ, for the Holy Spirit and their work in the world. That means that a vital church doesn’t spend all its time focusing narrowly on itself. It looks upward and outward not mainly inward. A church that focuses too much on its own narrow concerns will not be vital, will not be alive. A church that focuses primarily on questions like “How are we going to get more people here so we can make budget” won’t get many new people there and will continue to have difficulty making budget. A church that asks rather what is God calling us to do outside these walls, who is God calling us to be outside these walls in this time and place, will be much more alive than a church that never asks those questions. Because that church will be more alive it will almost certainly grow even though it isn’t focusing primarily on growth.

Small churches like ours almost always think they need to get bigger, but here’s the thing. Church vitality does not depend on church size. There’s no reason why a very small church can’t be a very vital church, a church alive in the Holy Spirit. A vital church doesn’t spend all its time worrying about the people and resources it doesn’t have. It looks instead to the people and resources it does have and asks what God is calling it to do not with resources it doesn’t have but with the ones it has. If there is a church at all there are people who make up the church, and people have gifts. People have resources. Sure, there will be gifts and resources a small church doesn’t have. So what? A vital church looks at what it does have and serves God and God’s people in every way it can with those resources.

Here’s a trick I learned from Rev. Mike Denton, the Conference Minister of the UCC’s Pacific Northwest Conference. I think it may be quite useful in leading a church to focus on what matters, to look outside itself rather than only inward. After every answer a vital church asks “so that?” Here’s an example. Say a small church is having trouble paying for the maintenance of an old building that it owns. They say we need the resources to maintain this building. A vital church than asks: “So that?” Well, so that we’ll have a place to gather for worship. “So that?” So that we will survive as a church. “So that?” A vital church will answer so that we can witness to the Good News of the Gospel in this time and place. “So that?” A vital church will answer so that we can do the work of the Holy Spirit in this time and place. There’s the bottom line of the church’s call. To do the work of the Holy Spirit in its time and place. A vital church then asks: Do we really need this building to do that? Maybe the answer to that question is yes, but quite possibly the answer is no. Maybe it makes more sense for that church to sell its building, to meet for worship somewhere else, and to use the proceeds from the sale of the building for good work in the church’s community. Continually asking “so that” can lead a church to what’s really important about its life and its mission. Give it a try. It just might help.

A vital church knows the answers to the “so that” questions. A vital church knows its true reason for existing and is committed to living for that reason. It knows what its specific mission is and is committed to living out that mission. Just having a mission of being a church isn’t enough. Spiritually dead churches are churches too. A spiritually alive church knows who it is, why it’s there, what its identity and mission are specifically. And a vital church is so committed to living out that mission that living the mission colors everything it does. A vital church either knows what that mission is or is working systematically to discern what that mission is.

So ask: Does your church know what its identity and mission are? If so, great. Get on with living that mission. But if not, are you working to discern what they are? If so, great. Keep up the good work; but if not, then you’ve got a problem. Then you’ve got a problem that threatens the long-term survival of your church. So start working on discerning who you really are and why you really exist. Start working on discerning who God is calling you to be and what God is calling you to do. And once you think you’ve answered those questions, live those answers. But always understand that this discernment is not something you do and then stop doing. A vital church never stops asking who are we and what is God calling us to do. A vital church lives always in a process of discernment, and it always relies on God to be with it and to guide in that process.

So, what is a vital church? It is a church that knows who it is, why it is, and what God is calling it to be and to do. It may be a very big church or a very small one. Either way, it is a church in which no questions about its identity and mission are out of bounds. It is a church that is always working to discern its identity and mission even when it thinks it knows the answers to those questions. Any church, big or small, that does that can be a vital church. May we be such a church, relying on God’s grace. Amen.