Generation to Generation

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 1, 2015

Generation to Generation

Luke 12:48

From everyone to whom much has been given,

much will be required;

and from the one to whom much has been entrusted,

even more will be demanded.

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“Ugh!

I’d rather do just about anything else.”

That’s often the reaction you’ll hear

from my colleagues in ministry,

other pastors,

when you ask them how they feel

about Session meetings,

meetings of the governing council of their churches.

Most pastors love leading worship,

teaching,

providing pastoral care,

and doing all those things

that we were trained to do in seminary.

But most pastors look at Session meetings

as a necessity,

something that must be done

to deal with the administrative side of things,

rather like the monthly meeting

of the management team.

In many churches, Session meetings can be lengthy,

and they can often be contentious.

That was true of the Session meetings

I recall attending at my church in Buffalo,

when I served as an elder there in the early 1990s.

Things were particularly heated

because the church at that time

was planning to launch… a capital campaign;

a campaign to raise funds for…

renovations and repairs;

a campaign not all that different

from our campaign here.

Our Session has been working

on our capital campaign

for the better part of the past two years,

and I can say without hesitation

that I’ve never approached a meeting of our Session

with the feeling of “ugh”!

On the contrary,

I have looked forward to our meetings,

because our Session,

the men and women called by God

to serve our church as elders,

have worked so well together.

We’ve been united by excitement about our future;

united by our commitment to faithfully following

the call of the Spirit;

united by our commitment

to discerning God’s will for us

as a Session and as a church.

Our Session meetings have been neither lengthy,

nor contentious.

No, we don’t always agree on everything,

but we’ve worked together,

listening to one another,

listening to ideas generated from

the Imagine campaign,

and from the all the different ministry teams.

We’ve listened respectfully,

carefully,

thoughtfully.

The elders on our Session have understood

that their calling isn’t to run a business.

Yes, they have management and

administrative decisions to make,

budgets to approve,

but they are not a management team.

Elders are called to be

the spiritual leaders of a congregation,

to work together to discern God’s will,

to discern where God is calling us,

what God is calling us to do as a congregation

of disciples of Jesus Christ.

To serve as an elder on our Session

is to understand that we are often called

to take a “leap of faith”,

to make a decision that might not

make dollars and sense,

but is instead a decision

God calls us to make on faith.

Our Elders have done that the past couple of years

in adopting budgets with small deficits,

rather than balanced budgets.

We took a leap of faith that we as a congregation

wanted to keep programs intact,

and pay our staff fair salaries,

rather than cut back on programs,

cut back on staff.

We took a leap of faith that the congregation

would respond with increased annual giving.

Certainly, planning for a half-million dollar

capital campaign is taking a leap of faith,

taking a leap of faith on our future.

I’ve sensed that our Elders have understood that.

        

I’ve also sensed that our Elders have understood

that, as our text teaches us,

we’ve been given great gifts over the decades

by the generations who have gone before us,

and those gifts require a faithful response from us,

a response grounded in stewardship,

a response pointing to the generations

who will come after us.

Our Session helps lead our church

to strengthen our link

from generation to generation,

from the past through the present

into the future.

I’ve sensed that our Elders have understood that,

for all the different projects we are proposing to do

over the next few years,

this campaign isn’t about the roof,

or wiring,

or technology;

this campaign is about our future,

the future of our church.

This campaign is nothing less than that.

Tom Norwood,

our consultant from Horizon Stewardship,

said the other day that if you don’t want

a capital campaign in your church,

your choice is simple:

just join a dying church,

a church that has no future.

But any church with a future

will have a campaign like ours

to help lead that church into the future.

This church did a campaign 15 years ago:

Vision 2010.

And this church will,

if we continue in the future to faithfully link

generation to generation,

have another campaign a generation from now.

In the very first sentence in the now classic book,

“The Once and Future Church”,

author Loren Mead wrote,

“God is always calling us to be

more than we’ve been.”

                                            

It may well have been Reverend Mead’s way

of responding to our Lord’s words to us

in our text:

From everyone to whom much has been given,

much will be required;

and from the one to whom much has been entrusted,

even more will be demanded.

Eugene Peterson paraphrases our text this way:

“Great gifts mean great responsibilities;

greater gifts, greater responsibilities”

To be a disciple of Jesus Christ

is not to be invited to a life of ease and comfort;

to be a disciple is to live a life of service,

at times of sacrifice,

of losing our lives that we might gain them.

We have been given great gifts by God,

and that means we have great responsibility

 to do great and faithful things with them.

Don’t you see: the very fact

that we are having a campaign

is such a good thing!

It is a sign that we are vital, vibrant church,

that we are working together,

all of us, a diverse group,

but, like our Elders,

single minded in our understanding

that we have a responsibility

to the next generation of faithful

who will fill this Sanctuary.

We’ve talked a lot recently about our

wonderful, rich past,

our 148-year history.

Let’s look forward today,

forward into time,

a generation forward.

It is the year 2035

and a visitor comes to the door of the church,

a man, a woman,

old, young,

single, with a family.

What will they find?

Will they find what they seek:

A place of welcome?

A place of warmth?

A place of vibrant worship?

A place that nurtures learning in young and old alike?

A place where friends are made

bound by the Spirit in Christ?

Will that visitor,

that family

find this to be a place alive with the Spirit?

The answer lies …

with you and with me.               

AMEN