MUMC Sermon-07/09/06

Okay, I’ll begin with a confession: though I had not heard of him before, by the end of the article about Rob Bell, I was jealous. The newspaper writer, after all, compares him to a rock star. In fact, his 21-city tour stops in places normally used by touring bands. In Chicago, the Logan Square Auditorium’s 450 seats were sold out. Right. They bought tickets to hear this preacher.

At 35, Rob Bell is the founding pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church, an independent evangelical congregation in Grandville, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids. Though the church is only seven years old, it has nearly outgrown its present worship space, a remodeled shopping mall that seats only 3,500. So they have three identical Sunday worship services to accommodate their average attendance of 10,000. Even if you factor in a preacher’s attendance inflation factor, that’s a lot of people. See why I was jealous?

But the article in The Times also intrigued me, so I looked up Mars Hill Bible Church on the web. The church was founded in 1999. Rob Bell then just 28. Their first worship was held in a rented school auditorium. Not unusual; a few years ago I was the pastor of a church that was born in a rented middle school auditorium. But there’s where the similarity ended. At the Mars Hill Church’s first service, which they say was advertised only by word-of-mouth, 3,000 people showed up. And obviously they stayed. And brought their friends.

What impressed me about Rob Bell’s church was not just its size, though that was impressive enough. But their website also carried a listing of various ministries: small group studies in house church communities; national and global mission partnerships in India, and northern Africa; ministries for children and youth; an emphasis on healing, on worship and on learning. In some ways, much like any other church, or what most churches strive to deliver. And their self-understanding as people on a journey of faith, open to other people on a journey was also impressive, especially these two sentences: “We are a community of people where everyone admits we have faults and issues, yet we maintain that nothing is beyond the healing power of our God. As much as possible, we try to keep pretense and performance out, and emphasize that all growth and healing takes place in community.”

Because ours is a competitive culture, many of us tend to be competitive in the extreme. It’s a common issue. And stories like the article about Rob Bell, his 10,000 member church, and his current month-long, 21-city tour hit something in my gut. A little voice, mostly likely not a whisper from God, began comparing that church and Mamaroneck United Methodist. For just a split-second, I had fantasies of moving to Michigan or Arizona and renting a space in a school auditorium. The problem, of course, is endemic to our world: we compare ourselves to others, we think bigger is better, and we assume that to be faithful is always to be successful on the world’s terms.

It was a good thing, therefore, that I had been wrestling this week with the lessons for today. The gospel lesson is a simple story about Jesus and his disciples coming to Nazareth for a visit. What happens there is less than impressive. If only Jesus had been able to talk to someone with better communication skills, it might have gone better. Someone like Rob Bell. Because on his own, Jesus’ results are nothing special. They make fun of him, asking, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James? …” and all the rest. The upshot is simply described: “And they took offense at him.” Mark effectively closes the book on this little chapter, and, in this gospel, Jesus never goes home again.

Had I been Jesus, I would have found it all too discouraging. As a follower of Jesus, I’m glad to know that he had those days, too. And, had I been Jesus, I might have retreated, looked for another place, moved to Michigan, or a more hospitable corner of Galilee.

What Jesus does, instead, is send the disciples out to do the very work he’s been doing. Having taught them, having loved them, having modeled for them the way of God’s transforming community of grace, acceptance, and peace, Jesus sends the disciples out on to do his work. Undeterred, undiscouraged, unfazed, clearly within his own purpose, Jesus gives the work away. And the disciples come back to tell of their accomplishments. Still not on the scale of the Mars Hill Church, but impressive nonetheless. In fact, I suppose that if we could ask him, Rob Bell would say that he is merely continuing the tradition that Mark describes began with the first disciples: he’s doing the work that Jesus gives him, using his own gifts in his own way, to build the very same kingdom of God.

And that, of course is the point. We are called, as a church, to be the best version of our best selves. Wounded, we are called to love the God who loves us. And, loved by God, we are called to love our neighbors, wherever we find them in this vast but shrinking neighborhood we call our world.

In this, my second Sunday, I yet have much to learn. For that reason, I have little, really to say. I don’t have an agenda for the church. I understand our task as a church here enough to suppose that we may not be called to become a Mars Hill Church. Certainly, that is not my agenda. If, by some miracle, God calls us to “super size” the church, it will be as much a surprise to me as to most of you.

But I do hope that we will use all our talents, all our gifts to be the best version possible of what God wants us to be. I pray that we will each make the best use of our God-given talents, energies, and resources to support our community of faith with all our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service. And each of us is called to give each of those things, not just one of them. For we are shaped in the praying of the prayers; we are formed in the coming together into a community of learning and worship; we are taught to trust both God and each other as we give our financial gifts as generously as we are able, and we are transformed as disciples as we discover new brothers and sisters when we give ourselves totally in serving others.

My dream for this church is not that we’ll be bigger or more “successful” than another church. My hope is not that one day we’ll find ourselves written up in “The Times” or even in the “The Journal News.” My dream IS that we will be the very best version of whatever it is that God is calling us to be. To get to that place, we’ll need to give it our very best. Christ, I believe, will take that and make something of it. The disciples found out the power in committing themselves to the task Jesus had given them.

So, too, will we. That’s my agenda, my dream, for myself and for our community of faith. To be a follower of Christ means, finally, to be sent by Christ. In that sense, we are all sent, each of us individually, and all of us together. Each Christian is sent, and every church is sent, with some particular task. I am excited to discover, with each of you, just where we may be sent next, and just who we may meet on our journey.

Amen.