Annual Meeting Sermon: On not being “The Little Church that Refused to Die” anymore
Preacher: The Rev. Heidi Haverkamp
Preached on: January 30th, 2011
Audio:
No recordingScripture Text:
Matthew 5:1-12
Sermon:
On my first Sunday at St. Benedict more than three years ago, the search committee gave me a few gifts, including two books they’d found on my Amazon “wish list.” The one that made us all laugh was called The Little Church that Refused to Die! It’s actually a book about a family in 17th century England who formed the Christian community called Little Gidding. But never mind, it’s a great title!
But… I don’t want that to be a title that makes us think of St. Benedict anymore. Now, I love little churches. I love the strength of the relationships among many people here, I love the ability for your baptismal ministry to mean something – that your gifts and your leadership are an important part of our mission because we can’t pay a dozen staff people to take care of everything for us. I love that, even though we’re not a huge church, we have so many different kinds of people, kinds of Christians, and even kinds of Episcopalians, here.
Now, the Bishop’s Committee and I are not making plans for St. Benedict to become a mega-church, but I don’t want “small” to be the dominant adjective we use for this place, either. And even when we use the word “family”– which encompasses the deep sense of relationship and caring so many here feel for one another – we are limiting ourselves a little bit, I think. A church family is a wonderful thing to have. And when this church was getting by in a storefront over on Boughton, when attendance was declining, when there were times when no one was sure how the bills would get paid: then, it was important to be a family.
But now, think about how much St. Benedict has to offer. Think about what a strong, thriving place this church has become, and how we’re continuing to grow in God’s call to us. We’re growing in the numbers of people who worship here on a Sunday morning – we grew 8% in 2010. (We’re actually one of the few Episcopal churches in the Diocese of Chicago that are gaining members instead of losing them.) And in 2010, we, the congregation of St. Benedict, gave about 8% more than the budget was projecting. Awesome! The programs that we offer are also growing: from Sunday School, to adult education, to nursery care, to outreach. And the reach of our ministry to people who never come to a Sunday Eucharist is also growing: did you know that once a month, members of the Healing Prayer Team go to the Bolingbrook Christian Health Clinic to offer to pray with the patients there? did you know that there are six 12-Step groups that use our space during the week for our meetings, and that three of them this Christmas made extra and generous donations to the church out of gratitude for our hospitality to them? did you know that the St. Benedict Festival this summer attracted people from all over Bolingbrook to share in the work of local artists and vendors?
We’re not “the little church that refused to die” anymore. We’re a church that can’t help but keep living! We’re a church that welcomes all kinds of people to worship God, receive the hospitality of Jesus Christ, and follow the call of the Spirit in their lives. We’re a church that has a lot of room: look at this wide open worship space! We have a lot of room for a lot of different kinds of people. We have room to try new things. We have room to grow, both in numbers of people and as Christians. One of my goals as your priest is that, no matter what your journey of faith looks like, you find this a place where you feel welcome and where you feel you can grow as Christian. And there are as many journeys of faith in this room as there are people. (Maybe even a few more than that!)
And if this church feels like your family, then that’s a good thing. But how can this church be more than a family? How can this church be something more? That’s part of the call I feel God making to us. I wonder if you feel that, too? Because God’s vision of a church is more than that: it’s a vision of a whole kingdom. It’s a table where strangers share a meal together. It’s a crowd on a hillside, listening together to the teachings of Jesus. It’s a crowd that follows Jesus as he travels around the countryside. It’s a group of disciples who stay close to the needs of the sick and the poor, and who welcome tax collectors and prostitutes as well as fishermen, carpenters, physicians, and children. It’s a monastery like the one started by St. Benedict, 1500 years ago, where every person is welcomed as Christ. It’s the City of God, the New Jerusalem, where God makes all things new.
What if our vision was bigger than a Family? What if it was The Kingdom of God? Or if that’s too big, what if it was A Christian Community? Either way, when a church grows, it’s not that there’s less love to go around: there’s actually MORE. I know that I’ve noticed that in the three years I’ve been here – as we’ve grown, so have the energy, the hospitality, and the sense of God’s love and the presence of the Holy Spirit in this place. Guess what? It can keep growing!
Now, today in 2011, we are still in a place of transition between being a growing church and being a church with a mortgage that’s remains bigger than we are. For several years, we paid our mortgage through capital campaigns that asked households to give a special gift each month or each year just toward the mortgage, to keep this church independent and well, from going back into a storefront. For the past two years, the Bishop and the diocesan trustees have stepped in and helped us make those payments. Now, the Bishop and the trustees are asking us to step back up and to run another capital campaign to make those payments ourselves. As part of that process, we’re going to take a look at what it is we’re asking ourselves to invest in: who have we become together these past three years? And who are we growing to be as we move toward the future? And we’re moving forward together: Adam and I aren’t going anywhere – we love St. Benedict and we feel God has called us to be here in Bolingbrook. And I feel called to be your priest. I’m excited about being part of this process of reflecting and dreaming together about the kind of faith community we want to be. We’re not the “Little Church that Refused to Die” anymore, and if I have my way, we never will be again.
In the Gospel reading today, we heard the list of blessings that the Church has come to call: The Beatitudes, or The Blessings. Jesus tells people who don’t normally see themselves as being very fortunate that they are, actually, blessed. (And we can hear those blessings as individuals or we can hear them as a church community.) Blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. And he tells people who don’t normally get much credit from society how blessed they are: blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the merciful, blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you on Jesus’ account. In other words, the Beatitudes say: blessed are you when you are in need, and blessed are you when you share God’s love with people who need it, even when it hurts.
And so, I have a few “St. Benedict Beatitudes” I thought I’d try out on you:
Blessed are you who gather together with people who are not exactly like you to worship God and share in the holy meal of Jesus together, for you will find the kingdom of God in your midst.
Blessed are you, when you stretch out your hand to share the Peace with someone, whether you’ve seen them for thirty years or if you’ve never seen them before, for you will feel God’s love all around you.
Blessed are you, when you welcome another person as Christ, here at church or at your school or at work or at the grocery store, for you will meet Christ wherever you go.
Blessed are you, when you worry about the future and when you worry what you may have lost in the past, for God will give you the fullness of the past and the future both, as gifts of grace.
Blessed are you, who are willing to invest in the future of a Christian community, an investment whose returns you can’t count on a spreadsheet, whose profits you might not be able to explain to a skeptical world, but an investment that will make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, an investment that will carry you through retirement, an investment in the future of our children, and really, an investment in the future of God’s whole world.
So whether or not you stay for the meeting and the discussion after worship with Andi Tilmann, who will be our consultant or coach for this capital campaign, please keep these as prayers and promises on your heart for St. Benedict. This is your church, I am your priest, and together, we are making many separate journeys but also one journey, together in Christ. We are a Christian Community, we are an outpost of the Kingdom of God, and we are blessed, indeed.
Amen.
