"Open Minds: Ministry In A Changing World
" Sermon Transcript for September 2, 2001 By Rev. Mike BeckScripture Reading: Isaiah 43:15-21
Today is the second in a three-part sermon series related to the "Igniting Ministry" initiative within the United Methodist Church. In the coming months, you’ll see some very well done commercials on TV with the theme, "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors". Our worship today began with one of those television spots.
Last week I spoke on the topic, "Open Hearts"; and we examined the importance of our being welcoming to newcomers in our midst. Next week Reverend Dan is going to preach on our third phrase, "Open Doors". His message will challenge us to what needs to happen after we have extended the gift of hospitality in the related areas of evangelism and discipleship.
Today we turn our attention to the middle phrase, "Open Minds". And I want to speak about the need for us to be creative in the ways in which we go about doing ministry in order to effectively connect with a rapidly changing culture around us. I would urge you to note the visual images on this slide depicting some of the new ministries we’ve added the past few years—the F3 Connection which not only gives people opportunity to fellowship together and share in small groups but also gives people an opportunity to come together for worship at a time other than Sunday morning. The little clocks that Shelley has included there speak of the different times of worship. The guitar and the drums indicate the different styles of worship we now offer. The Alpha Course video tape ministry.
Before I go further a great big thank you is in order. A few weeks ago we took 25 members of our Praise and Technology Teams up to Chicago. We worshiped at Willow Creek Church on Saturday night and then on Sunday morning we worshiped at Wheatland-Salem United Methodist Church southwest of Chicago--a very progressive and a very growing United Methodist congregation. And they provided our lunch and the pastor came and spoke to us for a little bit. And in his remarks he said this, he said, "The true saints in this congregation are our older members." Then he said, "We have many who a lot of the new ministries we have begun that have led to our growth and health are not ministries that are particularly their cup of tea." But he said, "They haven’t stood in the way of our doing different things. They have prayed for us. They have embraced these new ideas to the extent that they are able." And he said, "They are the true saints in this church." And friends, those same things are true here at Grace. Many of you older adults, steeped and cherished in your traditions, and yet you allow us to put the electronic drum set up here. A lot of churches would never have allowed that to happen.
As we move in to the message today I want to give you a puzzle to solve. Put it up on the screen, Ryan. Here are your instructions, if I’d have gotten around to this earlier in the week I would have included it in the bulletin, so you’ll have to kind of do it in your head. Here are the instructions. You are to connect A, B, C, & D using one continuous straight line and changing the direction of that line only once.
Connect A, B, C, & D. The line has to be straight and continuous. You can change directions only once. And I’ll give you a few seconds to look at it and see if you can figure out the puzzle. Okay, Ryan, slip on the next slide. The solution will be coming thanks to the magic of technology. Here we go. Here’s the solution (at the bottom of the page). But you have to be willing to think outside the box to get the solution. See I said nothing about the box. But you saw the box and most of us from our very earliest ages were taught, "Don’t color… what?" "Outside the lines." And so all of that preconditioning about the way you were to do things prevented probably, it prevented me the first time I saw this puzzle, from getting the solution.
What we’re talking about today is the need for the church to embrace change in the way it goes about doing ministry. And change, whether we be 24, or 54, or 84, is not an easy thing for any of us. But our minds, and also our hearts, must be open to going "outside the box" if we are going to effectively communicate the gospel to a rapidly changing world out there.
In the newsletter and on the front page of every bulletin is our "mission". The mission of Grace Church is five-goaled. I hope you’ve got it memorized. "To worship God, to proclaim Christ as Savior, to encourage growth in Christ as Lord, to fellowship together, and to care for those in need." But underlying that are twelve principles in what we call our "Philosophy of Ministry". And most people don’t realize how much we use those twelve principles. They guide us in every decision we make. Three of them are very relevant to what we’re talking about this morning. One of them says this, "The church exists to minister to the needs of our congregation and…" and it’s a very important and, "…to reach out to persons who are not yet a part of our fellowship." The second one, "We are sensitive to the needs of seekers in all of our activities and decisions." In other words, we’re assuming that many people who walk through our doors have no understanding of Christianity, have not yet come to faith, and as we go about doing things we are sensitive to that fact. Then, thirdly, "worship should be culturally relevant while remaining Biblically sound."
There have been many changes in our ministries here at Grace over the past few years and no doubt there will be more in the years ahead. But those changes are never made for the sake of change alone. They are made so that we might more effectively carry out the mission that is found there on the front page of your bulletin. And as we have made those changes, we have also tried very hard to adopt an attitude not to "take away" things that are important to our heritage, but to "add to" that heritage.
So let me illustrate the need for "open minds" in how we go about doing ministry with these three statements that I think are solidly rooted in Scripture.
- The Christ we proclaim is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The message, in other words, doesn’t change.
- The ways we communicate Christ’s gospel will always be changing.
- The forms of our ministry must be secondary to the goals of our ministry.
The Christ we proclaim is the same yesterday, today, and forever. However, friends, if you’re not aware we now, in America, in the year 2001, live in a post-Christian era. That, for those of you who are my age and older, that’s changed. Forty or fifty years ago, even though the society as a whole not everyone was Christian, nevertheless permeating that society was a basic understanding of Judeo-Christian values. That is no longer the case. Which, to use a simple illustration, is why we put the page number of the Lord’s Prayer in the bulletin. Because there are numerous people that are going to walk through these doors that never learn the Lord’s Prayer.
There’s a phrase that is used today that sounds like a negative phrase but really isn’t. The phrase is that the church is probably called to "dumb-down" the gospel. The phrase is "dumbing-down" the gospel, but that is not to be equated with "watering-down" the gospel. Jesus was a master at "dumbing-down" the gospel. In other words, when Jesus preached he told stories. He told parables and the people said, "We understand these. He doesn’t teach like the rest of the religious leaders." He was very non-conventional in how he went about doing his ministry. And Jesus went to where the people were. He didn’t hold church and say, "You come to me." He was willing to go to Mathew’s house despite all the cries of his followers that he would defile himself in doing so!
Now hear me very carefully in this statement, "Our worship of Christ must not be allowed to degenerate into mere entertainment or self-gratification." I need to repeat that. Our worship must never degenerate into merely entertainment or self-gratification. It ceases to be worship at that point. But we must examine how we connect un-churched persons because that’s our mission. We believe we are here to win the lost. How do we connect un-churched persons with the living Christ? And it may take different music, or a video clip, or a mini-drama to help them encounter Christ. But you know, as I have visited some large churches that make our contemporary worship look very tame, there’s been one thing I’ve really been surprised about. The boldness of their proclamation of the Gospel! I’ve heard a bolder presentation of the Gospel in some of those very contemporary settings that you would hear in most mainline churches on any given Sunday morning. When we went to Willow Creek, I’ve worshiped with them in their Seeker services twice. In their Seeker services they’re not for the church folks. They’re designed for un-churched people. Bill preaches for forty minutes. If I tried to preach for forty minutes on a regular basis here at Grace, I’d get stoned! "Dumbing-down" does not mean "watering-down". It just means putting it in a way that connects to people in a post-Christian era that we are living in.
The ways we communicate the Gospel will always be changing. We live in a visual age. That’s not a toy that we put up there; it’s a communication tool. And even before the visual aides came into being, educators told us, "If you only tell them audibly they’ll remember 30% of what you say. If you put a visual image with it, they’ll remember twice the amount." We live in a visual age; that is how people connect and learn. The sermon has to change with our age. Is the goal preaching a sermon three linear points or communicating the message? That’s good food for thought. We’re rethinking worship. For you see, we can come together and worship and never have a sermon! Worship is about praising God! We’re realizing in the day in which we live, that although worship is at the center of what we do, do you know where lives are transformed? Primarily in small groups which is why we’re urging people and really working on that area of ministry. I’ve got an idea that if you told Brad Klotzsche six month’s ago that he’d get up in front of all three services and give a lay witness he’d have said, "Who are you kidding?" His life was radically transformed by being a part of that small group.
The forms of our ministry must be secondary to the goals of our ministry. That’s what the puzzle illustration earlier in the service was all about. For you see, most of us were so focused on staying within the lines that we were never able to see the solution to the puzzle. In other words, the form became more important to us than the goal. We can illustrate this also in the words of the great hymn that we sang this morning, "All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name". It was written in 1779. Look at the words:
All hail the power of Jesus’ name,
Let angels prostrate fall.
Bring forth the royal diadem
And crown Him Lord of all!
Sinners whose love can ne’re forget
The worm-wood and the gall.
Go spread your trophies at His feet
And crown Him Lord of all!
Friends, that is a wonderful hymn. We will continue to sing it at 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. We’ll probably never sing it at 11:00 p.m. or Wednesday night when there are many un-churched persons in our midst. Can any of you explain to me what it means when it says, "Bring forth the royal diadem"? That may have connected with people in 1779 steeped in theology. Or, "The worm-wood and the gall"? I don’t know what that means. How does it connect with people if they don’t understand the meaning of the words? Are the words of this chorus understandable and is it possible that these words say the same thing as this hymn in different ways?
Lord, I lift Your name on high.
Lord, I love to sing Your praises.
I’m so glad You’re in my life.
I’m so glad You came to save us.
You came from Heaven to earth to show the way.
From the earth to the cross my debt to pay.
From the cross to the grave,
From the grave to the sky,
Lord, I lift Your name on high!
I would suggest those words convey basically the same message that the hymn, "All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name" is seeking to convey, but in a way that you don’t have to have four years of theological training to understand its meaning. It’s the same challenge to "open minds" that the Prophet Isaiah spoke of in our Scripture lesson for today when he said, "I am the Lord, you Holy One, Israel’s Creator, Your King. This is what the Lord says – He who made a way through the sea." Over 2500 years ago, Isaiah said, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. To give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself…" And here’s the ultimate objective, "…that they may proclaim my praise!"
If you boil it all down, friends, our ultimate goal in ministry is that we would experience Christ. That we would realize His presence with us and that we would know His love, that we would know His grace, and that we would know His transforming power. That’s what it’s all about. We may have to think outside the box in order that people may come to that point. That’s what our closing hymn is about, "Open My Eyes, That I May See". Let’s stand and sing it together.
