We are in week two of the winter sermon series. We are talking about Westminster’s vision for the new millennium which will be discussed, modified as needed, and approved at our annual meeting on February 27.
Last week, we talked about who we are. This week, I want for us to explore where we are going as a church in this new millenium.
When our church officers and leaders met on retreat in September to develop our vision for the future, after we articulated who we were, our facilitator John Bird – an active Episcopalian – said, "Now I want you to develop some goals, some "Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals." BHAGS he called them. "Goals so big they will take ten to fifteen years to reach and even then have only a 50% – 75% chance of being accomplished."
It seems fitting on this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend to remember that Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement was all about BHAGS. I take a moment to point this out because Dr. King and his mentor Mahatmas Ghandi were men of faith and action and their movements were driven by their willingness to think big and risk everything.
Who would have believed in 1962 when King’s movement suddenly came to life that the city of Birmingham, Alabama – the most segregated city in America, an American Johannesburg ruled by fear and plagued by hate could ever change. Or that the African Americans in that city could ever allow themselves to accept the notion, the vision of an integrated city and equitable living.
Who would have believed in 1893 that rights for colored people in South Africa would be won or that the colored population – used to accepting oppression – would ever entertain the notion of freedom? Or in 1948, who would have guessed, who could have guessed, that the British colonial government would pull out of India and that 350 million Indians – Hindus and Muslims – would unite to achieve their goal.
The gift of Dr. King and Ghandi to us is the example of dreaming big, dreaming long-term, dreaming against all odds. And so when John Bird asked us to do the same thing we knew this was not an exercise for the faint of heart. We were being asked to stretch our faith, to use our imaginations for the Kingdom of God, for Westminster, for Buffalo, for our nation and world.
I can tell you that when we started imagining our future, our visioning retreat came alive. Energy jumped like electricity from person to person, group to group. A vision here sparked a vision there. The Spirit of God was among us, speaking through us, finding a voice in each person present. Defining a future for this congregation in this community.
But sometimes we are afraid to dream. Either we think we cannot achieve such grand goals or we are fearful of being jinxed or cursed. Better not to dream, not to think big, than to disappoint ourselves.
That is what makes me so proud of our church officers and leaders. They did not hold back. They were not afraid to dream. They risked sounding foolish or grandiose and they painted a picture of this church ten to fifteen years down the road.
What happened when they let go and dreamed is that the Westminster of 2010 was conceived. That vision is still in the corporate womb of this congregation.
And when each new person adopts that vision and adds something to it the vision knits and develops further so that at our annual meeting we can birth it and watch it grow.
Permit me one more word about the process before we look at today’s biblical stories and consider our long-term goals themselves.
Whether you are a church or corporation or school or hospital,
the process is called visioning for this reason: you have to first be able to see into the distant future before you can adequately see in the present.
Sometimes, it is true, we operate without a long-term vision and do not have a clear idea of where we need to go in the present. When we make decisions as spouses or partners or as parents to what extent do we have the end in mind? What kind of marriage or relationship are we striving for? What kind of adults are we raising our children to be? As managers or employees what is the ideal workplace we are trying to create?
Maybe you have seen the television commercial that every time I see it strikes to the quick of my being. The commercial pictures children of rural and urban poverty saying into the camera things like, "I can’t wait to become a number, working on the assembly line for 35 years, unnoticed by my employer," or "My goal in life is to become an office gopher and lackey – and be at everyone else’s beck and call," or "I am looking forward to the day when I will be downsized and end up without health care for my family."
Not too subtle. The point is if we have dreams for our children then we better live like it today.
The bible does this from beginning to end. What is so powerful about the long-term vision of the bible is whenever it gets expressed it is usually some situation where hope is all but gone. Like the situation to which Isaiah spoke in this morning’s story.
The people were held captive in Babylon. They had more than the wind knocked out of them. Their army was decimated, their capital in ruins, their leaders slaughtered or exiled, their temple leveled.
So God’s long-term vision comes to these people like a cool spring in the hot desert. "Comfort, comfort my people," says your God. "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem…get you up to a high mountain…lift up your voice with strength…. God will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms.… Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, walk and not faint."
The beauty and power and majesty of those words is unsurpassed. What makes them so inspired is they were spoken during a dark moment in the nation’s history.
A moment when the people sat around remembering how it used to be when the nation was strong and the army feared and everyone was prosperous.
So back in old Babylon just when they were preparing to say the umpteenth time, "remember when…" Isaiah bellows, "I am about to create new heavens and a new earth…."says your God, "I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight…they shall build houses and inhabit them, plant vineyards and eat their fruit…before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear."
You see, just when our resources are depleted, says one preacher, God’s are not. When we’ve used up all our options, God has more. When we’ve given in to hopelessness, God comes with new possibilities, new hope, new creation, a new future.
Faith is looking forward, not sitting around the fire telling stories about how good the good old days were. Faith is getting ready to join God in the ongoing drama of creation. Kierkegaard said we understand our lives looking backward but we live our lives looking forward.
Instead of wringing our hands over the dreadful state of things and the signs of obsolescence and redundancy and irrelevance all around us, the prophet calls us to watch for the new thing God is doing.
So today I invite you to watch for the new thing God is doing here at Westminster.
I do not mean to imply for a moment that we have been sitting around lamenting about the past. Or that our resources are used up.
But as formidable as our talent is and as great as our resources are sometimes when we look at the world, when we consider the injustices and hardship in our city and nation we wonder just how much we can do. And maybe we begin to discount or diminish the gifts for ministry we have been given.
Yet, I would submit that that is precisely the problem – putting the emphasis on what we can do. As the bible makes clear it is not we but God who creates a new heaven and a new earth. God who creates a new city, a holy city. God, as Revelation says, who lives with us in the city where nothing accursed will be found. God who gives light to the people and to the city in which they live.
It is in that spirit that the long-term goals in your bulletin were envisioned. They are big and hairy and audacious. But I am hard pressed to find an instance in the bible when God’s people think small and are praised for it.
Just the opposite is true. The parable of the talents is a parable of thinking big and risking the ranch, as it were. St. Paul’s vision for a church was not just a little regional network of communities at the eastern end of the Mediterranean but a world-wide fellowship from Damascus to the coast of Spain. Nor was Jesus thinking small when he said, "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."
Our faith was given to us not to be timid but bold.
The long-term vision found in your bulletin is a vision of biblical proportions. Double the membership of our congregation while becoming more diverse in every way as a sign that all people are God’s children and called to live together in peace.
Add another worship service Sunday morning and one during the week – not only to provide more convenient times for worshipping but because more and more people come here to help them make a connection between their daily living and their faith.
Triple the endowment, use invested income for mission and outreach, living income for congregational program, seeing all we have as God’s.
Call a third pastor for pastoral care and spiritual growth, extend the parish neighborhood network to every member of the church. Teach and train the next generation of believers so that they can announce the justice and mercy of the Lord in their time and extend the ministry we perform here and now well beyond our lifetimes.
Transform WECP into a community of children as racially and socially diverse as our congregation will be then and our city is now. Teach thirty congregations how to adopt a block like we have done at Ferguson Ave. so that pockets of neighborhood renewal create a critical mass of hope and transformation throughout the city.
Hold forums and host dialogues on controversial topics in order to build bridges of understanding and action. Send two dozen or more adults each year to national or global mission to be a sign of the Kingdom of God and to learn how God is transforming the human family in other lands.
Let me share with you a literal dream that I had when I was candidating here at Westminster. I knew Westminster from my first assignment in Western New York when I was a pastor at North Presbyterian Church in Williamsville.
I also knew of the long interim and search for a pastor and many of the good things happening here. The outstanding staff, the excellent music program, the brave outreach, the widely-acclaimed commitment to education and youth.
The dream I had after visiting Westminster in the fall of 1997 was simple:
A sanctuary full of worshippers on a Sunday morning. A sea of faces of all ages and colors. Every pew filled, 900, maybe a thousand. And I took that dream, that vision, to be a sign that Westminster and I were meant for each other. That God intended for us to be together and enter the future.
My hunch is the only thing limiting our future and preventing us from achieving even greater things for the glory of God here at Westminster is our ability to believe that such things are possible. That our faith can move mountains, make miracles happen.
But if you are open to it, you can see signs that this congregation is already thinking big. This past Friday I found a note from a member of the congregation. She holds a significant position of responsibility in the business community.
Stapled to the note was a clipping from the Wall St. Journal. The story said this: "Using vacation time for volunteer work Habitat for Humanity International will send 300 teams of vacationing volunteers to 40 nations this year to build houses; up from 15 its first year just a decade ago."
The note next to the clipping read this, "Tom, perhaps this is of interest.
See you in church." And then in parentheses with an exclamation point, "Yeah!"
Who knows what we are capable of accomplishing in ten or fifteen years? But I can tell you this. We are living in a moment of unprecedented opportunity. People are searching for purpose and meaning in their lives eager to shape a better world.
I’ll bet Habitat International, a faith-based organization, could have told you ten years ago that they would be sending 300 teams one day.
Just as we can point today, if we let ourselves, to powerful growth in our ministry ten years from now.
It is time for us to believe big. Like St. Paul, and Jesus and Jesse Ketchum – who funded this 1,000 seat sanctuary when we had but 200 members.
It is time to dream like Dr. King and Mahatmas Ghandi.
We are called today to embrace the very best we can imagine for this congregation and city. Amen.