Tools for the Future Church | Church Off the Map | Lenten Series

Transcript

00:00:01:04 – 00:00:32:27
Clint Loveall
Last week, Michael and I tried to make the case pretty strongly that some of the answers, some of the antidote to the situation we’re in is to be the church. And we tried to say that when we failed to be the church, that’s when we get some of the problems, or at least that’s when we tend to focus on some of our problems and tonight we want to revisit that because that seems very simple.

00:00:32:27 – 00:00:53:33
Clint Loveall
And in some ways it is be the church. But when we make that a slogan, as if it would happen on its own, we’re in danger. It takes a great deal of work to be the church. It takes a great deal of intentionality to be the church. It’s not as if you could say to musicians, Just go play good music or to sports teams.

00:00:53:33 – 00:01:22:08
Clint Loveall
Just go play good basketball or football. They have to work into that. And so when we say be the church, it’s not simply something that we can aspire to do without working at it, without being very intentional, without planning, it takes a lot to do that simple sounding thing. So tonight, we’re going to talk a little bit more about what it means to keep those bigger goals in mind, a little bit of appraisal.

00:01:22:44 – 00:01:49:42
Clint Loveall
We’ve talked a lot about where we are, but the thing about knowing where you are is then reflecting on where you want to go and how do you get there, What is the path Look like there? And we’re going to talk about begin to talk about the first of two sessions, probably more so of this next week. But we’re going to begin to talk about what does it look like to be the church in the new place we live.

00:01:50:23 – 00:02:20:24
Clint Loveall
If this isn’t the world of the past, what does it look like? How does it look differently to be the church in the here and now and Michael doesn’t struggle this too much. We mostly, me, are going to try not to be salty, but we mostly will. We were both we had a presbytery meeting yesterday. So my church frustration is.

00:02:20:34 – 00:02:27:14
Michael Gewecke
That they know what that means already. You just said that. And they realized and they went across the room, the communal awareness.

00:02:27:16 – 00:02:43:04
Clint Loveall
My my church tolerance is is here and my church frustration is is here. So I’m trying not to point that at you because you don’t deserve any of it. But just know that if you hear some of it, that’s where it’s coming from.

00:02:43:04 – 00:02:47:40
Michael Gewecke
So that that said in jest, I do think that.

00:02:48:01 – 00:02:48:30
Clint Loveall
It is a.

00:02:52:25 – 00:03:22:37
Michael Gewecke
That wasn’t said in jest, but if it was we we turn our attention here to to ask a little bit tonight of what does it look like when when the situation around you has changed to then reflect upon what strategies and goals do we want to or will we need to rely upon in the future? And I think maybe the best way that to lay out the path for tonight’s conversation is to look backward.

00:03:22:55 – 00:03:51:30
Michael Gewecke
So one of the the leaders in our presbytery, his name is Ian, and he functions in as a kind of pastor to the pastors. He’s kind of a person who tries to help the leadership. And Clint was talking to him and I was listening in and Ian mentioned this book called Canoeing the Mountains. And in this this has been a relatively recent, I think five or six years ish time.

00:03:51:54 – 00:04:17:47
Michael Gewecke
The author of this book is a former Presbyterian pastor. He pastored in a relatively affluent California church. And then he did well there. And then now he’s a professor at Fuller Seminary. And as a reflection of his time in ministry and now his new position where he’s trying to resource churches, he wrote this book called Canoeing the Mountains, and it kind of became popular amongst church leadership groups.

00:04:17:47 – 00:04:51:28
Michael Gewecke
And it spread pretty quickly as things as quickly as things go in the church. And so in this book, he makes this case, he says loosely, Clark were tasked with the the job of surveying the Louisiana Purchase. Right. And that they were set out to do that task with the belief that they would be able to essentially navigate water the entire way to the ocean that they thought they would get in canoes and they would paddle that path all the way west.

00:04:52:13 – 00:05:17:45
Michael Gewecke
And that plan worked all the way up until they hit the mountains and realized there was no longer a water path to keep going out to the Pacific Ocean, at which point a decision came in front, came before them. The decision was ultimately, will we proceed and no longer be canoe people or will we stop and go home?

00:05:18:23 – 00:05:43:28
Michael Gewecke
And the moment that they decided that they would continue on to the Pacific was the moment in which they decided that they would now be mountain climbers and not canoe paddlers. And everything changed at that moment. They still needed the same. They needed food, they needed clothing, they needed to continue to move forward their supplies, but they had to radically transform the way that they thought about it.

00:05:43:46 – 00:06:08:27
Michael Gewecke
That’s Michael’s five sense summary of the book. You should read the book. It’s a lot better than that. But the short version is at that moment they make this decision in light of the change of their circumstance, that they’re going to address their circumstances differently. And so they they learn to use horses and they learn to find paths through the mountain that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to navigate.

00:06:08:49 – 00:06:31:39
Michael Gewecke
And the question that the author of this book raises is what does it look like for congregations to stand before the choice of are we canoe people or mountain people? And if we choose to be mountain people, what will we carry with us? What things will we need to do to be successful if we’re going to make it on the other side of the mountains?

00:06:31:55 – 00:06:57:32
Michael Gewecke
And he proceeds to offer some ideas of what that might look like, all of which are summarized under this this label, Adaptive leadership, which essentially means that at the end of the day, leadership is always being willing to account for what you have and not what you wish you had. And in other words, you’re willing to be flexible and to encourage the whole team to be flexible, because if not, the decision is to go back the direction you came.

00:06:58:03 – 00:07:18:39
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And essentially, I think the case that he makes in the book is that the genius of Lewis and Clark’s leadership was to recognize when what they knew wasn’t going to help them much anymore. And the very difficult decision to leave your canoe behind when you’re a canoe expert because carrying a canoe through the mountains isn’t particularly helpful.

00:07:19:10 – 00:07:41:54
Clint Loveall
And for them to recognize that and be willing to abandon what they had done and what they knew and what they were good at, and embark on a journey that was going to demand new things is in some ways the pivotal moment of their decision, of their journey and their leadership. And they thought seriously about turning around. In fairness, they also did not realize what they were getting themselves into.

00:07:41:54 – 00:08:10:33
Clint Loveall
But that’s part of the trip. So as as he writes, under this heading of adaptive leadership, that matters, but I think the the flip side of that is what does it mean to be an adaptive congregation? Yes, leaders have to know pastors have to have some of those skills, but it doesn’t work if congregations don’t embrace the same struggles, the same changes.

00:08:11:04 – 00:08:36:52
Clint Loveall
So how do churches navigate new wilderness, new landscape? Stay focused on the right things. How do congregations get to the point where they can say what we used to do we were really good at, but it doesn’t seem to be working anymore. We need to try something else. And how do we sort of step out of our canoes to use that metaphor?

00:08:36:52 – 00:09:00:27
Clint Loveall
And that is a very, very difficult thing to do. That’s hard for individuals, It is very hard for groups. It is not something that groups historically do very well. And so how do how do we do that? How do we stay focused on the right things? I worked with the pastor I worked with in Texas, Steve. I’ve mentioned him many, many times.

00:09:00:27 – 00:09:33:52
Clint Loveall
He had this phrase that he would say. He said, I feel like right now we’re majoring on minors. And his words have always stuck with me because, again, Michael and I have interactions sometimes with with different congregations, different people, and I am surprised when you are subjected to a group of pastors for the day. How many of the conversations are our frustrations and experiences?

00:09:33:52 – 00:10:04:13
Clint Loveall
And, oh, we have this happening, we’re having this happening and you say, What’s it about? And they say something that doesn’t matter at all. I am surprised how much of church life, if we’re not careful, gets consumed with things that aren’t ultimately very important. I think I’ve showed you all this before, but at one point a pastor gave me a business card and I keep it and pull it out.

00:10:05:02 – 00:10:23:27
Clint Loveall
Sometimes in meetings it’s a picture of Jesus and I think he’s laughing. But the words I don’t know if you’ll be able to see this. It says, I don’t think this matters to Jesus. So sometimes in the middle of a meeting, I will just sneak a peek at my billfold and remind myself, I don’t think this matters to Jesus.

00:10:23:27 – 00:10:51:39
Clint Loveall
And it’s scary how many times that that might apply. I have wondered many times in ministry why so much of the churches work is connected to things that really aren’t the most important things and why so much of our time is taken up with things that don’t really affect change. That is a good recipe to stay stuck in your canoe.

00:10:52:21 – 00:11:17:16
Clint Loveall
And I’m not. My frustrations are largely not in this place. I want to be clear about that. My frustrations are largely with the church in general, and we devote a lot of time and effort to things that I think ultimately would be very hard to classify as kingdom things, and they would be very hard to put under that heading of being the church.

00:11:17:16 – 00:11:26:29
Clint Loveall
And so we want to think together about some of the markers we think we navigate by as we try to be adaptive congregations.

00:11:26:38 – 00:11:48:18
Michael Gewecke
I think to flesh that out a little bit. We were talking in Sunday school this morning about one of Jesus’s parables, and it it seems to me that it’s worth turning to Jesus’s parables at this point in the conversation, because you remember the story that Jesus has about the rich man and the idea that all of his possessions in one night can be plundered.

00:11:48:18 – 00:12:20:11
Michael Gewecke
And then Jesus says, You know, that you should, that that’s not where most and Ross could destroy, but in the eternal storehouse of heaven. Right. And we think of that as a personal command that we should not overinvest our lives in the stuff of our lives, but that is equally applicable, if not more in churches, where the temptation is that it’s the stuff that we hang on the wall or it’s the stuff that we donate that has a personal meaning which is meaningful and valuable.

00:12:20:11 – 00:12:43:26
Michael Gewecke
But but we begin to entrust that to something beyond the just the the church itself. We invest meaning in the thing rather than in the community. And when we do that, I think there is danger that we become people over connected to our stuff and not connected to the one who calls us in his name and who that stuff was supposed to serve.

00:12:43:26 – 00:13:08:38
Michael Gewecke
And, you know, I think that that is a thing that this congregation navigates really pretty well. I’ll tell you, I’ve got friends who send me pictures of the Post-it notes. They get put on drawers and cabinets in the church, and you can almost tell you can like a detective, you can almost read the story as it goes. It started as a misunderstood ending, but then it got a little salty and then it was just all out war over the silverware.

00:13:08:52 – 00:13:33:43
Michael Gewecke
You know, there was one picture where the silverware cabinet was locked with a padlock. I love following where that’s how that story got there. But that’s the temptation is to think that the stuff in that drawer was the determinative value of the congregation. And and that’s not to be convicting because that happens to all of us. We values are easy to misplace.

00:13:33:43 – 00:13:56:06
Michael Gewecke
But I think in a group it it happens very quickly that we stop telling the story of grace and forgiveness, repentance, conversion and change. And we start talking about, can you believe that Sister Betsy locked the silverware? And then that becomes the next leadership meeting. And I wish I could tell you that it doesn’t become the next leadership meeting, but the next agenda on the next church.

00:13:56:06 – 00:14:14:56
Michael Gewecke
I have a meeting, not this one actually has an issue like that on the agenda. And and so there’s a way in which you you try as a congregation to help one another. Remember, this is important, but it’s not the most important. And that’s a valuable practice for a congregation.

00:14:16:26 – 00:14:48:27
Clint Loveall
So what are the tools we have to navigate? Whatever, whatever it is that the church sets itself to do, it needs to be guided by its theology, its reading of scripture. It’s life of prayer and it’s fellowship, it’s communal health. And whether we’re canoeing, whether we’re hiking, whether we’re doing a project together or an outreach together, these are the things that we have to do.

00:14:48:54 – 00:15:21:59
Clint Loveall
And a very interesting conversation yesterday with Ian, who Michael mentioned. A lot of Ian’s job is to work with churches who are struggling. And in the three Presbyter cities that he serves, I think there are about a dozen churches that are in the process of closing or considering closing. And so Ian has to go in and have these meetings when churches aren’t doing well and begin to think with them about where they are and where it would take what it would take to maybe find a new path.

00:15:22:57 – 00:15:54:19
Clint Loveall
And I told him, you know, I can’t I can’t imagine your job. But having done that job, I asked him, is there a is there a thing that you see when you’re in one of those conversations with a congregation and times are tough and they’re not doing very well, is there a thing you hear that you know, oh, this isn’t likely to end well, that that they’re probably going to close the door and sell the building and wrap it up.

00:15:55:25 – 00:16:30:23
Clint Loveall
Is there is there anything consistent? And he said absolutely. I know I’m in trouble in those conversations when they don’t mention Jesus and they don’t mention other people when they talk about themselves, when they talk about their buildings, their budgets, their struggles, I know they are going to have a very hard time making it. And he didn’t use these words.

00:16:30:23 – 00:16:57:12
Clint Loveall
But in in this presentation previously, Michael and I use these words, the church has to resist the temptation to substitute the things of Jesus for Jesus himself. In other words, to have a religion instead of a faith. You may know this the word religion in Latin means to bind, and the intent of that word was to be bound to Christ.

00:16:58:08 – 00:17:26:52
Clint Loveall
But the practice of that word is to sort of be tied up. Religion binds us and faith frees us. And that’s an oversimplification for our purposes. But there is truth to that. When we substitute Jesus things for Jesus himself, we are going to have a very hard time. And as Ian said, those words, I thought of those many conversations I’ve been in with people in those situations.

00:17:27:14 – 00:18:09:25
Clint Loveall
And I think that is the death bell for a church. I think when they begin to look inward and they fail to look outward, there’s there’s trouble ahead. They’re going to struggle. And as I consider the experience in this place of a rich mission and connections with and partnerships with people throughout the world and in the community and projects and etc., I really think that is the way forward to invest time and energy in things that have a kingdom aspect to kingdom implication.

00:18:10:30 – 00:18:39:10
Clint Loveall
Now, Yes, light bills and furnace, of course. Yes, that stuff all matters. But if it matters too much and the other stuff matters too little, a church finds himself in a bad place. And I thought it was fascinating that Ian so quickly could identify a trait or a phrase or a situation that for him is consistently bad. I thought that was telling.

00:18:40:37 – 00:19:02:58
Michael Gewecke
What’s striking about this is it is difficult to find the nuance here because when we gave this presentation to the presbytery a few months back, we were talking in this section about how congregations need to be looking outside their walls and all the ways that they need to do this. They need to try to communicate with people outside their walls.

00:19:03:25 – 00:19:33:12
Michael Gewecke
And so I made this comment, which I think in hindsight I still stand behind. But I said that the church should not rely upon marketing. The church should rely upon our skill set and tool set of evangelism that of of good news sharing. But that should come effortlessly for from who we are. And there’s a guy who came up after me just blazing upset, told me I insulted every marketer that I’ve ever lived and that marketing wasn’t a bad thing.

00:19:33:12 – 00:19:58:46
Michael Gewecke
And I assured him that I didn’t think marketing was a bad thing and I meant no disparagement to an entire industry. But it struck me his response to it because I you know, that first press comes out more content outside our walls than any Presbyterian church. I know. I mean, we send stuff out all the time, but we’re not good marketers, if you understand what I mean by that.

00:19:58:55 – 00:20:21:23
Michael Gewecke
It’s not glitzy or glamorous or we’re not out handing out free ice cream sandwiches if you come to church, you know, I mean, we could we could get more marketing if we wanted, but that’s not the point. And I think the the nuance in that is rather simple is that a congregation dedicated to being church. And let’s be clear about what that means.

00:20:21:27 – 00:20:48:23
Michael Gewecke
Studying scripture, praying, caring for one another, and then finding in that energy the inspiration to go out and invite other people and say, hey, I think you might be blessed by studying scripture and prayer and fellowship and serving well. And that that itself is that’s what we mean by evangelism. That’s what we mean by sharing the good news.

00:20:48:34 – 00:21:16:12
Michael Gewecke
And it’s not what we consider those traditional tools of marketing. Oh, here I open the that please. If you feel about that, just send me an email if you feel like it. But do you understand the point that that there’s there’s a there kind of practice that says we want to do whatever it takes to get you to come here, and another that says we want to make a kind of community that is itself irresistible and that invites people into it.

00:21:16:22 – 00:21:23:38
Michael Gewecke
And it’s not that you don’t do both, but there is one place you should start, and that’s the case I want to make.

00:21:23:38 – 00:21:52:44
Clint Loveall
While we were in Texas, there was a church in Dallas, not a Presbyterian church, but they made the news. Y’all remember when the they looked like quarters, but they were the little golden dollars. Remember Sacajawea? Yeah. Speaking of Lewis and Clark, that wasn’t on purpose to connect those things. But there was a a newspaper article about a congregation in Dallas that had done a campaign maybe called Mark and Outlaw.

00:21:53:00 – 00:22:18:23
Clint Loveall
But the short of it was if you came to visit the church, they gave you one of those dollars, you could come. And I don’t. They went and got I don’t know how many of them and I don’t. The paper was kind to them creative, but okay. Yeah. I mean that’s fine A good for let’s try things, see what works.

00:22:18:54 – 00:23:04:31
Clint Loveall
But no, I don’t want to sound yeah I don’t want to sound like I’m going to sound. So just keep that in mind when we when we gather, we gather before the living God, the Creator of heaven and earth and the Sun, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer. And we’re going to give a dollar if that’s what we can come up with, because that’s not good enough that that’s not witness, that’s marketing, that’s not a community being attractive because it’s living the life of faith.

00:23:05:02 – 00:23:30:21
Clint Loveall
That’s a gimmick. And yeah, gimmicks are fun. I mean, they’re okay and I’m not knocking that church. I don’t know that church. They probably it was probably awesome, but I the the problem is then somebody else hears that and they think, well, let’s make it $2. And then you’ve got a bidding war for the idea that that’s why people come to church, because there’s something in it for them, because they get something out of it.

00:23:31:03 – 00:24:10:01
Clint Loveall
And it’s an unfortunate reality that that has dominated our conversations about how do we move forward and what does it look like to make progress now and I don’t know if you all feel the fatigue of it or not. Maybe, maybe you don’t. But one of the things and again, I’m I’m sorry for this language, Michael and I, you know, I spent the day yesterday with a bunch of people who feel stuck in canoes and won’t get out of them.

00:24:10:01 – 00:24:48:28
Clint Loveall
And I’m grateful to come to a place where if the canoe works, let’s use it. And if it doesn’t work, let’s let’s put it over in the grass and see what might work. That’s the only way that the church has a chance of surviving this sort of new landscape that we’re in. And I just don’t we’re not we’re not going to get there with Sacajawea dollars and fancy ads in the paper.

00:24:49:04 – 00:25:12:52
Clint Loveall
It’s going to be the church being the church and it’s going to be messy. It’s not clean. It’s not easy to talk to any organization that is trying to do new things and chart a new path. And they’re going to tell you, yeah, we probably fail more than we succeed. But failing forward is okay, perfect. The idea of perfect is sometimes the enemy of good.

00:25:13:49 – 00:25:43:17
Clint Loveall
And if we can if we can do that, if we can feel forward and be honest in situations that, hey, we tried that and it didn’t work. I’m always struck when I have larger, again, larger conversations. What if this happens? What if that happened? Then the paralysis that if causes in in congregations that are scared to try anything in case it doesn’t work and I mean, I don’t I’m not sure I understand.

00:25:43:17 – 00:26:33:32
Clint Loveall
I know failure isn’t fun and those are difficult moments, but they’re the moments that you have to take. And so, yeah, we are in a strange time. I don’t want to make this heavier than it needs to be. I, I find that places like First Press are unfortunately rare. I wish other pastors could have this experience. I don’t want to trade with them, but this this idea of we used to do this really well, so we just keep doing it like, well, you got you driving, dragging a canoe up a mountain.

00:26:33:32 – 00:27:03:30
Clint Loveall
Yeah, we’re, we’re canoe people. Well, yeah, you’re not in the canoe territory. Well, but we like canoes, so we’re just going to sit here in it in this field. Okay, let’s do that. So, yeah, yeah. It’s a very interesting time for churches to. To take this challenge of being the church seriously and to begin to explore. What does that mean?

00:27:03:30 – 00:27:20:40
Clint Loveall
What has it meant and what does it mean now? What does it mean for us? What does it mean for the people around us and the good news in that is that being the church has always been hard, but sometimes when it’s been the hardest is when church has done the best yet.

00:27:20:40 – 00:27:49:24
Michael Gewecke
The thing that I think it’s worth remembering is that the if you’re going to make a chart of church growth over time, you realize that the point of the church’s fastest accelerated growth in all of history happened during the first 200 years when the church was most systemically oppressed and sought out and persecuted. And this is going to make you wonder about me as a parent.

00:27:49:53 – 00:28:21:03
Michael Gewecke
And that’s fair. But Olivia and I love watching documentaries. And so we just watched the documentary about the gladiatorial games. I know not everyone does that with their eight year old, but Olivia and I were nerds, so we watched this documentary and I poor Clint has already heard this because it was a really good documentary. But the thing that struck me in it, which my eight year old didn’t get because, you know, anyways, but the thing that struck me about it was the games were of course, entertainment.

00:28:21:23 – 00:28:50:51
Michael Gewecke
But what what I didn’t know was every time Rome went and sacked the city, you know, their military was was here, they did not have an equal at the height of the Roman Empire. They would take a city and the first thing that they would do would be to build an arena. I didn’t know that. And the reason why they built an arena for games is because the definition of being Roman happened when the gladiators fought.

00:28:52:01 – 00:29:34:55
Michael Gewecke
That’s how they taught the people they conquered to be Roman. This is what it means to be Roman. Now, the documentary didn’t insert this, but if you know your church history, you know the people who were put in those Colosseum or the Christians and the witness that they gave and giving of their lives, women, children, that witness was so compelling that it spurred a movement that had never been seen before in its day, which led to the birth of the church and later the complete conversion of the Roman Empire, both with its ups and downs.

00:29:34:55 – 00:30:00:16
Michael Gewecke
And there were a lot of all of that. But the point I want to make is we sometimes forget that mother. The word means witness. And yes, with all of the conversation we’ve had and there’s always a danger of over talking about it. But all the conversation we’ve had about the context changing and about how culture does have a what sure feels like a more adversarial relationship to church and religion and faith.

00:30:00:37 – 00:30:24:39
Michael Gewecke
If that’s the case, then we’re getting even closer to the conditions upon which the early church thrived. And so the question that I think lingers in a congregation and and what I think of this conversation that we’re having here, it makes me wonder, will the leaders of this church in ten, 15, 20 years, could they tune back into this recording and find something valuable there?

00:30:25:08 – 00:30:52:21
Michael Gewecke
I don’t know. For me, it’s an interesting thought experiment is what we’re talking about going to lead to the creation of tools and thought and and communal practices that will help us to be Christians in the future. And will they help us respond to the world That is surely different. And I think the mistake we make is thinking that if it gets harder for Christians outside these walls, that that’s bad for the church.

00:30:53:13 – 00:31:11:25
Michael Gewecke
It might be it might be bad for some churches, but it also might be the exact right context per our history for the church’s witness to be strong. And I hope that we lean into that promise. It’s actually an opportunity if we’re willing and able to, to live into the struggle of it.

00:31:12:37 – 00:31:36:16
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and the counterintuitive part of that, I think, is if you ask people, hey, it looks like hard times are coming for the church, what churches are going to make it? It’s not going to be the biggest it’s not going to be the flashiest. It’s not going to be the newest. It’s going to be the churches that kept their focus in the right place.

00:31:36:16 – 00:32:08:45
Clint Loveall
It’s going to be the churches that remain faithful, that didn’t disintegrate over things that didn’t really matter in the big picture, and that kept their eyes on Christ as they navigated a new way forward in new times and I think that’s the frustrating moment of being. Where we are is to watch the domino of of church after church that doesn’t make it.

00:32:08:45 – 00:32:44:02
Clint Loveall
And that’s not a judgment on those places. They’re they’re good people. But we’re coming into a moment where it takes more than it has in the past for the church to Sara survive and let alone to thrive. And the churches that do that will be the ones who who have a single focus on being the kind of place that makes room for the growth of the kingdom in the presence of Jesus.

00:32:44:02 – 00:33:16:42
Clint Loveall
And to whatever extent a church can do that, then it has nothing to worry about. I don’t know that that church I mean, yes, there are places where the population dries up around you that that happens happens in our part of the world. A significant number of times, I suppose. But I just think the church that commits itself to be the church doesn’t have to worry too much about this is to be honest.

00:33:17:07 – 00:33:41:15
Clint Loveall
It’s more worried about where are we going, what are we doing, how do we encourage each other, how do we grow, how do we serve and if we keep those questions at the center, if people who have the conversations with us here, Jesus and others, more than they hear us in ours, I don’t think that church has a lot to fear.

00:33:41:15 – 00:34:10:19
Clint Loveall
Kind of want to put a put a pause here, take some thoughts, some comments, questions. I want to also tell you next week, in some ways we hold well, in some ways both the most and least practical. Next week we want to offer some thoughts and hear some thoughts on what the Church of Tomorrow might look like, how we think the church has changed, how we think the church might need to change in this new thing.

00:34:10:19 – 00:34:29:22
Clint Loveall
In other words, in a new landscape. What are some of the directions that the church might be called to explore? But we want to save that kind of end with. I think what’s interesting about that is he describes it in the book. I think I don’t like when I may disagree with it. I don’t think it’s a great book.

00:34:29:22 – 00:34:46:28
Clint Loveall
I think it’s a great story. And I like the way he uses it. The rest of the book, I thought, was just okay, But they did have a moment where they have to decide right? Because first of all, they thought they’d be there, but they’d gone way farther than they thought they were going to go. And it turns out they were only two thirds of the way.

00:34:46:28 – 00:35:11:29
Clint Loveall
They didn’t know that yet. And second all, they didn’t expect mountains and they thought if they ran into them, they’d be like the ones they knew from back east, which were this, not this. And and so they did have they did have a decision to make. And they literally made it. They sat down, you know, they they got everybody’s input and they made a conscious choice to stay the path.

00:35:11:58 – 00:35:36:23
Clint Loveall
And I think those are good words to to fulfill or try to fulfill their mission. Not sure what that would mean. I think, you know, a couple of sessions ago, we talked about some of the guidance of the church to be a witness, to do evangelism, to worship, to serve. We have a tool in our our Book of Order.

00:35:36:23 – 00:36:01:13
Clint Loveall
It’s called The Six Great Ends of the Church. I think those guide our mission. I think being Jesus people is the fundamental part of our mission. Then we could talk about our tradition and being guided by Presbyterian and such. But I think the I mean, as Jan said in our children’s love, God, love self love neighbor is a pretty good summary.

00:36:01:15 – 00:36:11:43
Clint Loveall
I mean, obviously there’s a lot of wiggle room in there, but I think that’s that’s not a bad compass heading to to follow my going.

00:36:11:52 – 00:36:34:22
Michael Gewecke
And at the risk of oversimplifying, I think my direct response to that is the church is a place that’s called to confront us with the reality of the gospel, which, if heard, has the ability to transform our life, which if happens, then sends us into the world to replicate that process somewhere else. Man, that’s fine.

00:36:34:44 – 00:36:40:15
Clint Loveall
I try to say that again. We should write that down.

00:36:40:44 – 00:37:09:50
Michael Gewecke
We we miss it because far too often we think that the conversion is supposed to be for someone else. An out temptation in the church only grows as we’ve been in it longer, as we like to think that we’ve heard it. And so we know and and the church becomes calcified not because of our ill will or but because we’re bad people.

00:37:10:03 – 00:37:33:48
Michael Gewecke
It’s because at our best, I think we think that it’s something for someone else. And if we’re confronted by the gospel, if we’re confronted by the Jesus of the Scriptures, if we’re confronted by the reality of the Kingdom of God, then we learn that he’s lower than we’re not, and that every time that we are once again reminded of that, we’re called to humble ourselves, to learn, to be renewed, transformed.

00:37:34:06 – 00:37:58:37
Michael Gewecke
And it is so easy to decide that this is where my faith is. This is how much I love my neighbor. This is how much I know who God is. And I’m sad to say that in 20 years that won’t be enough. When the conversation about faith deconstruction happens as if someday you’ll wake up and learn something and then it’s all over.

00:37:58:37 – 00:38:26:20
Michael Gewecke
Like. Like there’s one thing in the foundations blown out and we should be wrestling with that all the time, right? I mean, we should have real fundamental questions come across our desk more than once a year. And as congregations, we are tempted to to get on autopilot and to say, well, let’s let’s see if air traffic control, let’s move over here so we don’t hit the bumpy stuff.

00:38:26:51 – 00:38:50:45
Michael Gewecke
But but the reality is, I think the mission of the church is to be a place. And by place I mean people gathered, people who invite Jesus to show up. And my reading of the gospel is when Jesus showed up, he brought unsavory characters. And the people who everybody wanted first in the room tended to be the ones most vocally in opposition to his presence.

00:38:51:23 – 00:39:19:13
Michael Gewecke
That happens in church. And that’s what makes a healthy church, is the fact that all of that’s happening in this in this beautiful organic mixture and that is a witness. It’s compelling when people and you say you’re like, how are they talking to each other? How are they learning from each other that doesn’t happen outside the walls of the church often, and it should happen inside the walls of the church Capital C more often than it does.

00:39:19:13 – 00:39:40:58
Michael Gewecke
And that’s not to pretend like we’re a group of people who figure that out. We all know that there’s a lot of room for us to grow in that. But I’ll tell you this, starting to talk about it is not unimportant. Admitting the reality that this is what the congregation’s called to do and who were called to be in relationship with one another.

00:39:41:25 – 00:39:46:58
Michael Gewecke
That is at least the first step towards us being open to the Spirit of God, working that in our midst.

00:39:47:55 – 00:39:53:36
Clint Loveall
I think I’d add maybe two things as follow up.

00:39:55:40 – 00:40:27:12
Clint Loveall
So now it’s confession time. I was this probably 95%, maybe a little higher of the reason I was at the press tree meeting is because they asked me to preach. So I had to go. And I preached a passage from Joshua. And you may know it that the people crossed into the promised Land. And God tells Joshua they go through a part, a river, a river dries up.

00:40:27:12 – 00:40:46:04
Clint Loveall
So it’s sort of like crossing the Red Sea. Again, it’s a reenactment, but on the way, God tells them, send a man from each tribe in to get a stone and then pile the stones up. And there’s this wonderful line in Joshua. It says, So when your children ask you in a time to come, what do the Stones mean?

00:40:46:49 – 00:41:19:28
Clint Loveall
You will tell them that the water was cut off when the Lord delivered you from Egypt. And I think the challenge for the church is that we always live in the middle of the Nile and the future. The then part of what you all are doing now as the church is building, the thing that your children and grandchildren will inherit and and they’ll ask us why?

00:41:19:35 – 00:41:52:06
Clint Loveall
What does it mean? Why do you go eat soup on Sunday nights? Why do you go get up on Sunday mornings? Why do you do that stuff? Why is that place there? Why is there a cross on top? Right. And if if we don’t do that, if the church isn’t always concerned with, of course, being the best it can in the present, but being what it can be in the future when we may not even be there, then then we’re missing out on something.

00:41:52:06 – 00:42:21:57
Clint Loveall
And the second part of that, I think the really interesting maybe carryover, if you were in first service this morning, you not only heard me read the wrong scripture, but you are sorry about that. By the way, we had a baptism and the baptism starts with the Great Commission. I go into all the world and preach and teach and baptize in in the Greek, Greek and English.

00:42:21:57 – 00:42:49:33
Clint Loveall
They get along pretty well. But we have we translate that word goal in Matthew or in the Great Commission as an imperative. In other words, go, that’s in order. But in the Greek, it’s an imperative that is also an ongoing imperative so that the best translation is probably, as you are going or even along the way would be, I think, an acceptable version of it.

00:42:50:04 – 00:43:18:09
Clint Loveall
And we have thought of missionaries in the church as the people who went. We sent them. We need to learn to think of missionaries as the people who are along their way so that we are all one of them. So every Christian considers themself a witness, a missionary And along the way we are preaching and teaching and sharing and doing those things.

00:43:18:19 – 00:43:47:20
Clint Loveall
That’s not reserved for people who go far off. It’s it is a calling for all of us. And so I think that one of one of the strategies in regard to our mission will be to reinterpret the idea of goal to the reality of as we’re going. And I think that will be a helpful for me at least that that is a helpful thing to know.

00:43:47:20 – 00:43:57:23
Clint Loveall
It sort of reforms the idea that all that calling isn’t just for some special people, it’s for everyone. And I think that matters.

00:43:58:04 – 00:44:32:42
Michael Gewecke
For for the longest time, we have been blessed in in America because of our freedoms. To think that that our going with the face is is completely consonant with what we do in our lives. And a professor really helped me here. I did not know this until I was taught it that in the in the first century, I don’t know if you knew this, but but many of the different trades were they shared the same idol or God.

00:44:33:09 – 00:45:04:01
Michael Gewecke
So the meat trade had its own deity. And if you were going to become a meat seller in the market, if you were going to be part of that cohort, part of that economic industry, you would have to swear allegiance to. The meat sellers, God, are you with me? So the reason this is relevant to the early church is they had to ask themselves the question, Can I be a meat seller?

00:45:04:01 – 00:45:24:36
Michael Gewecke
Can I work in that industry? If to become a certified individual, I have to swear allegiance to a God other than the one true God. And this should bring to mind a whole bunch of conversations from the Book of Corinthians because there’s a whole bunch of other God stuff happening in that book. And that is the backdrop to those conversations.

00:45:25:37 – 00:45:54:12
Michael Gewecke
So I doubt anyone in this room wondered, Can I be an insurance agent and a Christian at the same time? But that’s not in our native language because of some of the freedoms that we’ve had. But every Christian knew they were a witness because doing one thing likely meant you couldn’t do another. And so in a world in which we increasingly feel like those margins are changing, that might help us find our place.

00:45:55:08 – 00:46:21:45
Michael Gewecke
But there may be some moments in which you encounter a pushback that you didn’t expect that help firm your faith in a line that you didn’t know was there that that maybe that maybe mammon or money or prestige or title or position maybe that has been a God and I didn’t realize it. And that’s an opportunity for us, I think, to see the work of Jesus Christ as Lord working within us.

00:46:21:57 – 00:46:45:10
Michael Gewecke
But that requires the humility to confront that, and it requires the courage of the church to say that there might be stuff that we find along the way that we would prefer not to find. That’s my cardinal rule of cleaning my house, is I find stuff I would rather not have been there. Does I realize how much I spent on it?

00:46:45:13 – 00:47:06:48
Michael Gewecke
Never used it, or I convinced my wife we needed it and it turns out she was right. We didn’t, you know, like the church has that, but it’s not funny. The church has that. And there’s stuff that that we might legitimately we will. I won’t say, Mike. We will legitimately be ashamed. What is in the closet. And and that’s been that way, by the way, for hundreds and thousands of years.

00:47:06:48 – 00:47:32:15
Michael Gewecke
If you know your church history, we have those things. But the courageous church stands before the redeeming savior and says, by your grace alone, are we saved? And that is enough, not our merit. That’s us taking seriously what we’ve said all along. And and I think it goes back to to your question that fundamentally, if we’re driven by the mission of looking like we all have it together, the church is in for a rough strait.

00:47:33:12 – 00:47:48:14
Michael Gewecke
If the mission is to be the people of God who live in the way of Jesus, we have a bright future because it he who will show up and is showing up. He in the present continuing sense.

00:47:49:12 – 00:48:11:27
Clint Loveall
So let me kind of finish with a story that I think maybe ties some of that together. And this is partly biographical, and then it’s some other things stitched together. So part of this story is true, and part of it is a reflection of other stories that are also true but not the same story. And I’ll tell you where it is, which is to make sure don’t mislead you.

00:48:11:27 – 00:48:29:47
Clint Loveall
I had a friend Texas, asked if he’d come talk to me, went to a church, but not the church I served lived the next town down. We hunted together, we bike together, did some stuff together. Good guy comes to me is client. I’m struggling. I don’t know what to do. I think I need to get a new job.

00:48:29:47 – 00:48:53:04
Clint Loveall
So. Yeah. What’s going on is he’s a salesman. Sold. Sold like industrial metal, sold steel and stuff to companies. He said, Well, most of my clients, when I when I go sell, they want to go to the strip club. They want me to take them out. They want to go have lunch, go to strip club. I told my boss, I don’t want to do it.

00:48:53:22 – 00:49:13:30
Clint Loveall
He said, You do what the client wants. That’s where the client wants to go. That’s where you go. So he said, I find myself with this choice of meaning, having to do things I know are wrong in order to do my job or taking the risk of getting a new job. So and he did. He got a new job.

00:49:13:58 – 00:49:33:59
Clint Loveall
Now I want to share similar stories. And this is partly his story, but not exactly because this is more this is sort of a conglomeration of other stories. There have been moments like that where people have had to make that decision and their church gets involved and their church says, look, we got you. We’re going to bring you food.

00:49:34:42 – 00:49:58:40
Clint Loveall
I’m going to take over some babysitting. We’re going to help you get through this to you find a new job because we know that’s not what Jesus wants for you. Right. So the community of faith supports one of their own who says, my faith won’t allow me to be faithful in this situation. The world says this and my faith says this.

00:49:58:40 – 00:50:20:33
Clint Loveall
And I got to go with my faith. And the church says, How can we help? And that’s our way forward, friends. I mean, that that is what it looks like to be the church now that has it’s informed by. But that has nothing to do with the name on your sign and the shape of your sanctuary tree and the kind of liturgy you do.

00:50:21:00 – 00:50:48:09
Clint Loveall
Those things are all great. But that’s the church being the church to say to one of its own, as you’re following Jesus, how can we help? And we don’t want your family to suffer because you’re making a faithful choice. We’ve got you. And those are the kind of things that happen. I think when the church has Jesus at the center and I don’t I don’t worry too much about those churches.

00:50:48:09 – 00:51:19:53
Clint Loveall
I mean, you know, churches, you can go off the rail at any point. But I think those places are going to be the ones that ultimately do. All right. And again, I I don’t want this to sound like a flogging because I can’t tell you how grateful Michael and I both are. We we have this conversation regularly to to be in a place where I don’t feel like I’m trying to canoe through a field of rocks very often.

00:51:19:53 – 00:51:45:09
Clint Loveall
And I’m very, very grateful for that. So next week, like I said, we’re going to talk, I think in some ways next week will be interesting, be practical, because it will be a lot of guesses and maybe it won’t be practical, will be a lot of guesses about what the Church of Tomorrow may look like and what church may look like in a new place.

00:51:45:09 – 00:51:54:39
Clint Loveall
So thanks for being with us tonight. Thanks for your patience and your time. And we’ll finish up next Sunday, Palm Sunday already. So thanks.