WHEN THE CHURCH ELDERS PASSIONATELY REFUSED
TO CREATE A MISSION STATEMENT


By William M. Spangler
November 26, 2006
Matthew 28:16-20


At a retreat I attended for staff and board members of Hospice of the Western Reserve several years ago, we formulated a mission statement. The concept was new to me. What a great idea for the first church I served as interim pastor at that time, I thought.
The response of the elders to my proposal, however, soon dampened my enthusiasm. The moment I brought up the subject of a mission statement, one of the elders responded, “Many people I know and myself as well have repeatedly gone through this business of formulating mission statements for the companies we work for. I’ve had it with mission statements, and I don’t want ever to work on another one.” The other elders expressed similar sentiments.

So. That idea shot down, we went on to other things.

Nevertheless the idea of church mission statements has caught on in the years since. Al-most every church I visit these days has a mission statement. After all, if any organization has a mission, it is the church. But do we need to create mission statements? What if, what if we were to set aside our mission statements and pursue instead the mission statement of Jesus, the mission statement of the risen Jesus in Matthew 28:16-20? It’s a thought. Let’s hear it now:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey every-thing that I have commanded you. And re-member, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The reading we just heard stands at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew. It relates an appearance of the risen Christ to the eleven apostles, the only such appearance in the gospel of Matthew. You may have missed something in the reading. Even though I have noticed it before, when I read through the gospel lesson as I began to prepare this sermon, I missed the words, “Some doubted.” Some of the eleven apostles gathered on the mountain doubted, even as they worshiped him with the others.

Could these doubters summon sufficient faith to believe that Jesus really was present with them, and find the courage, and the enthusiasm to carry out his mission? I can understand why those church elders so passionately refused to work on a mission statement for their church. They had worked on mission statements for their companies and perhaps other organizations, and were skeptical, even cynical because in their experience such statements accomplished little or nothing.

Through the years I too have become cynical about mission statements, programs, educational materials, seminars, etc., etc., that promise to revitalize the church. They come and they go, and nothing seems to stop the decline of mainline protestant denominations and most of their congregations. And many, maybe most pastors, myself included, tend to be over-whelmed now and then by guilt, low self-esteem, inadequacy, depression, and failure. Even more, active church members also be-come discouraged and depressed, especially when we see new, non-denominational churches spring up and in a few years boast up to a thousand or more worshipers at-tending services each Sunday.

We are assailed sometimes by doubts, like those among the apostles who doubted. We struggle to hang on to our faith in the crucified Christ whom God brought back from the dead. We live a new global culture that promises to bring the material benefits of a rigorously competitive capitalist society to all the people of the earth.

At the same time the moral fiber of human society seems to be unraveling. The values of community and life together collapse in the vain and destructive pursuit of self-fulfillment through the illusory goals of unlimited wealth and pleasure. The America dream, bloated beyond reasonable expectations, has been exported on a global scale. The earth groans un-der the stress. The foundations of human survival shake.

Well! Enough of this hope-less and helpless despair over the state of the church and of the world! What is our immediate task as a small congregation in the small and shrinking denomination knows as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)? Let us seek to accomplish at least two things this morning:

1. Begin to pray for the Holy Spirit to come upon us con-firming our faith and filling us with passion and joy in spreading the good news of Jesus whom God raised from the dead.

2. Commit ourselves to continuing study and pursuit of the mission of Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ words in the gospel lesson this morning are called the Great Commission. He instructed his apostles to make followers from all nations, baptizing them and teaching them what Jesus commanded. The command to baptize points us toward Jesus’ understanding of his ministry.
Following his baptism by John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descended upon Jesus, and a voice from beyond spoke to Jesus, saying, “You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased.” Thus the gospels of Matthew and Luke confirm by the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the Son of God.

This points us toward the meaning of Christian baptism. John the Baptist baptized with water, but he spoke of one greater than he who would baptize with fire and Spirit. Begin now to pray for such a baptism and renewal as members of Franklin Circle Christian Church. Then study the meaning of baptism. We may think of John’s baptism as a ceremonial cleansing from sin repentance and forgiveness. In those days gentile converts to the Jewish faith also submitted themselves to baptism.

The baptism of such converts looked back over a thousand years, to the time when God delivered the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. You may remember, if not from your Sunday school lessons when you were children, then from the movie, “The Ten Commandments,” what happened when the fleeing slaves, hemmed in by Pharaoh’s pursuing soldiers behind them and the waters of the Sea of Reeds before them. Moses raised his staff, the waters parted, and the people crossed safely to the other side. But the waters closed over Pharaoh’s horsemen and chariots. Thus the baptism of converts to Judaism in Jesus’ time stood for deliverance from slavery to pagan ways as they ritually crossed over the Red Sea to freedom.

Christian baptism parallels this meaning. In our baptism, potently realized in the practice of believer immersion in Disciples of Christ and other churches, represents crossing over from death into life, from slavery to sin to freedom in Christ. Christian baptism how-ever it is practiced by various traditions, always carries the meaning of dying with Christ and being raised up in newness of life in his resurrection. Thus, as St. Paul ex-plains in his Letter to the Romans, we die to sin and live to Christ.

The meaning of baptism is the same, no matter how we were baptized. If you were baptized as an infant, you professed faith in Jesus at your confirmation; that is, you confirmed the vows made on your behalf during your infancy.

But what if we miss the meaning when we submitted our-selves to immersion, or at our confirmation? What if something distracted us? Does that invalidate the sacrament?

The boys adored Becky, a twelve-year-old girl in a Christian commitment class I taught years ago. Becky had matured early in body, and had a strong, matronly build and a pretty smile. The boys teased her all the time, calling her “Biiiiig Becky.” But she was still very much a twelve-year-old, and when the time came for the baptism of the class, Becky, the first in line was vigorously chewing a large wad of bubble gum, which I didn’t notice. When she put her toe into the water, she exclaimed, “Ooh! It’s cold!”

The other kids waiting to be baptized heard her and began to giggle, continuing through the baptisms that morning. Moreover, most of the people in the congregation (they couldn’t hear Becky’s, “Ooh! It’s cold!”) were distracted by the bubble gum she continued to chew. Clearly, the meaning of the occasion was pretty much lost.

Nevertheless, there is a saving grace named retrospect. So in retrospect I invite each of you to think back on your baptism or confirmation, because the meaning is never lost, even if it is only in this moment that it fully comes to you. Pray therefore that you will be renewed in your understanding of baptism and confirmation. For you were bought with a price. As you were born from the waters of your mother’s womb, so you were born from above by faith from the waters of death in the resurrection of Christ. You have died to sin. You live to Christ. You have put on Christ. You have been blessed by receiving into your life the mind of Christ. Pray continually for the Holy Spirit to sustain your faith and knowledge of your life together in this church, the local body of Christ.

May these reflections lead you to a renewed study and his mission, beginning with the scripture we heard form Isaiah, that Jesus read at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, not long after his baptism. Hear them again as Jesus reads from Isaiah as records in Luke 4:18-20: “ ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’ And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ ”

This is the agenda Jesus set for his ministry. Let us renew our-selves in it and in all his teachings, because the Savior, our Teacher, cannot be separated from when he taught. We will find light and love and freedom in his words. We will find challenge as we face his call to discipleship. We will set aside our fears about the future of this church because we will be so filled with passion to share the good news of Jesus by word, by deeds of lovingkindness, by witness to social justice, and by the all inclusive love of Jesus. Pray that we will reach out to others in this community, and invite them to come home with us, and to come home to God through the grace and love of God in our Lord Jesus Christ.

But will we? Really? I think about the elders who passionately refused to work on a mission statement. They were an outstanding group of men and women. And we got along well. Supposed I had proposed a study of Jesus’ understanding of his mission, and the great commission? Would it have made a difference there? Could it make a difference here?

After a quick start, it would become a grind, I think. Too often enthusiasm flames up quickly, and just as soon dies down. We grow anxious about the survival of a congregation and denomination. But suppose we could forget about surviving, and carry out the mission of Jesus Christ with all the love and joy and passion the Spirit pours upon us through our devotion and prayers. Suppose the Spirit lifted us up in reckless abandon into caring for one another, our community, and all the people Jesus came to save from the desolation of sin and despair. And suppose then joy and love swept over us and possessed us all, one body of believers possessed by the Holy Spirit. Can we open our-selves to such a possibility?

Well! It’s worth a try, isn’t it?

Rev. William Spangler

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Copyright 2006

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096