THE RISE AND FALL

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations:

RISK-TAKING MISSION AND SERVICE

Matthew 25:31-46

Excellent churches step out of the box

to serve their neighbors.

A sermon preached by

Dr. William O. (Bud) Reeves

First United Methodist Church

Hot Springs, Arkansas

February 8, 2009

There’s a story about a management consultant who was leading a seminar on risk-taking and decision-making. She borrowed an illustration that had been used in many situations, but she gave it a little different twist. She got a man from the audience to volunteer, and she said to him: “Suppose I put a 40-foot steel I-beam on the floor in front of this podium. Would you walk that I-beam for $20?” The man said of course he would.

The speaker continued, “Suppose I took this same 40-foot I-beam and suspended it between two skyscrapers, 50 stories above the street. Now would you walk it for $20?” This time the man quickly responded, “No way!”

“How about $100?” she offered. Still no way.

Then the woman went a step further. She said, “Now suppose I’m on top on one skyscraper, and I’ve got one of your kids, and I’m dangling him over the edge. I say to you, ‘If you don’t walk that beam and get your kid, I’m going to drop him.’ Then would you walk across that I-beam?”

The man from the audience hesitated just slightly, then said, “Which kid have you got?”

All of life involves risk. We constantly have to decide if our goals are worth putting our lives on the line to achieve what we want. Just growing up has risks involved, much less getting married, choosing a career, running a business, or raising children. Even retiring can be risky. But I think you’ll agree that without taking the risk, we never receive the reward. What makes the risk worth it?

Churches have opportunities that might be considered risky. Every church engages in some sort of service and mission. We have to have people to teach Sunday School, serve on committees, hand out bulletins, send money to missionaries, and so forth. There’s nothing wrong with those sorts of service; in fact, they are necessary. But they’re not very risky. Fruitful congregations take service and mission a step further and engage the culture and community in risky acts of compassion, mercy, and justice. Excellent churches step out of the box of usual church life to serve their neighbors. Fruitful ministry focuses on what God is doing outside of our own church walls.

Bishop Robert Schnase, in Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, says, “Risk-taking mission and service is one of the fundamental activities of church life that is so critical that failure to practice it in some form results in a deterioration of the church’s vitality and ability to make disciples of Jesus Christ. When churches turn inward, using all resources for their own survival and caring only for their own people, then spiritual vitality wanes.”[1] Then he goes on to ask a diagnostic question: “What have we done in the last six months to make a positive difference in the lives of others that we would not have done if it were not for our relationship to Christ?”[2] Can you make a list?

I think of the Caring Place, ministering to the needs of people with Alzheimer’s and their families. I think of our mission trips to Mexico, building houses and doing medical clinics for the desperately poor. I think of some ladies in our church who did a ministry at the Garland County Jail, helping recently incarcerated women get back into society. I think of several of our church members who serve as advocates for children involved in the criminal justice system. I think of our children and youth including mission activities in their programs. We have First United Methodist members serving in virtually every mission activity in Hot Springs—feeding people, sheltering the homeless, treating the sick, helping addicts—you name it, Methodists are there. We have people stepping out of the box all the time, and I have to believe that part of it has to do with them loving Jesus. The only thing that could make me any prouder would be to have more and more people involved.

Why is this so important? Why is it critical for an excellent church to be involved in risk-taking mission and service?

First, risk-taking mission and service transforms the life of the recipient. People we help are really helped. It makes a difference in their lives. They are better for it. And when the help comes from somebody who loves Jesus, the people who receive the help know that Jesus loves them, too.

Jeff Collins is a Christian who was working with Love in Action, a ministry with AIDS patients, about ten years ago. He was ready on a Friday afternoon to call it quits after a long week. At 4:55, his phone rang. It was Jimmy, who suffered from several AIDS-related illnesses. He was sick and suffering with a fever. Could Jeff come over? All the way over, Jeff complained to God about this inconvenience after giving himself to people all week long.

When he walked in the door, he could smell that Jimmy had gotten sick all over himself and the couch and the floor. He was too weak to clean himself up. So Jeff got busy cleaning up the mess.

Then Russ, Jimmy’s partner who also had AIDS, came down the stairs, smelled the odor, and he got sick. Another mess to clean up. Jeff tried to maintain a facade of concern, but truly he was raging inside. As he cleaned up the mess around Russ’s chair, suddenly Russ spoke up: "I understand! I understand!"

"What, Russ?" Jimmy asked weakly.

"I understand who Jesus is," Russ said through tears. "He's like Jeff!" Then Jeff too began to weep and hugged Russ and prayed with him. That Friday evening Russ trusted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. God had used Jeff in spite of himself to show his love to two men with AIDS.[3]

Risk-taking mission and service transforms the lives of those we help. But secondly, risk-taking mission and service transforms the life of the servant. There is no way you can step out of the box and risk yourself to help someone else without being changed. Becoming a conduit for the love of God to one of his children will strengthen your own relationship to God. It will deepen your spirit. It will open up wellsprings of compassion that you never knew you had. It will energize you to serve even more.

Patricia Miller was an ER nurse who had learned to shut herself off emotionally from the trauma she saw every day. After five years in the ER, she had cases to treat, but really didn’t see them as people.

Then one day God intervened. Patricia had admitted a young woman who had overdosed on drugs and had attempted suicide. Her mother had brought her in and was giving the information needed. The mother had been awakened in the middle of the night by the police and was so exhausted she could hardly speak above a whisper. Impatiently, Patricia dragged the information out of the mother and jumped to the copy machine to make a copy of the medical cards. Suddenly God clearly spoke to her heart and said. “You didn’t even look at her.” Patricia stood at the copy machine and heard the voice again, “You didn’t even look at her.” She felt God’s grief for this mother and her strung-out daughter. Patricia bowed her head and prayed, “Lord, I am so sorry.”

She went back to the admissions desk and sat down in front of that mother and covered the woman’s hands with her own. She looked deeply into her eyes and tried to send all the love she could muster and said, “I care. Don’t give up.” The mother, of course, just exploded in tears, and she poured out her broken heart for her daughter who had struggled with drugs for years. Then she thanked Patricia for caring—the one with the hardened heart.

Patricia Miller wrote, “My attitude changed that night. My Jesus came right into the workplace in spite of rules that tried to keep him out. He came in to set me free to care again. He gave himself to that woman through me. My God, who so loved the world, broke that self-imposed barrier around my heart. Now he could reach out, not only to me in my pain, but to a lost and hurting woman.”[4]

Don’t enter into risk-taking mission and service if you are not willing to be led by God into spiritual places you have never been before. I remember sitting in a commons room at a mission house in Juarez, Mexico. I was leading a devotional for a mission team from our church. It was the last night after a week of construction. We had had a great experience, and God led me to ask the “What now?” question. I think what I actually said was, “What will be different in your life because of this week?” Would this just be a neat week, or did God have something greater in store for them? I didn’t have any preconceived answers in mind for the group, and I don’t remember what responses anybody made. But I know for one young woman, it was a question that changed her life. She decided she could not be content with her secular sales job any more. Neither could she be content to serve God as an active lay person. She felt a call to full-time Christian ministry. It took her a while, but she eventually went to seminary and will graduate this May. One day she will become an elder in the United Methodist Church. Her name is Heather Spencer, our intern pastor.

In risk-taking mission and service, both the servant and the served are transformed. There’s a reason for that. It’s because in risk-taking mission and service, the one we touch is Jesus Christ. Jesus told this parable of the Great Judgment, and it appears only in Matthew. But Matthew puts it at the culmination of the teaching of Christ, just before he begins the Passion narrative leading up to Easter. It’s the punch line of the entire ministry of Jesus. And the point is this: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”[5] And the converse is also true: “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”[6] Those who do the former are rewarded with eternal life, and those who don’t—well, you literally don’t want to go there.

The simple but highly profound truth is this: when we serve others, we serve Jesus Christ. We say that all the time, but think of it. The face of that unruly child in Sunday School, the face of that teenager with an attitude, the face of that old person with Alzheimer’s, the face of that homeless person, the face of that immigrant who doesn’t speak English, the face of that drug addict, the face of our spouse or our grandparent or a complete stranger is the face of Jesus Christ. How can we not love them?

One of my favorite stories that bears repeating today comes from Tony Campolo, a great preacher and professor of religion at a college in Philadelphia. One day he was on his way to work, walking down the sidewalk in winter, dressed in his suit and overcoat, when he was approached by a filthy bum. The guy was covered in soot from head to toe, and he had a huge beard. In the beard we remnants of his last several meals. The bum was holding a cup of McDonald’s coffee and mumbling to himself. He spotted Dr. Campolo and said, “Hey, Mister. You want some of my coffee?"

Campolo took the cup and drank a bit, just to be nice. He handed the cup back and said, "You're being pretty generous giving away your coffee this morning. What's gotten into you that you're giving away your coffee all of a sudden?"

The bum said, “"Well, the coffee was especially delicious this morning, and I figured if God gives you something good you ought to share it with people."

Tony could feel the set-up coming, but he walked right into it. He asked, "Is there anything I can give you in return?" He was expecting to be hit up for money.

Unfortunately the bum said, “Yeah, you can give me a hug." Five bucks would have been better. But there on the Philadelphia sidewalk, Tony Campolo put his arms around this filthy man, trying to avoid the pieces of rotted food in his beard, and the man hugged him. And kept hugging him. He would not let go. People were staring at the professional in the overcoat and the homeless bum embracing on the street. Tony was embarrassed, until suddenly his embarrassment turned to awe.

He said, “I heard a voice echoing down the corridors of time saying, I was hungry. Did you feed me? I was naked. Did you clothe me? I was sick. Did you care for me? I was the bum you met on Chestnut Street. Did you hug me? For if you did it unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to me. And if you failed to do it unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you failed to do it unto me.”[7]

I guess the question is, which group do you want to be in, the sheep or the goats? What kind of Christian do you want to be?

Rev. Andrew Young served in Congress, as the Ambassador to the United Nations in the Carter Administration, and as mayor of Atlanta in the 1980’s. None of that prepared him for the time in 1985 when his youngest daughter surprised him by announcing that she was going to Uganda to work for Habitat for Humanity. He couldn’t believe she would go to a country so far away and to an area that was still very dangerous after the civil wars and the terror of Idi Amin. He feared for her safety. But she was a young adult, and her mind was made up. She felt God calling her to make a difference by building houses in a devastated country.

So Andrew Young found himself standing in the Atlanta airport on January 7, 1985, with tears streaming down his face as he said good-bye to his daughter. He stood at the window and watched as the plane took off, taking his little girl—now grown up—to Uganda. As the plane lifted out of sight, he turned away from the window and his aides heard him mutter under his breath, “I always wanted her to be a respectable Christian…but not a real one!”[8]

What kind of Christian do you want to be? What kind of church do we want to be? Real Christians and real churches engage in risk-taking mission and service. It’s how we bear fruit for the Kingdom. It’s how we transform the world. It’s how we touch the face of Christ. Amen!