So we are ambassadors for Christ,
since God is making God’s appeal through us;
we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to
God.
For our sake the Lord made him to be sin who knew no
sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God.
As we work together with him,
we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in
vain.
For God says,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of
salvation!
We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way,
so that no fault may be found with our ministry,
but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every
way:
through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships,
calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights,
hunger;
by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of
spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God;
with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for
the left;
in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.
We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;
as unknown, and yet are well known;
as dying, and see—we are alive;
as punished, and yet not killed;
as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;
as poor, yet making many rich;
as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
***
They said, one side will loose and the other will win. That if Session, the governing body of this church, decided to hire a full-time youth director, those who wanted to retain the purchasing power of our endowment would loose, namely the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee feared the church would loose part of its character if it continued to spend down the endowment. Where would be the ability to support our flagship programs and ministries and the building which sustains them? What would become of Open Door, without a sustained endowment? Where would the kids who walked to school in the earliest of morning find shelter, warmth, caring adults and breakfast to fill their bellies? Without an endowment what would youth ministry look like in ten years when Jake is a junior and May is ready for her first Mission Trip? What would our building look like without an extra pocket from which to fix sewer lines and a boiler someday to break? People feared that without an endowment, these things would cease and our church would be less.
We said, one side will loose and the other will win. That if session decided to retain the purchasing power of the endowment, we would have no full-time youth director. That without a full-time youth director our youth would go to a different church, that the burden of organizing would fall to the parents, that youth would have no one to call in a tough situation. People believed that without a youth director, our youth ministry would cease, and our church would be less.
We said, one side will loose and the other will win, and there are ways I hoped neither would win. I think the future of the church is neither dependent on an endowment, nor a youth director, but instead the stewardship of its people, the creative movement of the Spirit, and the unbounded grace of God. There are ways, we have used both the endowment and having a paid full-time youth director as crutches to bolster up our failing stewardship. Failing stewardship of finances that rely’s on an endowment to fill in the gaps of ministries we deem essential, while the number of people pledging has dropped by _ since last year with no easy answers as to why besides forgetfulness. A failing stewardship of time and talents, that have relied on a youth director to fill in the gaps of relational ministry and program organization, while we have congregants asking to be involved with our youth and not knowing how to plug in. I worried too about a failing stewardship of trust in the steadfastness of God and the creativity of the Spirit. The doomsday predictions aforementioned, that feared anything different than how it has been done. The doomsday predictions of having to do budgeting, or youth director recruiting and do them now. I worried that if either won we wouldn’t be relying on God’s unfathomable ability to transform us beyond our imagining in God’s time. I felt if we couldn’t do this, eventually our church would cease.
The thing is, instead of some people winning and other’s loosing, everyone won. The scripture reads,
As we work together with Christ,
we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.
For God says,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!
We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way,
so that no fault may be found with our ministry,
but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way.
The first way we commended ourselves as servants of God was to wait, through great endurance, and some sleepless nights, we postponed our budgeting four months from November to February. It seems easy to say but it required not only the practicalities of interim budgets but the patience to wait for the right answer despite questions from the regional office.
The second way we commended ourselves as servants of God was to show up. All together there were six visioning meetings, some specifically for thinking about how to use our endowment, some for looking at our youth ministry, others for defining our church values and priorities. These then helped guide our discussions and inform our Session elders about where our heart and energy was and who we felt called to be as a people of God. We feel called to show God’s love, to the community through service and to one another. We feel called to our youth and our kids, and to be a family young and old together. We want to learn and grow in our faith and to be able to ask questions. We want to be inclusive of all.
The third way we commended ourselves as servants of God was to pray and discern, to pray and discern, and this was the part where the Spirit began to sneak in and by the time the Session met to set the proposed budget the Spirit was alive and moving. Each session member prayed in one word for what they hoped the meeting would bring, concencus, wisdom, creativity, hope, listening, and so on, and by the end of the meeting everyone’s prayer had been answered and I don’t think any of us expected it. We set the budget all except for the youth director and related line items, and I asked, should we total them up and see where we are? Then Lynn, the representative of the Finance Committee, those whose charge is to oversee the finances of the church and care for the endowment, said no. We should wait and as a group figure out what is best for the youth ministry of the church and then see how it works financially. And in that moment I saw how we had grown in our faith. It was the willingness to not let our finances dictate our ministry but to let our ministry dictate our finances knowing we could figure something out financially if we were following God’s call to our ministries. Each person on session spoke. Annie courageously challenged us to be more welcoming and to encourage people to share their gifts and in that moment Shirley lifted up Annie’s courage. Bryson gave thoughtful perspectives as a youth really rolling around different questions, critiques, and scenarios in his head and then speaking from his heart. That and his pencil and paper math skills rival LaVonne and her clicking calculator. Ginger, having led the youth group with Sharon Defrees as a volunteer, spoke with conviction about the ministry and depth program but also the realities of organization. Others talked about including younger kids as part of the ministry and doing more things intergenerationally. Then Karen, who does much listening offered up an idea she had heard in talking with her son in Boise about having an intern having graduated college, or perhaps mid-seminary to come. The church could be a place for teaching, and then it would be easier financially support a full-time position.
In that moment the Spirit was dancing, like watch this, I am going to spin around using all these things you already have a vibrant twirl for love of youth, and patterned out step for the personnel procedures that have been planned, a hands up for having already endured two millennials on staff, and then it came, this giant leap of faith. Session decided a full time youth ministry intern was the way to go, and then started adding up the budget. There it was, what was proposed was in line with the spending plan of the endowment, and would retain its purchasing power. Everyone won, even me, because what I saw was a a congregation trusting in God’s faithfulness and open to the creativity of the Spirit for change, and I also know, that it will require more stewardship. Additional funds will need to be raised for the youth ministry program as well as other budgets like Open Door or Backpack which were simultaneously reduced. Moreover, you can’t hire an intern without a Personnel Chair. If an intern is temporary the church will have to be the ability for the program, there will need to be a support team for that youth director, parents will need to be involved in connecting their youth and kids in. To meet someone new, the congregation will take on more relational duties, an idea has been floated that each kid have someone like a confirmation sponsor, that if something they would have a sponsor who said I am going to be there, I am going to come to your games, I am going to visit you in the hospital when you get a concussion, I am going to call your parents and support them. I am going to know you from the time you are in sixth grade until the time you graduate and beyond until you go to college, and are married, and have a child, etc. etc. Someone is going to have to help Wednesday night meals, getting youth there, and meals. Others will need to help them to figure out housing and fun things to do in Baker. Its not done, but I think we have the faith because we’ve trusted in the Spirit. It was a case where no one lost. It was all win. It was all God saying,
"As we work together with Christ,
we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.
For God says,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!
We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way,
so that no fault may be found with our ministry,
but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way.”
I am proud of you First Presbyterian, and where you have traveled in the last months. In these past four months you have become even more faithful then you already were, even more loving than you already were, even more a community then you already were. I have watched the Spirit bring you together from that crazy word called consensus. That crazy word is just our definition of getting behind the Spirit’s moving. And its moving, its dancing, and I can’t wait to see where it will lead.
