KOH2RVA: Day 271

I’m in Charlottesville this morning, on a 24-hour retreat with the Coordinating Council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia. We spent some time yesterday talking about our plans for this year including a partnership with CBF missionaries in Slovakia, something called “Mission Madness” for youth, “Mission on the Move” for the churches, and, finally, a Mission Immersion Experience in Slovakia (did you see the word mission in there anywhere?). I finally asked Rob Fox, our Field Coordinator, “What is our mission?”

In a book called The Once and Future Church author Loren Mead argues that there was a time when nobody would have asked that question. In the years following World War II Christians in this country were riding a wave of euphoria. “We won the war,” they thought, “now let’s win the world!” And they tried to do it in much the same way, sending wave after wave of heroic “Christian soldiers” to convert the heathen in other lands. The mission was clear; our efforts were focused.

But then, for a number of reasons, things began to change.

In a book called Resident Aliens William Willimon suggests that things began to change on a Sunday evening in 1963. He writes, “Then, in Greenville, South Carolina, in defiance of the state’s time-honored blue laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us—regular attenders of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church—made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox. That evening has come to represent a watershed in the history of Christendom, South Carolina style. On that night, Greenville, South Carolina—the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world—served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church. There would be no more free passes…no more free rides.”

That word Willimon uses—Christendom—contains the idea that the church and the community are essentially the same thing: that they have the same values and the same goals. While many people can remember a time when that seemed true, it doesn’t seem true anymore. And, like Willimon, many of us can remember the moment we realized Christendom was collapsing. For me, it was when I found out there was going to be a youth league soccer game on a Sunday morning in my town. I could hardly believe it. But these days it isn’t so hard to believe. If America ever was a “Christian nation,” it isn’t anymore. And it’s not just because people of other faiths have moved into our neighborhoods, it’s because our faith–the “Cultural Christianity” we used to take for granted–has moved out. When the pastor stands in the pulpit these days and says, “Let’s win the world for Christ!” the few people who are there might yawn and look at their watches.

That’s why we can’t go on doing business as usual, and why we have to take the time to ask questions about what our mission is, and why it matters, and who it’s for. That’s what we spent some time doing yesterday afternoon at the CBFVA retreat and when I can I’d like to tell you about it. Until then, let me give you this glimpse:

We were talking about that parable in Matthew 25 where Jesus said, “I was hungry and you didn’t feed me.” We talked about how often, when it comes to mission, we think of taking Jesus to people who don’t “have” him. But here was Jesus saying, “No, I was already out there. I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me.” I had to stop and think about that for a minute, and then I said, almost in a whisper,

“Jesus is out there.”

I don’t know what might come from that revelation, but I know that we need to keep talking about how to be faithful to Jesus and his mission in a world like this one.  Take a good look a the picture above, at those beautiful children singing the National Anthem.  You don’t have to look very long to realize:

It’s not 1963 anymore.

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KOH2RVA: Day 257

Someone was asking me about First Baptist’s year-long, every-member mission trip recently, and wondering how we organized it. “How did you find something for everybody to do?” she asked.

The answer: we didn’t.

I told her what I’ve said again and again since coming to First Baptist, that there must be a thousand ways to bring heaven to earth and that our responsibility is to look around for anything that doesn’t look like heaven and then roll up our sleeves and get to work. I’m convinced that if we look at the world through our own eyes, we will see the things that break our own hearts and call us to action.

That’s so much easier than trying to come up with one, big mission project that everyone can embrace, and so much better than giving someone an assignment and saying, “Here, go do this.”

It also leads to some interesting results.

For example: I heard from one of our members recently who said she was bringing heaven to earth by feeding the feral cats in her neighborhood. And she said she’s using the premium cat food, not the cheap stuff.

That’s pretty much all she said, but I can fill in the blanks. She’s telling me that when she sees those skinny, half-starved cats it breaks her heart, she feels moved to do something about it. And she is moved because she believes those cats are part of God’s creation, and that God has it in his heart to redeem not only his human creatures, but everything he has made and called good, including cats (Rom. 8:18-21). And so she has taken on this ministry to the homeless, and she dishes out the premium cat food because she thinks of cats as something God made and loves, and not as a nuisance.

Chances are good that if she had submitted this idea to the church it would have never been approved. Someone would have said, “We don’t want to encourage this kind of thing,” and someone else would have said, “Are we supposed to pay for the cat food?” But she heard me say, “There must be a thousand ways to bring heaven to earth,” and she looked around for anything that didn’t look like heaven and saw this—skinny, half-starved cats—and it broke her heart, and she rolled up her sleeves and went to work.

That sounds like a parable to me. I can almost hear Jesus say, “What is the Kingdom of Heaven like, and to what shall I compare it? The Kingdom is like a woman whose heart was broken by what she saw in her own neighborhood, and who had the gumption to get up off the couch and do something about it.”

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KOH2RVA: Day 252

It’s the Day of Pentecost, everyone! Get out the leaf blowers and flame throwers, because this is the day we celebrate the birthday of the church, that time when the Spirit came with a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, and tongues of fire hovered over the heads of the believers (Acts 2:1-3).

But that was just the beginning.

Peter, filled with the Spirit, preached a fiery sermon, and at the end of the day 3,000 people had been added to the church. In the chapters that follow we hear how the apostles healed the sick, raised the dead, confronted the authorities, smashed through the barriers of prejudice, and carried the gospel to the ends of the earth.

So, I’m thinking…today is the Day of Pentecost. If what happened to the early church happens to us the Kingdom of Heaven will come to Richmond, Virginia. There will be no stopping it.

Which makes me wonder what’s stopping it now.

Is it us? Are we unwilling to let the Spirit take charge? Is that why we don’t wait for it and pray for it as those early disciples did? Today may be a good day to realize that if we try to bring in God’s Kingdom under our own power we will surely fail. But if we couple our efforts with the power of God, anything is possible. Just looked what happened in the early church. Eventually their critics began to say, “These people are turning the world upside down!”

Maybe soon they will say the same about us.

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KOH2RVA: Day 249

Last night was our children’s end-of-the-year program at First Baptist Church, which is always a treat. Those kids who have spent the school year in Wednesday night music and mission activities get to show off what they’ve learned and last night we got to see:

They’ve learned a lot.

I didn’t take good notes and I forgot to take a picture, but here are some of the things that stood out:

The Kid with the Big Voice, who stood on the steps with the Angel Choir and sang the parts of the song he knew with enthusiasm. It was funny. The choir would be singing along in those tiny voices children have and then, suddenly, they would reach the chorus and here would come TKWTBV (the kid with the big voice), booming out the first line of the chorus like an opera star. The look on his face was priceless. He loves to sing, and it shows. I’ve got to get to know that kid.

The Prayer Walkers. These precious little girls told us about prayer walking in the neighborhood (which is exactly what it sounds like: you walk around the neighborhood praying for people and things). Several of the girls told us that they had prayed for “the lost cat.” Apparently they had seen a poster asking if anyone had seen a lost cat. The poster had a picture of the cat on it and the girls just melted. “Poor Mittens!” Isn’t it a comfort to know that somebody is out there praying for lost cats?

The Fake Mustaches. I think it was the Mission Force group that was telling us about the things they had done in the community during the year, and one of those things was singing Christmas carols at the nursing homes. So half the boys put on fake mustaches, as if they were the elderly residents of the nursing home, and the other half sang carols to them. When they finished singing the “elderly residents” came and hugged the boys and patted on them and tousled their hair just as they had at the nursing homes. The acting was Oscar-worthy.

The Fund Raisers. A few of the Girls in Action (GA’s) stood up to tell us about the fund-raising they’d been doing for mission projects around the world. Morella Harris told us about “Pure Water, Pure Love,” and I think she said at one point that it costs $500 to dig a well or put in a pump (or something) in an African village and that she and the other girls had raised enough money to do that six times over: $3,000. I gasped. She said they’d earned most of their money by selling lemonade, cutting grass, and—surprisingly—by selling water.

What impressed me about last night’s event was how many of the presentations were focused on mission, and how much of that mission was an effort to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia. Kids catch on so quickly, and often they end up teaching us what can be done if we throw ourselves into it with enthusiasm and prayer and fund raising and fake mustaches.

I want to thank Ruth Szucs and Candi Brown, the staff members most responsible for directing our children’s music and mission programs, but I also want to thank the dozens of volunteers who come on Wednesday night week after week to work with children. What we got last night was just a taste of the fruit of their labors.

And it was delicious.

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KOH2RVA: Day 240

At the end of worship on Sunday I praised the communion team for “filling all those little cups.” I did it because I had heard some reports about how long it takes to do that, and how much work it is, and how little it seems to be appreciated. So I wanted to appreciate, publicly, the team that fills those little cups so we can have communion.

Since then I’ve been thinking about that line, “They also serve who only stand and wait,” from a poem by John Milton, which was used during World War II to affirm those who didn’t fight on the front lines, yet were still invaluable to the effort.  I found this post on a web site called “WWII Talk” by someone named “Jamesicus”:

Support and Administrative personnel are essential to winning wars. The men and women who fight in battle on the front lines rightfully get most of the glory and reap the accolades for they spill the blood and undergo the extreme hardships and are the most frequently and terribly wounded, often bearing the scars of battle for the rest of their lives. Many pay the supreme sacrifice in the bloom of their youth to defend their country and, in the case of WW2 especially, in order to preserve worldwide liberty and freedom.

However, wars could not be fought nor victories won without the legions of behind the scenes support personnel: clerks, cooks, transportation, supply, medical, maintenance, command & control, weather, civil engineers, legal, training, mechanics ….. and so on (I have probably inadvertently omitted many). They are the unsung and often unheralded heroes and heroines of the military who, like the combat soldiers sailors and airmen, endure long periods of separation from their loved ones, interminable boredom and loneliness and sometimes are wounded or die from non-battlefield injuries.

I want to salute the combat veterans of each branch of all Allied Military forces and offer profound thanks for their service and devotion—particularly those who were wounded or paid the supreme sacrifice in WW2—we are here today enjoying our freedoms and pursuit of happiness because of what they did.

I also salute the myriads of support personnel who toiled so hard and endured so much—frequently without much recognition—in order to insure the success of innumerable military missions and to aid & succor the magnificent fighting men and women.

“They also serve who only stand and wait”

Well said, Jamesicus, whoever you are, and thank you for reminding me that it’s not only the people who are on the front lines of this year-long, every-member mission trip who are helping us succeed, but also the “legions of behind the scenes support” as you put it: the communion team, the baptism team, the teller committee, the Sunday school teachers, the nursery workers, the deacons, the church officers, the standing committee members, the support staff, the custodians, the bus drivers, the ushers and greeters (like Jamesicus, I have “probably inadvertently omitted many”). They are the unsung and often unheralded heroes and heroines of this year-long, every-member mission trip we call KOH2RVA.

We couldn’t do it without them.

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