2^nd in Easter/April 2-3, 2005

John 20:19-31

“What Makes the Church the Church?”

What makes the church the church? What makes a church a healthy church? A great church? A faithful church? Is it inspiring worship or great preaching?

Excellent music? Is it the organ or choir or drums or guitars? Is it a sense of close fellowship, where you feel like you belong and people care for each other?

Or sound biblical teaching? Small groups for adults?

What makes a great church? An active, creative Christian education program for children? A vibrant youth ministry program? Or is it an orientation that is outward-focused? An outreach ministry? A church that serves those in need? That stands with the powerless in its community?

What makes a great church? A beautiful sanctuary or attractive campus? A hospitable facility? Catchy advertising or marketing? What makes the church the church?

I asked Kent Williamson if I could refer to his provocative article entitled “My Next Church,” in which he deals with the role of the church in this post-modern day. (http://www.paladinpictures.com/httpdocs/2005/02/my-next-church.html) Kent writes that his next church will not have a building but will meet in the community. It will engage the surrounding culture and minister to broken people. It will emphasize that daily life worship of God is just as important as corporate worship on Sundays. His next church will be intentional about discipleship, take seriously its call to make disciples of Jesus (not just church members). It will be a 24/7 church, not one that meets only on Sundays and Wednesdays.

As we were driving into the parking lot for a church conference last October, some people in the car asked me, why is Ginghamsburg the church you most admire?

I responded because they demonstrate a radical commitment to Jesus Christ, which is evident in many ways, but especially in the many ways they love and serve the people in the city and community around them.

What makes the church the church? The Lutheran Confessions say that “the church is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel.”

All of these definitions and descriptions stand in sharp contrast to our gospel reading. Here there is a picture of a church with no organ or piano. No sanctuary, no choir, no pastor. In fact, you could call it a picture of the church at its worst.

(Willimon, “You Call This A Church?”) The disciples are gathered, after Jesus’ resurrection, in a house behind locked doors. Hoping that no one would know where they are.

Thomas Long asks what kind of advertisement might this church put in the Saturday newspaper to invite new members? “The friendly church where all are welcome?” Hardly. Locked doors are not a sign of hospitality. “The church with a warm heart and a bold mission?” Not this one. “This is the church of the sweaty palm and shaky knees and a firmly bolted front door.” (Long, “Whispering the Lyrics”)

Can we even call this dejected little group of disciples a church? There is no life, no enthusiasm, no mission, no conviction. “Here is a church with absolutely nothing going for it except…Except that when it gathered, the Risen Christ pushed through the locked door, threw back the bolt, and stood among them. And maybe that’s as close as any church ever gets to being church.” (Willimon)

The picture of the disciples huddled together in the locked room is a very clear reminder for us that on our own, left to our own devices, we are nothing. “I am the vine, (Jesus said) you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

And that is good news. Let me tell you why. It’s good news because if the Lord comes to this defeated, defensive group of disciples (the church at its worst) and gives them a power and a mission, then the Lord can bring life and Spirit and mission to any church. It’s good news because it demonstrates that the Lord can penetrate our locked rooms. The Holy Spirit can slip through our closed doors,

our own inward-looking agendas and our fear of a new thing.

The risen Lord, in breathing the Holy Spirit upon them, transforms them from dejected disciples to empowered church, and he sends them out from the locked room into the world, telling them: “As the Father sent me so I send you.” And he tells them that their mission is about forgiveness. The apostle Paul uses the word, “reconciliation” to speak about the same mission. He writes: God “reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19)

It’s God’s Church and it’s God’s Mission. That’s what makes the church the church. And God invites us to participate in God’s mission (of reconciliation).

We’re so often tempted to think that the church belongs to us, and we are responsible for its growth and its success. But the churches that get it are those that realize it is God’s Church and God’s Mission.

The ELCA Department for Research and Evaluation studied many of the techniques or programs that most people think that you would have to use if you want your church to grow. Contemporary services, slick newsletters, knocking on doors to invite people to church, how much people like the pastor’s sermons.

What they found is there was only one factor which predicted whether or not a church grew. “The ONLY factor that really matters is whether or not a church has a clear enough vision of where God wants it to go that it is willing to do whatever it takes to follow wherever God leads.” (Fryer, Reclaiming the “L” Word , 10) It is God’s Church and God’s Mission.

God’s transformation of our church will not come from new techniques, or styles, or church programs. It will come about as the risen Lord slips through our locked doors and breathes the Holy Spirit upon us and sends us out with the mission of reconciliation, to love other people into God’s kingdom. It will come about through God changing my heart and your heart, my mind and your mind, my life and your life. People changed by God change churches.

We are at an exciting time when we are considering and discussing several significant strategic matters for our congregation. Two weeks from today we will vote to call Pastor Greg Briehl as Associate Pastor of Peace. As we walk into our new mission, we are asking God to raise up among us 4 people who God will call to be ministry leaders of the four core ministry areas: worship, fellowship, discipleship, and mission. (If God calls us to the mission, God will raise up the leaders needed for the mission.) We are discussing the addition of a fourth worship service, and the expansion of our Christian education program. And related to those, possible facility modifications. (In May I will attend a conference in Texas led by 4 Lutheran churches that have started satellite churches or have partnered to help new churches develop. To help us think further about this possibility in the future of Peace.)

How have we come to this strategic point in time? We’ve come to this point:

Because the Holy Spirit has slipped through our locked-door intentions to do church the same way we have always done it. Because He is the vine. And we are the branches…and apart from Jesus Christ, we can do nothing. Because the risen Lord has breathed the Holy Spirit upon us and sent us out with a ministry of reconciliation so that we live up to our name and bring Peace to all we meet, as well as a word of hope.

We’ve come to this point: Because “God loves us and calls us to love God, love one another, grow in Christ, and go in Christ.” Because we are “willing to do whatever it takes to follow wherever God leads.” Because we are willing to let ourselves “be turned upside-down and inside out by a God who wants for us, for our congregation, and for our world more than anything we could ever even ask or imagine.” (Fryer, 10) That’s how we have come to this special point in time.

Will Willimon, Dean of the Chapel and professor at Duke University tells a story about the first church he served as pastor in rural Georgia. He was fresh out of seminary, eager to be a good pastor in his first parish. On his first visit to the church, he found a large chain and padlock on the front door, put there by the local Sheriff. It seems things had gotten out of hand at a recent board meeting, and folks started ripping up carpet, and dragging out the pews they had given in memory of their mothers. It was a bad scene. The Sheriff put a lock on the door until the new preacher could come and settle things down.

Willimon said he spent a year there that lasted a lifetime. He tried everything. He worked, he planned, he taught, he preached, he pled, but the response was always disappointing. The arguments, the pettiness, the fights in the parking lot after the board meeting were more than he could take. It was tough and after a year he was glad to leave them behind.

A couple of years later he ran into a young pastor who related that he was now serving that same church. Willimon’s heart went out to him. Such a dear young man, and only twenty-three! But he was shocked to hear the young preacher speak with enthusiasm about that church. The young man said: "Their ministry to the community has been a wonder…That little church is now supporting, in one way or another, more than a dozen of the troubled families around the church. The free day care center is going great. Not too many interracial congregations like them in North Georgia."

Willimon could hardly believe what he was hearing. What happened? he asked.

"I don't know. One Sunday, things just sort of came together. It wasn't anything in particular. It's just that, when the service was done, and we were on our way out, we knew that Jesus loved us and had plans for us. Things fairly much took off after that."

Willimon thinks he knows what happened. The only way he can explain it is that the church got intruded upon. Someone greater than Willimon knocked the lock off that door, kicked it open, breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and gave them a mission. And now, they are called "church."

And he reminds us: “Church isn't my hard work, your earnest effort, our long range planning or heavy duty giving. Church is a gift, a visitation, an intrusion of the Living Christ standing among us.” (Willimon, “You Call This A Church?”)

That is what makes the church the church.