Vision Series - Growing

January 4, 2004

Rev. Ronald Burcham

Typed from audio transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Twenty-seven. That's the magic number, at least for this morning. Twenty-seven. There are only twenty-seven more days in January. You see, I'm counting them down. I don't like January. I've never liked January. It's my least favorite month of the entire year. Other months, I wish they would go for 40, maybe even 50, days but January, no. January could be over tomorrow, I would be a happy man. So, twenty-seven. Twenty-seven and counting. Twenty-seven more days, and January 2004 will just be history. I'm not exactly sure why I don't like January. Maybe it's those post-holiday blues that kick in, I don't know. Maybe because mornings like this morning when it's snowing like cats and dogs outside, I know I have shoveling awaiting me. I don't know what it is, but I just really don't care for January. I'm sure you have times like that, too. Usually it hits sometime in the wintertime when you're sort of looking forward to spring and summer and warmer weather. You get a little bit of cabin fever inside. You just don't know how you're going to make it through.

I have an idea for you this morning. I have an idea how you can help me get through January and help you either this morning get through January or whenever it hits for you when you're sort of longing for something more, longing for warm weather and sunshine. What I want you to do this morning is I want you to think about what would be the perfect day. What would be the perfect spring or summer day in your mind? Can you picture that in your mind right now? Would it be in June or maybe July? What would be the ideal temperature for you? 74? 86? About 40% humidity? Sun shining up in the sky. Would you like a few clouds in the sky or just no clouds at all, just clear, blue sky? Come on, you're all looking at me like I'm nuts. Play along, will you? You can do this, okay? It's going to help, all right? Picture this in your mind. What's the perfect activity for you on one of these days? Are you into gardening, planting flowers or vegetables? So would you be doing that? What kind would you be planting? What types of flowers? What kinds of vegetables? Maybe you're into landscaping. Is there something you want to do with the lawn maybe this year? Can you picture it in your mind? That perfect day. Everything falls into place. You're doing the perfect activity that you want to do. Got it? One could easily say that's your vision for the future. In other words, that's a snapshot of the preferable future. Now who knows whether on June 4 whether it's going to be sunshiny, 82 degrees, and 30% humidity or not. We can't control that. But you've set up in your mind and you have pictured in your mind what you would like that day to look like. It'd be even better if you could write down a description of what that day would entail and how all of the details would fit into place.

Now, of course, you don't know if it's going to turn out exactly that way. But even right now you could start making progress towards making that day a reality. So even here in January, while it's snowing outside and about 18 degrees, you could go home and look through seed catalogs to determine what you're going to put in your flower bed this year, what you are going to plant in your garden. Maybe you could start interviewing lawn service people to start talking about how you're going to get that green grass that you always wanted or maybe you're going to do it yourself, so you go to the library and you start researching. What's it going to take? What's the proper amount of fertilizer? What's the timing that I need to do? Even now, even though it's not a reality, if you have a picture of it out there in your mind and you know how you want it to turn out, you can start moving towards that goal. You can start moving towards making that vision of that perfect day a reality.

That's what the church's vision is all about. The vision for Gloria Dei is to paint a picture out in the future, to say if everything fell into place, if everything was the way we think it should be, the way we feel that God is leading us, the perfect church of Gloria Dei, 10 to 15 years from now, what would be a snapshot of that church? How would we envision it? The Vision Statement our congregation put together several years ago attempts to do that, attempts to paint a picture. Now we're not there yet. We're still here in January, but we're looking out ahead saying that this, to the best of our knowledge, through a lot of prayer and through a lot of study, through questioning all kinds of people, is what we envision our church will look like in 10, 15, 20 years. And once we have that snapshot, once we have that vision, then we can start moving ahead. We can start making progress, each step along the way to make that vision a reality. Now maybe it won't turn out exactly the way we have it envisioned, but certainly that's the goal we're shooting towards.

Each one of you should have received in your worship folder a copy of the Vision Statement of Gloria Dei. It's the Vision Statement that lays out for us how we see our congregation. If we could paint that perfect day, paint the perfect picture, this is what our congregation would look like. We're certainly not there yet. It hasn't become a reality. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a vision. But it gives us a target to shoot towards. It gives us something to make progress so we can make it a reality. For the next several weeks, we're going to talk about that vision or sort of refocus as a congregation so we know why we're here, what we're about, and what direction we're going in the future. And today is foundational to all the rest, because the first statement of the vision is foundational. It's foundational for the vision. It's foundational for this congregation. It's foundational for us as individual Christians, for the first statement says we will grow in faith. That is, we will be about tremendous spiritual growth here at Gloria Dei, that those who come here can experience growth in their faith and their commitment to Christ, that they can mature in their faith and their relationship with their God, and that's foundational to who we are as Christians. It's foundational to who we are as a church.

Maybe you could think about it this way. If you are a person who plants things, on that perfect day coming up this summer or spring, when you take that seed and you put it in the ground, you expect something to happen, do you not? You expect, through the sunshine, through water, through nurture and care, that seed is going to all of a sudden plant roots. And then it's going to begin to grow, and pretty soon it's going to burst forth out of the ground and then it's going to grow larger until finally it comes to a bloom. God has planted the seed of faith in each one of your hearts, and God expects it to grow. God has given us the ministry whereby we can help people grow in their faith and He expects it to grow. So foundational to whom we are as Christians and as a church is that we will grow in our faith, grow in our spiritual maturity, grow in our commitment to our God and to our Savior Jesus.

That growth is going to happen in several different ways, but there are three key ways that I'd like for us to visit this morning, three key ways in which God will cause the growth to happen in which the vision will become a reality for us.

First of all, this will be a place of growing spiritually only through the means of grace that God has given to us, only through God's means of grace will this be a place where people can grow in their faith and their relationship to God. We see it as God and God alone that causes growth. St. Paul was addressing that at the church at Corinth . He was pointing out to them because they were getting confused on who they were following and what was happening. He says, “Yes, I planted the church there and then Apollos came in and he nurtured and cared for the church at Corinth , but God is the one who caused it to grow.” He says, “Not I, Paul, not Apollos, not anyone else but only God caused the growth of that church.” God caused the growth of the faith and the spiritual life of the people at Corinth . So it is for us as the people of Gloria Dei. We will grow in our faith and commitment to God not because of the pastor, not because of the staff, not because of the wonderful facilities we have, not because of the programs we have going on. Those indeed may be instruments that God uses, but only God will cause our faith to mature and to grow. And God has told us that the means He uses to make that faith grow are what we in the Lutheran Church term the means of grace. In other words, the avenue, the way in which God conveys to us His undeserved love, the way He conveys to us faith, forgiveness, and salvation, it is the means of grace that God has given to us, the means of grace being His Word, the gospel message as it is written, as it is preached, and as it is taught and the sacraments of which there are two, baptism and the Lord's Supper. God says and He promises that, through these words and through these sacraments, God will be active in our hearts and He will cause the faith and our maturity to grow in our relationship with Him. God has promised that, through His Word, He will convict us of our sin and He will convince us of the forgiveness that we have in Jesus Christ through the preaching and the teaching and the studying of His Word. God will be active in our lives through the sacraments God has given to us, through the gift of baptism so that, in infants, it creates faith and, in adults, it confirms that faith, that through the water and the Word, God has placed His seal upon each and every one of you. He has claimed you to be one of His children through the Lord's Supper which we'll be privileged to partake of this morning in this service, that in that Sacrament God comes to us, literally comes to us because in, with, and under the bread and the wine is the sacrifice that Jesus made for each one of us, the body and blood of Jesus is given and shed for you. Through this Word and through these sacraments, God acts upon our faith and causes it to grow and mature. And what that means is if the vision is to become a reality, if Gloria Dei will be a place of tremendous spiritual growth, if all those who come into contact with our congregation will be given the opportunity to mature in their faith, it means it will be built upon God's means of grace, that God and God alone will cause that growth. So that means the Word of God will be preached. It will be preached in truth and purity, and it will be preached without excuse. What I mean that it will be preached without excuse is that where God's Word is clear, we will be clear. We will not compromise. We will not water it down. If it doesn't sound politically correct, too bad. Where God's Word is clear, we shall be clear. And we shall stand firmly upon what God has to say about our lives and about our world. Where God gives us freedom, we will enjoy that freedom. But where God is clear about what He says, we also will stand firm and be clear. God's sacraments will be administered so when parents come and wish to have their children baptized and have the gift of faith given to them, then the water and the Word will be applied. When adults come and want to have their faith confirmed and want to have God's grace given to them, the water and the Word will be applied. It means that when people have a proper understanding of what's happening at the sacrament of the altar and they know about the real presence of Jesus' coming to them, in, with, and under that bread and wine with His body and blood, then they shall be welcomed at God's altar and God's grace will be poured out to them and they'll hear Jesus' words given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

We will only grow as a congregation and we will only offer that growth and maturity to those who come into our doors if it is built upon God's Word and God's sacraments. So our vision will become a reality when it has the foundation, the means of grace that God has given to us.

We will also be a place of spiritual growth when we have learned to accept change. Change brings about growth, even if we don't like change. Change brings about growth. If there is no change, we end up being stagnated and we end up not growing. You know, there was a man who worked for the same company for 25 years, the same company for 25 years doing the same job for 25 years, receiving the same pay for 25 years. He finally got fed up and went to his boss. He says, “I don't understand why I keep getting passed over.” He says, “Do you realize I have a quarter of a century worth of experience?” And the boss looked at him and said, “No, you don't have a quarter of a century worth of experience. You've had one experience for a quarter of a century.” Change is essential to growth. Growth means that things will change. Spiritual growth means that things will change. If we are to be a place where people will grow in their faith, things will change. God's church has always been changing, not changing the Word, not changing the message or the gospel that is preached but changing how that message is conveyed, changing the methods that are used. Even from the very beginning of the church, it's been about change. Consider the early church. The disciples received from Jesus the commission. “Go and make disciples of all nations.” They received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, and all eleven disciples believed in their heart and were convinced that this gospel message was only for God's chosen people. The message was to be preached only to Jewish people. No one else. Gentiles, those who were not Jews, did not partake in the message of Jesus. It was only for the Jews. The church had to change. God appeared in a vision to Peter and showed him that the gospel was for all people. It was because on the road to Damascus that Paul was confronted by Jesus Himself, converted to the faith and now he was then the missionary to the Gentile population, the non-Jewish population. If the church had not changed, the church at Corinth would not have been in existence. If the church had not changed, Gloria Dei would not be in existence. If the church had not changed, we would not be here. We would have not heard the gospel message. We would have not experienced God's forgiveness and love. If we are to be a place that will be spiritually growing, we will be a place that can accept change. Not change just for change's sake; but when that change is necessary, changing not the message, changing not the gospel, but we live in the 21st century and communicating the message in the 21st century is different than it was in centuries before. The message will remain the same, but we will still be a place of spiritual growth. We can accept change. Look how much we have changed already. We are no longer the mission church of the 1960's. We are no longer the small church of the 1970's. Nor are we the medium-sized church of the 1980's. In fact, we're not even the large church of the 1990's. Here in the 21st century, we are a very large congregation. God has blessed us, and God has prospered us, and God has brought us so many people that we are a very large congregation and, with that, comes responsibility and opportunities. Those responsibilities will be met. Those opportunities will be capitalized upon when we can accept change, change so that the gospel message can be preached to all people, so that we can truly bring Jesus to people for the first time and for a lifetime.

Change will be necessary as we grow. We will be a congregation that grows spiritually when we have unity, when we stand united as one. The number one concern that Paul had for the church at Corinth was that they were not united. The first chapter begins to address it. He says, “I can't believe what I've been hearing. Some of you, because you were baptized by me, are following me. Some of you, because you were baptized by Apollos, say you are following him. Others say that you are following Cephas.” He says, “What in the world is going on? Can Jesus be divided?” No. You do not follow Paul. You do not follow Cephas. You do not follow Apollos. You follow Jesus Christ and Him alone. The church cannot be divided. The church will never grow if it is divided. Nothing will happen in the church besides destruction. A church needs to be united, united under the one banner of Jesus Christ. All of us have had one baptism. All of us have one faith. All of us worship one Lord, and we are part of one congregation, the congregation known as the family of Gloria Dei in Urbandale , Iowa , and we need to be united in that. That doesn't mean we won't have disagreements. It doesn't mean we won't have different opinions. But in spite of the differing opinions, in spite of the disagreements, we will stand together and we will stand united as followers of Jesus, one who want to see His mission for this church accomplished, one who believes that the vision He set out there before us is one we will move towards and we will see it accomplished.

We will be a place where spiritual growth happens when we stand united, one in Christ, one in our Lord. My friends, the future of Gloria Dei is so bright. The opportunities God is bringing to us every day is astounding. The vision He has given to us is courageous. It's ambitious, and it's real. Through God causing the growth, through God working among us and empowering us with His spirit, that vision, that snapshot of the future is going to become reality. It may not turn out exactly the way we've imagined it, but it will turn out exactly the way God has pictured it.

It's time for us to refocus, to take a look at that vision to see where God is leading us and to understand that, foundational to that and to our individual lives is a commitment to grow in our faith, a commitment of Jesus. It's built upon the means of grace as God causes it to grow. It's built upon the acceptance of change when it is necessary. It's built upon unity, the unity of all of us in faith in Jesus. Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church