The Other Side of the Fence

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 27, 2012

Pentecost

The Other Side of the Fence

Romans 8:26-27

        

The Willow Creek Community Church

was little more than an idea some 40 years ago

when Bill Hybels walked around neighborhoods

in the rapidly growing suburb of South Barrington

outside of Chicago.

He knocked on doors asking residents

who didn’t have a church home

what they would look for in a church

that would encourage them to attend.

Based on his shoe-leather research,

he started Willow Creek Church.

Within 15 years it had 15,000 members,

becoming the first and best known of the megachurches,

those churches with 5,000 seat auditoriums;

services marked by contemporary music,

bright lights and elaborate staging;

churches with small groups for almost any interest;

churches with Starbucks in the lobbies;

churches with fitness clubs and personal trainers.

Thirty years after its establishment,

more than 20,000 men, women and children

were worshiping there weekly.

Clergy from other denominations flocked to Willow Creek

to learn the secrets of its success.

Bill Hybels spent as much time

conducting workshops for other pastors

as he did within his own church.

The mainline churches in particular,

those known more for its membership losses

than its megachurches,

stood in awe of Willow Creek:

Huge facilities,

huge staff,

virtually unlimited financial resources.

The question clergymen and -women were asking was,

“How can my church be more like Willow Creek?”

An interesting thing has been happening at Willow Creek

the past few years, though.

They have been losing members.

Their budget has dropped.

Staff has been cut back.

Worse, even among those members

who have stayed with the church,

there has been a “lack of enthusiasm among the faithful”.

Bill Hybels is not one to sit back and rest on his laurels.

He has taken a long, hard, honest look at his church

and what he has learned is that for all its growth,

for all its success in drawing new members,

especially from among the unchurched and the “seekers”,

“Willow Creek has failed to meet the congregation’s

deepest spiritual needs.”

A large and growing group of members felt

that the church was not helping them

with their spiritual growth.

(“Christianity After Religion”, Diana Butler Bass, 73)

What happened to this church?

This church that not that long ago was so widely admired,

that the dean of management thinkers and writers,

Peter Drucker, wrote glowingly

of Willow Creek’s organizational model,

wrote that it was a model not just for other churches to follow,

but that even the largest for-profit businesses

could learn from them.

This was a church that was so innovative,

so imaginative, that at Christmas

it didn’t give its members the traditional pageant

with Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus,

but a “a Cirque du Soleil-style show with professional acrobats,

musicians and flying angels.”

(Chicago Tribune)

What happened was they lost their focus.

 “We made a mistake,” Hybels has acknowledged.

They were outstanding at bringing people in the door,

but they were not teaching their congregation

spiritual practices,

the hard, disciplined work necessary           

to help them discern what God was doing in their lives,

where Jesus was leading them,

and how the Spirit was transforming their lives.

They learned that churches

are not in the business of entertaining,

even if it brings people in the door by the thousands.

We gather in community,

in the body that we call the church,

to be nourished,

to grow spiritually,

to grow in Christ.

Jesus did not draw men and women to him

by having a warm-up act, a juggler,

some acrobats, a sword-swallower,

all to pull a crowd together,

to get them ready then for his fast-paced presentation,

his three bullet points.

Jesus drew men and women to him

by feeding them,

feeding their deepest spiritual hunger,

feeding them with the Word of God,

assuring them of God’s mercy,

of God’s forgiveness,

of God’s goodness,

of God’s love.

Assuring them of hope,

of healing,

of new life.

Assuring them of God’s constant presence within them

by the Holy Spirit.

Last week we learned that Jesus drew a woman

caught in the act of adultery,

a capital crime under the Levitical code,

by offering her new life through forgiveness,

through mercy, through acceptance.

He showed her the path to walk

without judging her harshly.

Jesus fed her deepest hunger,

and surely awakened her

to the power of the Spirit within her,

the very same Spirit that is within all of us.

The Spirit awakens us to our missteps,

calls us back to the light,

teaches us,

disciplines us,

comforts us,

reassures us,

strengthens us.

The Spirit calls us together in community,

binds us here within this church,

and with all those who follow Christ.

The Spirit “is the divine energy of life,”

as the theologian Jürgen Moltmann puts it,

“animating the new creation of all things.”

(Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 9)

We Presbyterians struggle a bit with this term “spiritual”.

It is not a term we readily embrace.

As often as not, when we hear the term “spiritual”

and “spirituality”,

we think of New Age books

that encourage a blend of yogurt and yoga,

something that is more magic crystals

than the Messiah Christ.

And yet, Paul puts it so matter-of–factly

when he says to us:

“You are in the Spirit,

since the Spirit of God dwells in you.”

(Romans 8:9)

Paul is talking about you,

Paul is talking about me:

every one of us who follows Jesus Christ.

We are all in the Spirit

because the Spirit of God dwells within us.

We are spiritual by faith,

and we are spiritual by definition.

We are spiritual by the grace of God.

Even as we struggle with the term,

there has been a slow but steadily growing trend

among the faithful to reject the term “religious”

 in favor of the term “spiritual.”

In fact, sociologists even have an acronym

for this growing group: “SBNR” -

Spiritual But Not Religious.

These are men and women who want to grow spiritually

but have found that the term “religion”

has become too weighted with institutional baggage,

suggesting an organization that is more concerned with

creeds, rules, dogma,

hierarchy and authority

than the spiritual growth and development

of its members.

Diana Butler Bass has observed in her work that

“the word ‘spiritual’ is both an critique of institutional religion

and a longing for meaningful connection.”

(Christianity After Religion, 68)

The members of Willow Creek articulated their frustration

with their church with their lament

that for all the activities,

all the programming,

all the liveliness of the place

there wasn’t enough to help them grow spiritually.

It is the Spirit that calls us here to worship;

the Spirit calls us in community.

It is the Spirit that draws us

to gather with brothers and sisters in faith,

to be nourished,

to grow in Christ,

to grow in maturity in our faith.

This is something we do together,

feeding one another,

caring for one another,

nurturing one another.

We do this in Sunday worship,

in Sunday School classrooms,

in Circles,

in Bible Study classes;

as we camp together,

eat together;

and as we pray with and for one another.

Those who have served on Session the past few years

know that I regularly remind Elders

that their principal call is to spiritual leadership,

that their call as elders includes time spent

managing and administering,

but that most of their energy should be devoted to

providing spiritual leadership for our church.

A few years back, when I was working on my doctorate,

my focus was on why Elders are so resistant

to taking on the role of spiritual leader.

Elders at every church I have been part of,

or studied and observed over the past 25 years

all embrace the work of managing,

of governing, of administering,

with energy and enthusiasm.

But the moment the term “spiritual leader”

is set before them,

you can feel even the most faithful elder back away,

as if to say, “I can’t do that.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“That’s the minister’s job, not mine.”

It is as though we have built a fence in the church,

with a small group of “spiritual” people on one side,

and most everyone else on the other.

But we all are spiritual,

all given the gift and power of the Spirit.

Our Lesson reminds that the Spirit will help us,

guide us,

strengthen us.

as one writer puts it, “give us legs to stand on”:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness;

…because the Spirit intercedes…

 according to the will of God.

God is constantly seeking to

“break open,

tear down,

and make new” through the Holy Spirit,

the Spirit working through you and me.

And certainly God wants to break down our resistance

to embracing fully our spirituality.

Just as there is a bit of Easter

in every Sunday worship service

as we remember the resurrection,

there is a bit of Pentecost in every Sunday

as we gather,

called by the Spirit,

to be nourished by the Spirit,

and then sent out in the Spirit,

renewed, refreshed for service

by the very breath of God that is the Spirit,

every one, all of us,

spiritual women and men,

including, yes,

even the acrobats and the jugglers.

AMEN