A sermon delivered by Paul Johnson

The weekend of September 15th & 16th, 2007

TEXT:  Genesis 12:1-3

                  This is how the story begins…

                  Now it isn’t the absolute beginning.  There’s the Creation story, reminding us that God is the source of our being; and God makes Adam and Eve, telling us that we are part of God’s good Creation; then there’s the whole thing with the serpent and the tree, a parable of what seems to be the human condition—that we choose our will rather than God’s; and then a series of stories that underscore human sinfulness.

                  And then comes Abram, who later becomes known as Abraham.  We know virtually nothing about him.  Before God calls him, scripture tells us nothing of his character, or his gifts, or his personality.  You see, what happens to him has very little to do with who he is.  All we know is that he’s from a big city called Ur; that God calls him out; and he goes.

                  Our record with God is spotty to that point.  There’s been Cain and Abel, the Flood, the Tower of Babel.  Things haven’t turned out exactly the way God expected at the beginning.  So it’s as if God decides to try the gift of salvation with one person.

                  The Lord begins this relationship with Abram the same way God begins every relationship—with promises.  “I’ll make you a great nation; I will bless you, and all the nations in the earth will be blessed by you, as well…”

                  And so it is that a basic principle of the godly life is laid out at the very beginning:  that every blessing bestowed by God is intended not just for the recipient.  Rather, it is intended to be given away and passed on.  The blessing of God is always intended to be a blessing of others.

                  Well, I want to talk a little bit this weekend about our future, and how it might be that we can be a blessing to others.  I want to paint a picture of what tomorrow might look like.  It’s a big picture; it might seem a bit overwhelming; it’s incomplete and unfinished; there’s work to be done.  It’s a future filled with opportunity.  If we decide to pursue it, it will ask the best of us.  So I want to offer a few thoughts on how we might pass on the blessing we’ve received…

                  Last summer, we began talking about the creation of a Parish Life Center.  We deal with our space issues by sharing space, which is a responsible way to live.  What’s being used for KidsQuest today will be used for DOCC tonight and will be used by the choirs on Wednesday and Thursday.  That’s the upstairs of the education building.  Downstairs, we use the space for KidsQuest on weekends, fifty-six children are there for the preschool during the week, sometimes our Cub Scout group, and sometimes CARITAS.  We use the parlor for adult formation on Sundays; and Bible Studies, Church meetings, and AA meetings during the week.  We have a milling area that we sometimes use for milling.  But 75% of the time it is set up so that we can find everyone can find a seat for worship.

                  We share space everywhere, but we’re about at our limit.  We have nine KidsQuest classes, two youth classes, and five adult offerings between our Sunday services.  Last year we had two adult offerings.  But because adult formation is so important, we’ve added three more this year.  We’d like to add more, but we don’t have the space.  Our youth ministry team has grown that ministry, and there isn’t enough space in the garage anymore.  You want a challenge?  Try teaching sixty-five sweaty middle schoolers in that garage every Friday night.  So we have Faith, Hope, and Charity in the parking lot…not because they’re beautiful, but because we need them to do what we’re doing.

                  Recognizing our space limitations, the Vestry made a commitment to explore the creation of a Parish Life Center.  For the last nine months, a dedicated group of people have been meeting with representatives of the various ministries here at Christ Church to explore what a Parish Life Center needed to do.  They’ve given three updates to the congregation, and they’ll be doing so again between the two Sunday services next weekend.

                  This group has not been designing the Parish Life Center.  They’ve been figuring out our program needs.  What they’ve been doing is meeting with people from our different ministry teams, asking the question “What kind of space do we need to do our work?” We’ve contracted with an architect named Charles Piper to help us, but there are no pictures done, no colors chosen, no decisions about what the floors should be like.  All we have right now is a schema.  All the work of what it will actually look like is still before us.

                  But in this process—and as we, the people of Christ Church have continued to mature and grow, which is part of our mission statement--the vision for this space has grown.  So that we haven’t just been asking “What kind of space do we need to help our adult ministries, or our children’s ministries, or our youth ministries?”  

                  What we’ve also been asking is “How might this space be a blessing to those beyond this community?”

                  Let me offer an observation…

                  I like to get a cup of coffee in the morning.  Sometimes I stop at Starbucks, and stand in line with a bunch of people who appear to be on their way to the office, or to drop their kids off at school, or who have the leisure to just sit for a spell.

                  And sometimes, I go to 7-11.  I stand in line there, too, but if you ever get a cup of coffee at any area convenience store before seven in the morning, you know that we’re standing in line with a different group of people than are at Starbucks.

                  They often speak Spanish rather than English; they arrive in groups, usually in pick-up trucks and service vehicles.  They are dressed to do muscle work outside.  They are day laborers, probably working for minimum wage.  I only see men—no women—so my hunch is that their families may be far away.  There’s a chance some of them don’t have their green card, which means they live each day afraid of being discovered.  They probably aren’t invested in a retirement plan, and have no health insurance.  They probably don’t shop at Ukrop’s or the mall, but instead get their food and clothes at Wal-Mart because it’s cheaper and it’s open when they can shop.  They do their jobs, seek a better life, but they live outside the mainstream of the Far West End.  They are often invisible to us.  They get their Red Bulls and breakfast bites every morning, and then go off and do the jobs we don’t want to do.  They cut our grass, dry our cars at Car Pool, and pour the cement that is our new driveway.  They have none of the advantages I had by virtue of being born where I was born, and to whom I was born.  Like us, they are God’s children; our brothers and sisters; who’ve made some tough decisions, and who face a hard uphill climb.  And when they have troubles, they probably have fewer options than we do.

                  And what I am suggesting is that we imagine creating this Parish Life Center not just for us, but for them, and other people often forgotten and overlooked.

                  Why build a Parish Life Center?  So that we can gather for meals without always having to move chairs around…that’s a good reason; so that we have plenty of room for formation ministries for adults, and children, and youth…that’s a good reason, too; so that there’s more space for our music ministry…that’s also a good reason.

                  But maybe we build it so that if you can’t read, you can come here for adult literacy classes…

                  That if you don’t speak English, you can come here for ESL classes…

                  That maybe we’re the place where Crossover Ministries, a health-care provider for low-income persons, can provide mental health services and health education…

                  That instead of summer camp happening down on Church Hill two years from now, it can happen out here; and that it’s not just for fifty kids, but 150. 

                  That three times a year—not just once—our CARITAS friends can be with us and comfortable, and can use the showers in the building rather than being shuttled to the Y, because they’re shuttled all over the place.

                  These are all examples, but see what I’m saying?  Use our imagination, and I bet there are a bunch of other ideas roaming around inside us.

                  You see, we’re a blessed people, and we want to be a blessing to others.  We have received much, and we want to be the Body of Christ that gives it away.  The possibility for us—the vision for this space—is that it can be more than just a Parish Life Center.  It could even be a Community Life Center…serving this people, but also serving the people beyond us.

                  What we think is that it’s going to need to be about 14,000 square feet, and that it’s going to cost about $2.5 million.  There’s still much to do.  We are barely started.  But before we go ahead with this project, we as Christ Church will have to decide whether it’s what we’re supposed to do.  Someday, we’ll have to make that decision.  But right now, it is simply time to imagine the possibilities.  Because we’re blessed, we seek to be a blessing.

                  But what we all know is that these are not are only space needs.  We got space needs for worship, so let me talk about that for a minute…

                  At the Annual Congregational Meeting in 2006 the Long-Range Planning Team presented to the congregation a recommendation that Christ Church deal with its worship space needs by expanding this space rather than create a brand new sanctuary.  The reasoning behind this recommendation is very simple:  To our surprise we discovered that this space can be expanded so that the milling area becomes a full part of the sanctuary, and this space can be improved so that it feels like a true sanctuary, for a fraction of the cost of what would be involved in creating an entirely new building.  The latter is a $4 to $5 million project.  The former is well below that.  Responsible stewardship asks us to take seriously the possibility of meeting our long-term worship needs through the improvement of this space rather than the creation of an entirely new facility.

                  In other words, the vision is that this space be our permanent sanctuary.  It is a vision that acknowledges that already this is a holy space…where we have baptized, and married, and buried the old and sometimes the young, and gathered at this table.  It’s a vision that asks us to make some changes to this space, and how we use it.  It wouldn’t be multi-functional anymore.  Following this path would mean it won’t look like a banquet hall with a few banners and a processional cross thrown in.  It would look like a sanctuary.

                  No work has been done on this idea.  There is plenty of time to work it out.  I imagine some of us have opinions of what needs to be done.  But it may be that for about 25% of what it would cost to build something new we can make it so that in this house there isn’t a bad seat; that it’s a place where we experience God’s presence not just when it’s full with people, but when in the middle of the night we’re the only ones here, saying our prayers.

                  To do all this—a Parish Life Center and improvements to this building--we’re going to have to raise money.  We’ll have to do a capital funds ministry, almost certainly in the first half of 2008.  The objective will be to raise $3.3 million.  Say it with me—“3.3 million.” That’s a lot, but it’s a doable stretch.  With what we have in the bank and what we raise, this work can get done leaving us with very little debt, maybe even none…maybe; and even leave us with the ability to make a tithe off the capital funds ministry for the service of those less fortunate than us…because always, a blessing received is a blessing passed on.  If you’ve ever been involved in a project such as this you know that circumstances can change.  But we’ve run the numbers more than once, and we’re as precise as we can be at this point in the process.

                  Now that’s a whole lot I’ve just given us.  But I want to talk about two other things.  I want to talk about what could be one other part of a vision for our future, and I want to talk about next steps…

                  We are an Episcopal Church.  The Episcopal Church is our mother.  We were born from the Diocese of Virginia.  At fourteen, we are one of the largest Episcopal churches in the nation.  And part of growing up is figuring out how to not just take from our parents, but to give back.

                  We are blessed to have a vital youth ministry.  But I’m going to tell you, it’s hard to find good youth ministers in the Episcopal Church.  There are lots of churches that want a youth minister on their staff.  They just can’t find ones who can do the job.  And there are men and women in the Episcopal Church—mostly young men and women—who want to be youth ministers.  They just don’t know how to do it.

                  What if we became the people that taught them?  What if we became the place that trained Episcopalians to be Episcopal youth ministers in Episcopal churches…because it’s not happening elsewhere.  What if we became the place where someone who wants to be a youth minister could come and learn the craft?  Where they could get the practical and academic and spiritual training one needs to be a youth minister?  What do we think about the possibility that five years from now there could be men and women in places like Raleigh, or Indianapolis, or Cleveland, or East Camden, or Fargo, or Hoboken, or Tacoma…in suburban churches and urban churches and rural churches…who are ministering to youth and their families through people trained by us?

                  We’ve learned something about youth ministry over the years.  Maybe at fourteen it’s time to share the wisdom…  Maybe this is a gift we can give to the Church that gave us birth.  You see, there are people in Peru, and Sudan, and Pascagoula, and Downtown Richmond, and Short Pump who are really glad Christ Church was born fourteen years ago.  But I’m also convinced that there’s some single mother in Albuquerque with a nine year old right now; who in 2012 would also give God thanks that Christ Church was born because she and her child have been built up and ministered to by someone well trained in the art of youth ministry…a training that happened right here, by us.

                  It’s just an idea.  The Vestry has asked a few people to look into the possibility as to whether it could really work.  It’s not a “yes” right now, and it’s not a “no.” Just a “maybe.” But it’s a “maybe” that could be a pretty good one for the Episcopal Church.  You see, we don’t imagine this first as a ministry to youth.  We imagine it first as a ministry to the Church that gave us birth, a blessing to the people that blessed us.

                  You see, the picture is this…

• Maybe we expand and improve this space not just for us, but for the people whose life depends on finding a church home but just aren’t here yet;
• And maybe we create a Parish Life Center not just for us, but for the people in our community who face challenges we often don’t understand, and who have too few safe places in their lives;
• And maybe we start a training program for youth ministers not for our kids at all, but for the sake of the broader Church.
• The world, the Church, and us…now there’s a picture for ya’…

So we’ve heard today a vision for our future…one that involves greater ministry to us, to the

world, and to the Church. 

Where do we go from here?  Well, our process of discernment needs to broaden and include the entire congregation. 

If these words today have created more questions for us than answers, I wouldn’t be surprised.  Not everything can be said in only a few minutes.  In the near term, over the next couple weeks we’ll be inviting everyone in this congregation to come together in smaller gatherings to hear more and ask questions, so we’re asking everyone to be aware of the coming invitation to do so, and to be present.  If you are willing to have people into your home, let us know.  We’ll ask one another to say our prayers—together and individually--and we’ll seek to stay connected to one another and to God. 

                  Come next weekend and hear from the Building Steering Committee; and then keep showing up to the monthly updates they’ll be offering.  They have a big job, and will need help along the way.  We’ll hear more about how we can help next Sunday.

                  And then—along the way--we’ll have to decide whether this is what God is calling us to do.  We’ll have to decide whether this is the way we are supposed to bear fruit.  To move forward, it’s going to have to be that we say yes to this vision, or some form of it. 

It might be that God will move in us in a completely different way than we expect; that some vision for our future will emerge that we haven’t imagined yet.  Nothing is impossible for God.  But what’s here is a start, and at least gives us something to ponder.

But what I know for sure is that life is too short, and God is too good, to play it safe; to play it small; or to seek any kind of Gospel life that asks of us anything less than our best.

Thank God we are not the vine; just the branches.  And we’re just seeking God’s will.  To get to the Promised Land Abram needed to walk.  And so do we.  What matters less than the particulars of the destination right now is taking the first step.  Right now, that’s what we’re asking us to do.  But it was a land of promise Abram entered, and that is true for us.  And as Abram was blessed to be a blessing, so are we.