Before the Scripture. As you may have noticed in your bulletin, the winter sermon series will present Westminster’s vision for the new millennium. It is a vision created by our elders and deacons, produced after a long process of questionnaires, interviews and focus groups.
At their January 26 meeting the elders and deacons will endorse the proposed vision for congregational approval at the annual meeting February 27.
My goal in preaching about our proposed vision is to get you thinking and praying about it. On February 20 I will be at the Case Library adult class to respond to your questions and comments about the vision. Then at the annual meeting on February 27 we will use a town meeting format for further discussion and finally endorsement.
The sermon. The bible says and Abraham Lincoln reiterated, "without a vision the people perish." It was clear to me 22 months ago at the start of a new pastorate that we needed a vision for our future together, you and I.
Three years before my arrival Westminster had an interim senior pastor. So my first year with you was not only a time of getting acquainted, a time of listening, it was a time of regrouping, even healing – before we could consider a vision.
So when a husband and wife active in the life of this congregation and who wish to remain anonymous, offered one year ago to pay for a consultant to lead us in a visioning process it was, I said to myself, a gift from God. The time was right. The energy at Westminster was high.
We were ready to look ahead and listen to where God was leading us.
Our aim from the beginning has been a vision that is true to who we are and that will resonate with the heart of this great church. A vision that speaks to our hopes and dreams.
A vision that is also sensitive to present realities.
Such a vision will not gather dust on a shelf. It will guide us into the future.
I believe Westminster’s vision for a new millennium is such a vision.
Each week I will talk about a different part of the vision.
The last week, annual meeting Sunday, I will talk about leadership.
Before you can talk about where you are going you have to know who you are.
That is the topic today, "Who We Are." When our consultant, John Bird, asked us that question he did not mean what are your names and ages and demographic make-up so much as "who are you?" What is your reason for being here on Delaware Ave.?
When we talk about reason for being, we are talking about core identity,
about basic purpose and values that define an organization.
We are talking about the glue of this congregation.
I’ll never forget visiting the home of Martin Guitars in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
They are considered the best acoustical guitars in the world. Each guitar hand carved, hand planed, hand assembled, hand glued from several kinds of exotic wood.
And the glue. A murky, tannish/brown paste/liquid sitting – the day I toured the guitar workshop – unceremoniously in a Maxwell House Coffee can with a couple of brushes and sticks protruding from it.
One craftsman whose family had been making guitars for generations held up the can and said to our group the recipe was ancient, that it came from the old violin-makers of Europe. Then he pronounced reverently, "you know, the glue is the most important part of the guitar. It has to breathe and flex and adhere and join together and be light as a feather."
What is the glue that holds Westminster together so that we can make music?
The glue that keeps the diverse and exotic parts of this congregation one when the stresses and strains of life and society play on us and through us? What is the glue that even though the temperature of society changes will not change, that will flex and breathe and adhere and join together? What is that glue?
It is, said the 40 church leaders and staff who met for our visioning retreat the weekend of September 23 at Stella Niagara Conference Center, it is in essence this: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.
If you take all 613 laws of the Torah and sum them up, as did the author of Deuteronomy first then Jesus later, what you get is the greatest commandment: to love God and neighbor.
That is the main ingredient in the glue that holds Westminster together. Love.
Not love in the sentimental sense. But love as a decision, daily, to live a certain way,
to do certain things, not to do certain other things. Love as obeying a higher calling even when it means disobeying or setting aside lower callings. Love as a willingness to go against the grain and rock the boat as it were – for the sake of justice and peace.
The bible also regards the love commandment as the glue that holds God’s people together. You may remember Jews were instructed in the bible to wear the love commandment in little leather boxes called phylacteries on their foreheads when they were at prayer. Also to place the love commandment in a small cylindrical box called a Mezuzah attached to the threshold of every Jewish home.
In other words, the bible says keep this commandment close to your heart and mind and close to where you live your life. Let it be always before you. Let it seep into your thinking and feeling. Be reminded of the great commandment upon all of your coming and going.
I wonder if when we get to implementing our vision for a new millenium we might place the great commandment symbolically somewhere – maybe a Presbyterian Mezuzh at our threshold at Delaware Ave.! So that we never forget what holds us together.
But there is more to the glue. If love is the base or stock so to speak of the glue then there are other special ingredients as well. At Westminster those ingredients, those values are: worship, community, outreach, care and nurture.
All of these are expressions of love: worship, love of God; community, love of God’s children; outreach, love for justice; care and nurture, love for one another.
But maybe you are asking, isn’t this all rather obvious? Shouldn’t love be the glue for every church?
I don’t think it is obvious. When our 40 leaders went on retreat we had a tabla rasa before us. John Bird our consultant said, "I want you to do some soul-searching. I want you to come up with no more than four values, not five, but three or four that are the most important values for your church. It does not mean that other things are not important. It means that these are the most important."
And so there are lots of things that are not on the list. Education, preaching, music, children, evangelism, healing to name just a few. Remember it is not that these other things are not important. It is that worship, community, outreach, and care and nurture are most important.
As we thought back individually and collectively about this entity called Westminster – from Jesse Ketchum’s vision for a great church at Delaware and North in 1854;
to Miss Holmes’ ministry at the Westminster Settlement House on the East Side at the turn of the century; to Dr. Holmes dialogue with religion and science; to Dr. Butzer’s preaching ministry and his commentaries on the bible; to Dotty Millard’s legacy at WECP; to Dr. Ray Keily’s passion for mission;to our 20 plus years of sending youth work projects to alleviate rural poverty in Maine; to Tom Stewart and this congregation’s prophetic voice on the More Light issue –
as we thought back about our venerable history the values, the things that marked this church were worship, community, outreach, and care and nurture.
It was almost as if we "discovered" them as we reflected on who we are.
But you might say, haven’t we slacked off a bit, how well are we living up to these lofty ideals. Or what happens, you might ask, when the glue of an organization loses for a time its stick-to-it-iveness? Our consultant John Bird said, don’t worry, it is inevitable.
Core identity, core purpose and values, sometimes lie dormant in organizations. They are like the great mural of the vine and branches on the chancel ceiling above me. That artwork was a part of the original chancel ceiling and somewhere along the line someone decided to put gold leaf over it. There is nothing wrong with gold leaf. It just wasn’t right for our chancel that’s all. And so the gold leaf was removed in 1992 and an artist spent the better part of a summer perched on scaffolding with linseed oil and earth-toned paints and she restored, she brought back to life, that wonderful vine and its branches.
There may be some aspects to our worship, community, outreach and care nurture that have been covered up for a while. That need us to apply some linseed oil and do some touching up. But what our church officers are saying in our vision statement is this is who Westminster is. These are the values that have distinguished this church for almost 150 years.
It is who we are.
We are talking about the glue of this church – we are talking about who we are. What I am saying is what holds us together in all that we do is love for God and neighbor. Love that finds expression in how we worship, expression in the sense of community here at Westminster; love that finds expression in the way we extend care and nurture for one another and also in our outreach to the poor, the sick, the outcast.
I would encourage you to find some time to reflect upon the last page of your bulletin. The mission and values spelled out there are what those of us who went on the retreat could best articulate was the core identity of Westminster.
If it is true that the great commandment is the essence of who we are then on any given week or day you should be able to see it in evidence. So let me paint two pictures from the week just past. Pictures that I think show the core values of this congregation.
My week started with the funeral of Ada Walker Melville, long time member of Westminster. 103 years old. Sharp as a tack to her last breath. Resident of the St. Andrews Nursing Home on Delaware Ave. Ada came from Protestant Ireland in 1937 to marry her Irish beau Alec who was already in the States, here in Buffalo.
There were about ten or twelve people at Ada’s funeral at Roberts and Dengler Funeral Home on Main St. By the time you get to 103 most of your friends are gone. Ada and Alec did not have any children so most of her family is gone too.
But there was a cousin Harry Walker and his wife Dorothy from Chicago, and also the husband and daughter of a beloved niece who came from Belfast just for the funeral then flew home the same day.
Equally impressive in that little room at the funeral home was the presence of three Westminsterites. Three women of this church, who along with a few others who could not be there, were Ada’s primary support group, her network of friends, her sisters in the faith. And at a luncheon after the funeral to the delight of Ada’s family from Chicago and Ireland these Westminster women told stories of Ada’s last years and days. Westminster. Loving God and neighbor in our community life.
The other picture is of outreach. I got a call the other day from John Perry.
John does not trumpet his own horn. He is a driving force at our local Habitat for Humanity. Western New York’s Habitat program constructs an average of 8 homes a year. Eight new first time homeowners each year, paying taxes, maintaining their street.
When John called this week he said we are ready to assist one of our friends on Ferguson Ave. who is a block leader and makes it possible for us to be in the community.
This man has literally put his life on the line confronting drug dealers and absentee landlords. This is the story of the proverbial shoemaker’s kid. While this man has helped everyone else on his street fix up and rehabilitate their homes, his home has been somewhat neglected.
Now it is time, John Perry said, for us to go to bat for him. So we are making a small loan and enlisting some able bodies to help our friend improve his own house – as a sign of our gratitude for all that he has done. Westminster. Loving God and neighbor through outreach to those in need.
The
vision we will be talking about in the weeks ahead is a vision that is possible
because of the great core, the great heart, the very essence, the glue of
who we are – a community who live out the command to love in big and
small ways in all that we do. Amen.