DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE A CHURCH?
Rev. Larry Peters
August 26, 2012
Ephesians 4:7-16
In 1972, an Episcopal priest by the name of Terry Fullam, was teaching at a college in Rhode Island when he received an unexpected phone call from St. Paul’s Church in Darien, Connecticut. The vestry of that church asked the college professor to consider becoming their pastor. He met with their search committee a few days later. He told the committee that he had several questions for them. But, after a long pause, the one question he did ask was: “If this church were to disappear tomorrow, would anyone miss it?”
A startling question it is, but also a good one to consider. As the church, is our ministry of such importance that anyone would miss it if it were no longer available? Someone once told me that if you want to find out about the effectiveness of a church’s mission and ministry, ask the people of the community. They will either tell you, or they will have no idea what you are talking about. If the response is the latter, then the church has some work to do.
So when the question was asked; “If this church were to disappear tomorrow, would anyone miss it – a ton of silence fell on the room. No one breathed; all looked straight ahead for several seconds. Then they began to look at one another. Finally someone said, “Probably not much.” They had come to a moment of truth, and were caught in their embarrassment. Fullam pressed on with another question: “Do you really want to be a church, or are you actually looking for a chaplain for your club?”
What is the church? The definition that we have in our scripture readings today is that the church is the body of Christ. Christ our Lord is the head of the body. And the people who want to follow Christ the Lord make up the members of the body. We come together because we love God and we love other people. God loves us and gives us special gifts to prepare us for the work of service in Christ’s name. In service to other people we build up the body of Christ, the church. We come together with one purpose in mind. We grow up in every way to Christ. Under his control all the different parts of the body fit together. When each part works as it should, the whole body grows and builds itself up through love. This kind of love is what we are created for. Our Lord God says; “I created you – you are mine. I know you; I have called you by name. You are precious to me. I give you honor, and I love you. You are created to be my people – to love me, and to bring me glory.”
This is what God expects us to be. This is what is required of us. If we really want to be a church, then we will do our best to meet these standards. We will not accept that the church should degenerate into something less. Our modern American culture undermines the definition of a Christian, watering down the Christian faith until people tend to perceive the church as some kind of social club where not too much is expected of us or from us. The problem is that in such churches you will find little of the joy and deep satisfaction God created us to experience.
I would like to take this opportunity now to tell you about the joy I experienced while attending a Leadership Training Course for Stephen Leaders that was held at Pittsburgh just a little over three weeks ago. I am very thankful that you provided me the opportunity to go to this training. Before I left, I understood very little about what Stephen Ministry is. Now, I am very excited to be part of it! I believe that the Stephen Ministry here is established and well received within our church and community. I believe that your Stephen Leaders and Stephen Ministers are very good care givers; and I know them to be very encouraging. Also, we are blessed to have the strong support of our church staff and our Pastor, which I have come to understand is very important. And certainly all of us, at some point in our lives, could benefit from the type of care that Stephen Ministry provides.
Part of what I would like to do, as I have the opportunity to preach and to visit with people, is to build awareness and ownership of Stephen Ministries within our church and community. I would like to be able to understand the situations that people face, the kind of needs that they have, and to tell them of the help they may find through Stephen Ministry. And I want to be able to support our Stephen Leaders and Stephen Ministers in the great work that they do.
The definition of a Stephen Series, which is a name given to the steps involved for managing a congregation’s Stephen Ministry, is a complete system for training and organizing laypeople to provide Christian care. It is important to understand what Stephen Ministers are and what they are not. They are trained Christian caregivers. Stephen Ministers are not counselors and they should not be referred to as such. Their role is to listen and care – but not to counsel or advise. Stephen Ministers do not call on anyone abruptly or without their consent. They are assigned only to people who agree to receive the care of a Stephen Minister.
Stephen Ministry is a confidential ministry. What a care receiver tells a Stephen Minister remains confidential. Name of care receivers and details of discussions are never revealed. Stephen Ministry is carefully supervised. Stephen Ministers engage in regular supervision to ensure that they are able to provide the best-quality Christian care.
You may have seen the Stephen Ministry logo. By describing what it means, we may further understand the type of ministry this is. This logo consists if a cross and circle, together with a broken person and a whole person. The broken person stands behind the cross, symbolizing the brokenness in our lives as a result of our sin. The whole person stands in front of the cross because it is through the cross of Jesus that we again are made whole. The circle symbolizes both the wholeness we receive through Christ and God’s unending love for us. Also around this circle are the words that describe this ministry as “Christ caring for people through people.”
The name “Stephen” refers to Stephen in the Bible who was the first layperson commissioned by the Apostles to provide caring ministry to those in need. We can read in Acts chapter six how ministry was becoming too much for one person or a few to handle with full effectiveness. So the Apostles saw the need to recruit and train others to be ministers in a specific way using the gifts God gave them. And the church continued to grow, as the Apostle Paul says; “Christ did this to prepare all God’s people for the work of Christian service, in order to build up the body of Christ.”
So there is the earliest beginning of Stephen Ministry. People who are the body of Christ, and who really want to be a church, have ever since sought to find ways to use their gifts for service and for the benefit of all.
In 1974, Kenneth Haugk, a pastor and clinical psychologist, was pastor of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in St. Louis, Missouri. He would begin and in time become known as the Founder and Executive Director of Stephen Ministries. His strengths and heart were in caregiving ministry, and he was looking forward to making a positive impact on his congregation and community by providing pastoral care to all those experiencing divorce, grief, hospitalization, discouragement, and other life difficulties.
Very quickly, though, he found that the needs for care by far exceeded that which he alone could provide. He faced one of a pastor’s greatest frustrations: seeing people slipping through the cracks because their urgent needs were going unmet. In November of 1974, he discussed the situation with two seminary friends over a cup of coffee. The conversation turned to Ephesians 4 and “equipping the saints for the work of ministry.” Haugk realized that God did not intend for pastors to monopolize ministry. Rather, God gave all his people gifts in ministry and one of his roles as pastor was to equip others to use their gifts in ministry.
Haugk returned to St. Stephen’s with a plan. In the coming months he recruited nine lay people who had the gifts and heart to do caring ministry. He then used his combined backgrounds in theology and psychology to develop a training program in Christian caregiving. By March 1975 the nine were commissioned as “Stephen Ministers.” Their first care receivers included a widower, a blind person, a young woman with cancer, a truck driver forced to retire early, and an inactive member struggling with faith issues.
The impact was immediate. People began receiving the focused Christian care they needed. Fewer people were slipping through the cracks, and Haugk found he had more time to perform his other pastoral duties. The Stephen Ministers were surprised by the spiritual growth they encountered as they saw God working through them to bring love and healing to others.
The story would have ended there, had not two of the Stephen Ministers cornered Haugk on a hot May morning after worship services. “This is good stuff,” they said to him. “We are not going to let you go until you promise to bring this ministry to other churches!” Still wearing his vestments and perspiring from the heat, Haugk gave in and agreed to find a way to bring Stephen Ministry to other churches.
In November 1975 Haugk and his wife, Joan, founded the not-for-profit Stephen Ministries organization and began bringing Stephen Ministry to other congregations. And so this ministry has spread! Meadville First Presbyterian Church is one of more than 11,000 congregations from more than 160 Christian denominations that now have Stephen Ministry. More than half a million people have been trained as Stephen Ministers. These numbers grow each year, along with the number of people who have been touched by God’s love through a Stephen Minister.
The session that I attended in Pittsburgh was the 189th Leadership Training Course thus far. Our group had 381 participants representing 35 Christian denominations from 41 states and 2 Canadian provinces.
I brought back more than my 35 pound box of materials could hold. At first, all of it seems a bit overwhelming. But really it is about loving and caring for people as Jesus loves and cares for us. It is Christ caring for people through people. Jesus makes it very simple, really. In the way that we can, we are to be Jesus to someone else.
After 189 training courses, there are a lot of good stories that are told – one of which I remember and want to share with you. An American soldier in World War II, serving in the European Theater of Operations, had experienced much of combat and had seen much suffering. But he was not prepared for the extent of man’s inhumanity to man as when his army unit entered and liberated a Nazi concentration camp.
He saw the dead and dying. He saw the emaciated bodies and the look of utter hopelessness. Not only were they starving physically – they were starving spiritually. They had absolutely nothing and the American soldier wanted to help. But how could he help? What could he give? There was so much suffering, what could one person do?
With heart-felt compassion he went over to one of those held captive under such cruelty and hugged him. When the soldier looked up, he was surprised to see that a line had formed. He did not think that he would be able to help in any significant way. He did not know the value of what he was able to give. But he had exactly what the people hungered for and needed. He had and was able to give what they had been deprived of for so long – the love, care and concern of one person to another.
Whether you are a Stephen Leader or a Stephen Minister, a care receiver or one who supports this or any number of ministries that we do; whether you are an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher; whether you are a secretary, custodian, musician or youth leader; whether you serve on the trustees, deacons, on session or in the kitchen, on mission outreach or in children’s school or day care; whether you are a liturgist, choir member, greeter, usher, audio or video technician – we do what we do together! If I forgot to mention anyone, I apologize.
We are in this together with one purpose in mind. We are the church. We are here because we love God and we love one another. We love or community and we want to see it a better place to live, work and worship. We know that God has made each of us unique and given us different gifts that we can use for the work of Christian service, in order to build up the body of Christ.
Let us thank God for the ministry that we are privileged to experience and be part of. Let us work hard together and pray that our mission and ministry will have such far-reaching effectiveness that if one were to ask a question like Terry Fullam did: “If this church were to disappear tomorrow would anyone miss it”, we, and others would be able to say: “Yes, indeed!” And to the question; “Do you really want to be a church?, we shall be able to say: “We do!, and with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ – we are!”
No comments:
Post a Comment