Dear Caldwell,
I can’t tell you how good it is to be back in the Caldwell community. I arrived back in Charlotte mid-day yesterday and went straight to the hospital to see someone, then to a staff meeting, handled some timely correspondence and then to the session meeting, getting home about 9. Call me strange, but it was a wonderful re-entry into the life and work of this congregation, and I rested happily from my labors last night.
We all get spam and other unwanted, unsolicited emails don’t we? Today, I received an email shouting in the headline, “You’re losing 20 customers a week!” O really, I thought. Obviously the sender, a consultant with something to sell, didn’t know he was writing to a church. But I welcome these unintended reminders of what “business” the church is actually in. It is not a consumer-driven enterprise that tracks its success like the old McDonald’s signs did. Remember the signs that used to declare “Over 1 million customers served?”
Instead, we look to the cross, which declares a much different message. The cross declares that we must be willing to die to ourselves and to the world’s measurements of success. When we do, we gain liberation from having to count “customers” to gain. What we gain is the freedom to practice what our Book of Order, the PC(USA) constitution, describes as a new openness. It is, the book says:
“a new openness to the sovereign activity of God in the Church and in the world, to a more radical obedience to Christ, and to a more joyous celebration in worship and work;
a new openness in its own membership, becoming in fact as well as in faith a community of women and men of all ages, races, ethnicities, and worldly conditions, made one in Christ by the power of the Spirit, as a visible sign of the new humanity;
a new openness to see both the possibilities and perils of its institutional forms in order to ensure the faithfulness and usefulness of these forms to God’s activity in the world;
and a new openness to God’s continuing reformation of the Church ecumenical, that it might be more effective in its mission.”
That’s good stuff, isn’t it? More than enough to keep us busy. For the last two Sundays, Evie and Rachel Pence have preached on the theme of call, and each of us has a call to do our part to exhibit and expand the Kingdom of God. This Sunday, we will look at the particular call to prophecy. That’s a role that’s not limited to a few; it is, rather, a call we can all hear and answer, a role we can fulfill in our daily lives at work and in our community.
Meantime, our shared life as the body of Christ goes on, and I am blessed to be a part of it. See you soon.
In Christ,
John