Sermon

Who Watches the Supplies? – A Football Meditation

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    In the books of first and second Samuel we read the story of King David.  Many of us have heard stories about David, but there is at least one that we don’t often remember.  In 1 Samuel 30, we find David and 600 men who had just returned from fighting alongside Achish the king of the Philistines.  As they return home they discover that the Amalekites had raided their town, captured their wives (including two of David’s wives), their children, their livestock, as well as anything of value.  After consulting with their priest to find the will of God, David pursues the Amalekite raiding party.
    As they hurry to catch up to the raiders however, David finds that two hundred of his men are too exhausted to continue and so he leaves them behind with all their gear, supplies and what is left of their town.  David and the four hundred remaining men pursue the Amalekite raiding party and find them celebrating over all the loot that they had plundered.  David and his men attack and fight with the Amalekites from dusk that day, until the end of the following day, defeat them, and recapture every single animal, personal belonging, wife and family member.
    But when they return to their camp, the troublemakers began to stir things up.  They argued with David that the two hundred men who were left behind should not receive any of the plunder because they didn’t fight to get it.  They argued that these men should get their families back, but receive no share of the loot and plunder that they had taken from the Amalekites.
    David fights back.  David makes an argument that is important to every single one of us and one that is important to each of you on the football field.  David said:
“No, my brothers, you must not do that with what the Lord has given us. He has protected us and delivered into our hands the raiding party that came against us. 24 Who will listen to what you say? The share of the man who stayed with the supplies is to be the same as that of him who went down to the battle. All will share alike.” 25 David made this a statute and ordinance for Israel from that day to this.
    It is important to remember that when you win, it isn’t just the superstars and the heroes that win the game.  Every member of your team had a part, Every coach, every water boy, every trainer, every teacher you ever had who helped you to earn the grades you needed to play ball, it took the guy on the sidelines who sprained his ankle before the season started, every football booster, every friend who gave you a ride home from practice, every relative, every parent, and every brother or sister that comes to watch you play.  As David said, these are the people who “watch the supplies” for you. 
    When you win, it isn’t just because of the guy who threw the touchdown pass, or who caught the interception, or who made the big tackle.  Your victory didn’t come because of the superstars; it took every single one of you. 
And that includes the people who just watch the supplies.

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Baptism: Why Didn’t I Feel Anything?

PastorPartridge Sermon


After I wrote my recent blogs on baptism, my friend Tod Moses asked several questions regarding the supernatural participation of God in the ritual of baptism.  First, Tod found it odd that baptism is thought to be supernatural, when “most people feel nothing special upon baptism (other than knowing that they have done something good in terms of faith and duty.”  Later, Tod added, “I have known some pretty fine people of faith and had this baptism conversation with many of them. I’ve never come across one who said it felt supernatural or saving. Good, positive, affirming, obedient…. yes.”

    And so, the questions Tod is asking are these: If baptism is a supernatural experience, then why didn’t I feel anything?  Why have I not met people who thought that baptism felt “supernatural?”
These are all good questions.
    Fundamental to the question is the assumption that because the act of baptism is supernatural, then baptism must therefore be miraculous.  Because we believe that God is the actor in baptism, we wonder why all baptisms are not like the one in Acts 19 where twelve men, immediately upon their baptism, began to speak in tongues and prophesy. But in fact, even in the New Testament, that sort of supernatural demonstration was rare. When Simon the Sorcerer came to faith in Acts 8, he is baptized by the Apostle Phillip, follows Phillip and was “astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.”  Luke never claims that the act of baptism was, in itself, at all astonishing.
Likewise, our theology makes no such claim.
    In Wesleyan theology, baptism is held to be a “means of grace,” a path through which God comes close to us and pours grace into our lives.  Moreover, even though baptism is a sacrament of the church and the sacraments are considered to be among these “means of grace,” in his sermons, John Wesley “does not list baptism in the places where the means of grace are discussed.”[i]  While baptism is an outward sign of an inward grace, and it is an avenue through which God draws near to us and through which chooses to pour out grace, and while it is a potent symbol of our membership in the body of Christ, baptism is not, in and of itself, transformative.
    Baptism is, however, a beginning.  It is the opening of a door that leads to grace.  When we choose baptism, we can choose to walk through that door and receive God’s grace and at an infant baptism, the parents vow to raise that child in an environment of grace.  But ultimately it is our choice whether or not we will follow the path that leads onward from that door.
    If baptism was transformational or at all miraculous, baptized people wouldn’t go off the rails and do all sorts of unchristian things. We all know it happens and it isn’t a new problem.  John Wesley once said, “Say not then in your heart, “I was once baptized, therefore I am now a child of God.” Alas, that consequence will by no means hold. How many are the baptized gluttons and drunkards, the baptized liars and common swearers, the baptized railers and evil-speakers, the baptized whoremongers, thieves, extortioners? What think you? Are these now the children of God? Verily, I say unto you, whosoever you are, unto whom any one of the preceding characters belongs, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the works of your father ye do.” Unto you I call, in the name of Him whom you crucify afresh, and in his words to your circumcised predecessors, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”[ii]
    Baptism is a gift, an invitation, an opening.  It is, as Tod declared, “Good, positive, affirming, obedient” but not, in and of itself, saving or miraculous.  The supernatural aspect of baptism is not that we are miraculously transformed in some way, but that, as in communion, God promises to be present and uses that opportunity to open the door to grace.  So is baptism ever feel supernatural?  Sure, it happens for some people.  I have met one or two over the years, but for most of us, “Good, positive, affirming” and “something good in terms of faith and duty.” is about as much as we can expect.
    For most of us, that grace flows into our lives a little at a time, sometimes in waves but at other times in what feels like a trickle but truth be told, the limiting factor is not God, but us and our willingness “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly” with our God. (Micah 6”8)

    I once stood on a dock in England from which the HMS Beagle, the Mayflower and many other famous ships had set sail.  All along the dock, signs were erected to remember them.  It was not the dock that made those voyages famous or memorable, but the adventures themselves.  Likewise, we mark the occasion of baptism, not because baptism itself is remarkable, but because, knowing that God chooses to be a part of that life, we have confidence that the adventure that is beginning will be remarkable.

 

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[i] United Methodist Doctrine, The Extreme Center, Scott J. Jones, Abingdon Press, Nashville, p.244

Entitlement and the Impossible (American) Dream

PastorPartridge Sermon


    A few weeks ago, USA Today printed an article about the impossibility of reaching the American dream.  According to the article, to achieve the “American Dream” you would need to earn in excess of $130,000 per year. Since my family has been happily living the American dream for several generations (and none of us have earned anywhere nearthat much) I wondered just how the author chose to define the American Dream.  As I read, I realized two things, 1) the author’s definition was wildly different than my own and 2) it is clear that many Americans have fallen into a (very unbiblical) trap of entitlement.
    The first item on the list projects the median mortgage cost of a new home (Price: $275,000).  While this might seem reasonable in some parts of the country, it reveals two assumptions.  First, in order to achieve the American dream we have to be better than average, and second any home we buy has to be new. 
Both assumptions are false. 
    Historically, the American dream was simply “an opportunity for Americans to achieve prosperity through hard work. According to The Dream, this includes the opportunity for one’s children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers.”  (Wikipedia) In modern times, politicians have implied that the dream included home ownership, but for most people, the American dream is still about freedom of opportunity more than anything else.
    But the American dream has nothing to do with the expectation that I should be better than average or that the only acceptable home is a new one.  Where I live, homes in a decent blue collar neighborhood can be had for $50,000 and if you are handy, a fixer-upper can be considerably cheaper.  Homes in suburban neighborhoods and in more affluent school districts obviously cost more, but who says that hard-working, blue collar, city dwellers can’t live the American dream?
    With the exception of utilities, I take exception to nearly every item on the author’s list.  I understand that it much harder to make a life where the cost of living is high, but we need to remind ourselves that living the American dream has never been, and should never be, about the accumulation of “stuff.”  Too many of us believe that the American dream means we should have more possessions than our parents rather than the freedom to do what we want to do.
    It is said that blacksmiths and cleaning ladies worked extra jobs so that their children could go to college and become engineers and accountants, so that theirchildren could become poets and artists.  That mirrors the history of our family.  Our grandparents got off the boat with little more than a suitcase.  And while none of us has ever been wealthy, because we live in a nation with extraordinary freedoms, we have had the ability to be and to do whatever we chose, within the limits of our God-given abilities.
    To claim that it is impossible to achieve the American dream unless you own a new, 3000 square-foot home, with all new furniture, two new cars and a lot of other “stuff” is an insult to everything our parents and grandparents sacrificed for.  They worked their fannies off so that we would have freedom and opportunity, not sports cars, Gucci handbags and iPhones. 
As followers of Jesus Christ, there is a far more significant problem.
When we fill our lives with the desire for material possessions, rather than things like integrity, justice, and the things of God, we open ourselves to all sorts of evil.  The Apostle Paul warned his young protégé Timothy saying…
7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. (1 Timothy 6:7-9)
    Paul wasn’t saying that it was bad to have wealth.  Paul was born to a family with wealth and influence.  What Paul is saying is that we cross a line when we desire money and material possessions too much.
I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.(Philippians 4:10-12)
    We don’t need new cars and new houses to be content, and we certainly shouldn’t feel like we are entitled to have more than our parents had.  Ten years ago we sold our house and I walked away from a satisfying career in engineering.  Today, I make almost $100,000 per year less than USA Today thinks I need. 
Regardless, I am happy, I am content, and…
…I am living the American Dream.
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”(Hebrews 13:4-6)

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Rockets and Jesus

PastorPartridge Sermon

    As I write this I am in Pueblo, Colorado for a week long event known as NARAM, the National Association of Rocketry Annual Meet.  Each year, several hundred members of our organization meet for the national model rocket contests and for a week of sport flying (just for fun).  I generally don’t compete but just fly for fun.  In the evenings there are research presentations, craftsmanship model contests, movies, a charity auction, and a “state of the union” message from our president. 


    As I listened to the president’s message it struck me that the experience of this group of rocket enthusiasts is similar in many ways to our experience as a church.  For many years the membership of this organization, as well as nearly all craftsmanship hobbies, has been in serious decline.  Today’s youth are pulled in a thousand directions with video games, school clubs, and many other things and hobbies that require a skill and have a longer learning curve have suffered.  The response of the NAR (National Association of Rocketry) has been to reach out to the community, schools and groups like the scouts and 4-H (evangelism, in a way).  We offer programs of mentoring and teaching so that young people can experience our hobby and learn about rocketry but also interest them in the math and science that explains how it all works.

    Nearly ten years ago, the NAR partnered with a group of major aircraft and aviation industry corporations to conduct an annual event called TARC, the Team America Rocketry Challenge. Teams from junior high and high schools, boy scouts, girl scouts and other youth organizations from all over the country compete against one another for $50,000 in college scholarships and a trip to the Paris airshow where our champions will compete against the champions from France, England and Japan.

    But as great as the program has been, for many years, our membership wondered whether it was all worth the effort.  Our membership continued to decline despite all of the time and effort that we were contributing.  We heard the same sorts of things we hear in church, “Kids today just don’t have time.” or “There just isn’t as much interest in these sorts of things.” But we persisted because it was the right thing to do.  We were interesting a new generation in science and mathematics and we began to see that many of the students who competed on TARC teams were going on to major in science in college.  This year, our president reported that our organization reached the highest membership we have had in decades.  It didn’t happen overnight and in reality, we still have a lot of work to do to stay healthy, but we do seem to be on the right track. 

 

    As I listened to the president’s speech I wondered how much our church might be just like this association of hobbyists.  How often to we hear things like, “We tried that already and it isn’t working.” or “We’ve been doing that for years and it isn’t doing any good.” or even “We did that and we haven’t gotten any new members.”?  What that speech reminded me was that often times there is no magic bullet.  Our programs, our outreach, our evangelism, are all different than they were forty years ago.  We won’t see instant results and flocks of new members overnight.  But, if we do the right things, and we are persistent over the long haul, I am confident that we will see results.

    We are seeing some results, even if the church isn’t filling up overnight.  We must continue to do the right thing.  We must remember out mission.    Our mission is to reach out, to tell the world about Jesus, and to be persistent even when nothing seems to be working.

 “And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.” (2 Thessalonians 3:13) 

Taxing Churches Might Be Good

PastorPartridge Sermon


    There is much talk about removing the tax-exemption for churches and that might be a good thing. 
    Please understand, I am convinced that taxing churches would probably be bad for our communities.  While they would see a modest increase in property taxes, they would also find themselves with a number of large, empty buildings that are notoriously difficult to resell or re-purpose.  At the same time, they would lose meeting places for a host of civic groups (from Rotary Clubs to Cub Scouts) as well as Election Day polling places.  For these, and other reasons that I explained in my blog (Taxes: Should the Church Pay?), taxing churches would cost our communities more than they would gain. 
So what good could come from taxing churches?
Quite simply, it would be good for the church.
    Under the present system, other than the cost of construction and maintenance (which are considerable), there is no cost, no penalty, to the church for overbuilding new space or for under-utilizing existing space.  Too often, the church suffers from an edifice complex, in which they feel better about themselves if their building is bigger than the church down the street. 
    New churches build bigger than they need and old churches stay in buildings long after they can no longer afford them.  Older congregations that are losing membership typically occupy a building that they own.  The mortgage, if any, was paid off decades ago.  Those shrinking congregations inhabit buildings that would hold three to five times their number but they remain for reasons of sentimentality and tradition and because, other than maintenance, there is no cost to staying.  While the church remains in the community and may allow others to use some of their space, the majority of the church budget is dedicated to maintaining the building and not to the mission of the church.
    But we NEED the room!  Do you really need that much room?  O sure it’s nice to be able to fit your entire congregation into the sanctuary all at once, but how much extra does it cost to have three (or even five) worship service each week instead of one compared to how much it costs to maintain a building big enough to house everyone all at once?  In my last appointment, there was a Baptist church across town that only seated fifty and so they had to have tow or three series to accommodate everyone.  They longed for a building as big as ours, which seated two or three hundred, but we knew that the cost of maintaining ours was a nightmare.  Maybe it makes sense to have a big building if you use it all week long and have multiple worship services during the week, but how is it good stewardship to have a building that sits empty six days every week?
    For larger churches, paying property taxes may cause them to rethink how they use their buildings and encourage them use their space more efficiently.  And if some churches can pay their taxes and still maintain colossal edifices (and their members are willing to contribute to that), then so be it.
    For small churches it is entirely possible, in fact likely, that the imposition of property taxes would cause many of them to walk away from their buildings and become house churches.  I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  As a house church, freed from the burden of paying to maintain and heat a building they couldn’t really afford, they could now use those funds to accomplish the mission of the church.  To feed the poor, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and carry the gospel to the four corners of the earth. 
    For a church to spend its wealth maintaining a building for the sake of pride or tradition at the expense of the mission is sin.
And if paying taxes can drive the church back to its mission…
…that would be good.

Taxes: Should the Church Pay?

PastorPartridge Sermon


    I regularly hear from folks who think that the church should pay taxes.  Despite the fact that the church is not exempt from all taxes (only property taxes and some sales taxes), the theory is that by removing churches’ tax exemption, local, state and federal government would receive an enormous increase in revenue.  But is that true?  My best answer is maybe, but probably not. Here’s why:
1)      Many churches are operating at the edge of solvency.  It’s sad, but it’s no secret that most churches were built before the long decline in attendance that we have seen for the last several decades.  In our denomination, probably ten to twenty percent of our churches are struggling financially.  Many of these small churches have a budget that is barely enough to pay the pastor and keep the lights on and yet occupy relatively large buildings.  If these churches were told they had to pay an additional $5,000 to $10,000 per year in property taxes, they would simply lock the doors and go home.
2)      Church income is a moving target (Part 1).  In every church that I have served, we have had members who objected to our church sending money somewhere.  Either they objected to sending money to overseas missions, or they objected to sending money to support the expenses of our district or conference offices, or they objected to paying to support denominational missionaries, or any number of other things.  In many cases, these folks either withheld their gifts, or found ways to give gifts directly to the projects that they did support.  If the church were subject to taxation, I have no doubt that a great deal of what appears to be “church income” would suddenly vanish.
3)      Churches are a moving target.  While my denomination (The United Methodist Church) has just under 800 churches in our East Ohio Conference, the majority of them are quite small.  I don’t recall the exact figures but something like 60 percent of our churches have 40 or less in attendance.  Nationally, half of all churches have 75 or less, and close to 70 to 80 percent have 100 or less.  Those who favor taxing churches may not appreciate that churches are not like other “businesses.”  While finding space for 100 people would be harder, finding room for forty (or twenty) would be easy.  If these small churches were required to pay property taxes, a great many of them would simply abandon their buildings and meet in one another’s homes instead.
4)      Church income is a moving target (Part 2).  In my grandparents’ church, in order for the pastor to be paid, those in attendance had to specify that a part of their offering was to go to him (or her).  If the offering was small, so was the pastor’s paycheck.  In reality, this idea could be applied to almost everything in the church.  The church exists as a corporation as a matter of convenience.  It’s just easier for us to make a single donation to the church and have the treasurer pay the electric bill and the pastor’s salary, and all the other bills.  But we don’t have to do it that way.  If the church were taxed on the donations that it received, it wouldn’t take very long for most churches to make a different plan.  Pastors are already considered to be self-employed by the IRS so it would make little difference if church members paid them directly instead of through the church account.  Almost overnight, church “income” could go to zero.  The hardest things to figure out would be the utility bills and the tax bills, which, as I already noted, would go away if the church decided to walk away from their buildings.
5)      Taxing churches would increase suffering.  When churches are doing what they are supposed to be doing (and admittedly, not all of them are), the benefits that they provide to the community may be more than any taxes that they would pay.  Each church typically supports many other organizations, food pantries, homeless and battered women’s shelters, clothes closets, health clinics, prenatal care centers, others in poorer parts of the country such as Appalachia, Indian reservations, and the inner city, as well as giving generously toward the victims of natural disasters.  Because this giving is not a fixed cost (like taxes) but comes from a church’s discretionary budget, any increase in taxes will necessarily take away funds that otherwise would have been given to these sorts of projects.  And remember that taxes can’t be used to replace the funds lost by these organizations, because most of them are run by churches.
    Overall, I just don’t see much benefit to the community from removing the tax exemption from local churches.  It would hurt the poorest among us and in the end I don’t think it would generate that much money.

 (Next: Taxing Churches Might Be Good)

Your Next Pastor May Not be Human

PastorPartridge Sermon


    There are, today, many large churches in which the people enter the sanctuary… and watch their pastor on television.  These are called “multi-site” churches and this may happen in your church sooner than you think.

    While sitting through several sessions at Annual Conference last week, and listening to reports, some of the numbers began to nag at me.  I am an engineer and numbers mean something.  In particular, as I listened to our bishop, Bishop John Hopkins, as well as visiting bishop, Bishop Janice Huie from the Texas Conference, speak about the age of our clergy members; the numbers told me something about the future.  What they told me is this:
In ten years, our church will be very different.
    I admit, you may still have a human pastor, but maybe not, and maybe not in the way you are accustomed to having one.
    Here are the numbers.  In East Ohio, we have 748 churches with 586 pastors.  At present, 60 percent of our pastors are 55 or older, and 6 percent are under the age of 34.  Nationwide, those numbers aren’t much different.  According to Bishop Huie, 54% of all ordained elders are age 55-72.  In 2000, that number was only 30 percent.
    For the last ten years we have ordained, between five and seven new elders annually.  This year we had the largest class in a very long time, and there were thirteen.
    During those same ten years, we have retired between twenty and thirty five pastors every year.
    To be fair, the number of ordinations and the number of retirees is not an accurate comparison because the retirees include many local pastors as well as ordained elders.  Even so, it seems to be a fairly visible hint of things to come.
    These numbers were announced and displayed for everyone at Annual Conference, so what has me so convinced that we are about to witness a major change in ministry?
    Think about it.  If 60 percent of our pastors are 55+, that means 60 percent of our pastors will retire within the next decade.  If the pastors of 60 percent of 748 churches retire, that means that 448 churches will need a new pastor.  Sixty percent of 586 pastors is 351.  If we also assume that we can somehow duplicate our efforts this year, and ordain 13 pastors every year for the next ten years instead of only 5, we will ordain only 130 new elders.
We will ordain 130 elders to fill 448 empty pulpits.
    Of course, this doesn’t count the addition of local pastors.  This year we elected 44 new candidates for ministry, discontinued 6 candidates and also discontinued 16 local pastors and 2 provisional elders.  If we assume these numbers as averages for the next ten years and also remember that those ordained (13) must also come from the ranks of the candidates for ministry, in the end we gained 7 local pastors.
    Over a decade, that gives us 70 local pastors to add to our 130 elders for a total of 200 pastors.
That still leaves us 248 pulpits short.
Unless every pastorfills two or more pulpits.
    If the math holds, in the next ten years, we will bring in 200 new pastors to replace 351 retirees.
    Of course there are other factors that will play into this.  Our conference (and others) has expended considerable effort to attract young clergy, but in the last decade we’ve managed to raise the percentage of young (under 35) clergy by only 2 percent.  Even if we continue to improve, this alone isn’t going to fix the problem.
    Currently, to fill the existing ‘clergy gap’ we’ve invited more than fifty retirees to pastor these churches as well as 18 pastors from outside our conference and denomination.
    This means that our shortfall may not be as bad as the numbers initially suggest, but the trend tells us something.
    In the next decade we will care for God’s people but to do so will require change.  We may well employ more part-time pastors and student pastors.  In addition, more local pastors and elders will find themselves serving more than one church.  But we may also experiment with new models of ministry.  We may try multi-site churches, where one pastor preaches in multiple locations via video, and we may go back to our roots and try a twenty-first century version of the circuit rider.  We may try many things, but one thing is almost certain.
In ten years, our church will be very different.

Graduates: Tomorrow, No One Will Care

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    First, I want to congratulate all of the young people who have recently graduated from high school.
    Second, as hard as it is to say, tomorrow, no one will care.
    That doesn’t mean that what you have done for the last twelve years of your life doesn’t matter, but that what you have done is just the beginning.  You have accomplished an important milestone, but it is a milestone that we all expected you to reach.  You have achieved what most people consider to be the minimum standard for education. 
    And so you ask, “What’s next?”  While your recent accomplishments are important, they are just the beginning.  We expect you to do something with them.  Up until now, what you have done has been mandated and required.  Nearly every step along the way has been mapped out.  Your education was paid for by your family, your friends and your neighbors because we believe in its importance.  We paid for the teachers, the buildings, the administration, sports, protective gear, and the buses to get you there and back.
But tomorrow is up to you.
    Tomorrow, a new chapter begins.  This fall (or sooner) many of you will start your freshman year in college or begin trade school.  Some of you will become apprentices to master trades people, some of you will begin working in a job of some sort, and a few of you may spend some time trying to “find yourself.”  All of those things are okay but be warned, you have been given great gifts, life, health, education, and many other things, but the world is watching to see what you will do with them.
    Of course, not every high school education, nor every student, is the same as every other.  Some schools provided phenomenal opportunities and others struggled to exist.  Some of you worked hard and some coasted through school.
    But tomorrow is a new day, and the question everyone is asking is, “What will you do with it?”
    Think of it this way.  Every one of you has been given a home, a building, a place to being a new life.  Granted some of you, by virtue of your parents, your school, or your own hard work, have been given more than others.  Some of you have a small apartment and others a more spacious home, but all of you have a place to start.  Today that home that you have been given is unfinished.  The drywall isn’t finished, there’s no siding on the outside and nothing has been painted.  Your new place, your life, is just a shell. 
What it will become is up to you.
    The building you have been given can become a library, museum, bank, school, hospital, factory… or a crack house.
    By your eighteenth birthday, between your parents and your community, statisticians tell us that we have invested nearly a half million dollars in your life and education. 
We have high hopes for your future.
    Two or three months from now, no one will care where you went to high school or what your grades were like.  What everyone cares about is your destination and how well you are doing.  If you start working your boss will only care about how hard you work and how well you help her to accomplish her goals.  Your past won’t matter.  If you skip class, get drunk and flunk out of college it won’t matter whether or not you were a great student in high school.  Likewise, if you work hard, at whatever you choose to do, no one will notice, or care, if you were a poor student in high school, if you had poor parents, or grew up in a town with two hundred people.
Tomorrow is entirely up to you.
    We have invested in your life because we believe in you.  We believe that you are capable of building something amazing.  We believe that you can change the world.  We believe that you can build factories, hospitals, banks or something entirely new and wonderful that none of us have ever imagined. 
   But today, none of that matters.  Our hopes for you, our investment in you, don’t matter.  All of your hard world yesterday doesn’t matter.
    From here on we can only offer encouragement and the occasional helping hand. 
Whether you build beautiful and wonderful things…
…or crack houses…
…is up to you.

Mixed Messages

PastorPartridge Sermon


    Have you ever received mixed messages?  In high school a friend included me during youth group but at school… not so much.  Our social groups were far too different.  Many of us have had bosses that told us how great we were only to say something completely different during our annual review in order to justify crappy raises.  Of course, politicians do this all the time.  It’s hard to know what we should do when the folks who preach about “reducing our carbon footprint” live in gigantic mansions and fly on private jets. 
Mixed messages are confusing and undermine credibility.
So why do we send mixed messages to our children about church?
    We take our children to church, we make sure they get to Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, we take them to youth meetings, Christian concerts, missionary programs, to church camp in the summer.  We tell them that their decisions about church and Jesus Christ are the most important decisions that they will make in their lives.  We tell them that it is important to live our lives like Jesus.
And then we act as if none of that matters.
You don’t think so? 
    What about all the times that we complain about being overcharged and stand in line for 20 minutes to get a dollar back from customer service, but when we get undercharged we simply rejoice and go home?
    What about all the times we do questionable math or take sketchy deductions on our taxes?
Or react in anger instead of “turning the other cheek?”
Or insist that the poor are just lazy so that we don’t have a reason to help them.
    Or say that church attendance is important… unless we have a sporting event, or a cultural event, or a work conflict, or voluntary overtime, or a family event, or a thousand other things that we have shown our children are more important by our actions, if not by our words.
    We can’t teach that abortion is evil and then condemn single moms who decided not to have one.
    What about the political candidates (and parties) that we support despite their obviously unbiblical positions, character, morals and actions?
    We teach our children that pornography is bad, but half of all Christian men and one in five Christian women view porn on a regular basis.  
    We proclaim that our church welcomes everyone but turn away people who don’t fit in because they aren’t like us.
Which is it?
We can’t teach our children one thing and do something else. 
They’re smarter than that.
    Worse, we run the risk receiving the same condemnation as the church in Laodicea to whom Jesus said, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
Are we hot?  Or are we cold? 
Pick one.
    We need to quit giving our kids mixed messages.  They hate it as much as we do and it undermines our credibility.
We need to live like we believe.

The Death of Communication in the Information Age?

PastorPartridge Sermon


    Sometimes it seems that the march of progress takes us places we don’t want to go.  Earlier this year, our East Ohio Conference magazine, Joining Hands, migrated to an all-digital format and this month we learned that our district newsletter, Tuscarawas Ties, is doing the same.  Both follow a trend.  Many other publications have made this migration for a variety of reasons.  
But these two cases are different.
    I think that the transition from Tuscarawas Ties was well done but fear that the digital migration of Joining Hands will not accomplish its intended goals.
    Tuscarawas Ties has been moving in this direction for more than a year.  Although produced once each month, it had changed to a schedule of eight electronic editions and four print editions each year.  Moreover, most of its recipients are pastors and church staff who are comfortable with computers and email.
    Joining Hands’ transition was more abrupt.  They transitioned from printing once every three months, to not printing at all.  In December’s concluding edition, our Conference Director of Communications, Rick Wolcott, said that we would instead publish “stories online as they happen” in order to “increase their impact.”  The target audience of Joining Hands was broader and directed toward the church at large and the mailing list included retirees, laity, pastors and local churches that ordered multiple copies to display or pass along to key volunteers.
    If your target audience is composed of those who prefer your product in an all-digital format, then such a migration makes sense.  Tuscarawas Ties is mailed to pastors and staff that use computers every day and the news contained in it is often reprinted in local church newsletters and bulletins.  For that reason, an electronic edition is both needed and valued. 
But I don’t think that the same holds true for Joining Hands. 
    Joining Hands brought us news from around the conference.  It was full of stories of how our churches were making a difference in the name of Jesus Christ.  But the audience was not made up exclusively of people who appreciated reading that same material online.  If the churches where I have served are representative of the rest of the conference (and I think they are), producing an electronic only magazine will make it impossible for eighty or ninety percent of our members to read it.
    Trinity Church (my current appointment in a suburban, middle class community) has, by far, the most computer users of any church that I have served.  We have more than 250 members.   I have email addresses for twenty-five.  Of those, perhaps ten spend significant time on the Internet, and four might read a church magazine online.  Based on the performance of our Facebook page (where I post links of interest) ten to fifteen might see a particular post but less than five would click on it.
    I am certain that in churches that are older or less affluent these numbers would be even more discouraging.
    Joining Hands is not the first publication to move to an electronic format and it won’t be the last.  But many of those that have done so no longer exist.  The readership that they had in print did not follow them online.
    I do not doubt the professionalism or the good intentions of our conference leaders, but I fear that we have created a system that is cheaper, faster, and produces news…
…that no one will read.