What’s Your “More” For?
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
6/27/2010
Here we are. Wow.
I changed my mind about John chapter 12. Really, it’s a great chapter, and since I didn’t change my mind until the sermon on it was already written, I can tell you next week’s sermon is a good one! However, there will only be one day like today. In what will seem like an instant, we’ll be walking out of here, and we’ll have our first service in our new home in the bag. So the question is what are we going to do with this time – what am I going to say to you in these few minutes I have?
I want to remind you this morning what Wildwind Church is all about. I want to assure you that, although we are changing in certain ways, there are certain things that have not changed and are not going to change.
But let’s start in the right place – let’s keep things in proper perspective. Churches are not about pastors and staff and administrators and policies. Churches are about people. When churches forget that, the people in the church can easily become casualties of the church’s ambition. A church might desire so much to grow that it actually forgets the main reason it is there, which is not programs and ministries, but human beings. Wildwind exists today not because of my vision, but because a small handful of other people had a similar vision, and embraced my vision, and we were able to do this together. I want to thank Dan and Judy for their unwavering support of Christy and I as a couple, of our aspirations for ministry, and of the people of Wildwind. I want to thank our core team, who made huge sacrifices, and kept making them year after year, to see our dream come to fruition. And I want to thank all of those who have come after that original group of 30, hopped on board, discovered what we call “the Wildwind way,” and made it their own. From that original group of 30, to 90 in the first year, to 120 by the following year, to 170 by the fifth year, back down to as little as 100 or so for a while as we met on Saturday evenings -- wait, I’m talking about attendance, aren’t I? Ministry isn’t about numbers, is it? It’s not about how many butts are in seats is it? Isn’t it about lives changing? Isn’t it about people learning to hear what God is saying to them? Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what ministry really is, what this church business is really all about. See, I learned something from our time in the desert. For me, as a pastor, those weeks where our church was actually shrinking – those weeks where, after having experienced 170, 180 people in our church, we’d have less than 100 – those were downright depressing. Trust me, you don’t pastor a church that has been growing, then watch it stop growing and begin to shrink, and not experience that as a desert. It was a difficult time, my friends, no question about it. But I had to ask myself a lot of questions at that time. What is church really all about? What are we really trying to accomplish here? What do we want to see happen? I spent a lot of time thinking about that, even wondering if maybe I was the wrong person to be your pastor, wondering what I was doing wrong. And during one of the worst of those moments, I wrote these words in an email to your leadership team:
Hi team. Increasingly I am coming to believe that we must focus on the personal spiritual formation of our people, and leave the rest to God. It is God who works in us to will and to move according to his good pleasure. So we take it as our task to create conditions where God’s life can spring up in as many as possible.
Our goal:
To replace church-building with people-building. To place the personal spiritual formation of every person as paramount, and place less emphasis on our standards for membership, attendance, etc. To organize so as to see the God-life springing up in as many as possible. To eschew structures and organizational pitfalls, and organize for the work of disciple-making.
To help people understand that their workplace, their home, their porch, their neighbor’s yard, their couch, their bedroom, and their hearts are monasteries and convents – places to be set apart for the glory of God, for the moment by moment experiencing of his presence and grace.
I am convinced that all else is religious kingdom-building in the worst sense – McChurch franchising. At the end of time, God will not ask how many members we had, how many salvation prayers were said, or how large our attendance numbers were. God will be interested in whether or not people came into our ministry and found there a place to absorb and learn the practices of Kingdom life.
Two years from now, I want more people experiencing freedom from guilt, from anxiety, from perfectionism, from fear, from the need to manage their image, from anger, etc. Those are real life changes that demand the grace and presence of God, which demands knowledge of how to live on God’s resources.
Just thinking. dave
I was just thinking, but I think I was thinking clearly. Building or no building, relocating every few years or on the same property for a hundred years, large or small, rich or poor, this is what church is. If we cannot accomplish this – if we cannot help people understand that their workplace, their home, their porch, their neighbor’s yard, their couch, their bedroom and their hearts are monasteries and convents – that they are places that are to be set apart for the glory of God, for the moment by moment experiencing of his presence and grace – if we cannot do that, then we’re just playing games. Of course I’m not as old as Dan here (!!) but I’ve been around 15 years – I know the religious gimmicks and games that will build mega-churches. I know how to do slick marketing and I know all the lingo that is used by pastors who are trying to sound cutting edge. But never have I ever cared about Wildwind being cutting edge, and if there’s any one gigantic misperception about us, that is it. We were not started to be a church that is hip, or cool, or relevant, or emergent, or any of that junk. Wildwind started because God is alive in you and in me, and in this world, and moving in all people and all places, and there are people who don’t know it and there are people who will come here and let us tell them who might not go anyplace else, not because we’re cool or hip or modern or contemporary or relevant or any of that business, but because we have always taken seriously the call to love people – messed up, broken, imperfect, suffering, hurting people, people who have bad habits, people who swear and drink and sometimes don’t stay out of beds they shouldn’t be in – people who struggle with pornography, people who are convinced God only loves them when they measure up (and who of course feel they almost never measure up), people who don’t know if they’re gay or straight, people who know they’re gay, people who are not gay but are so broken sexually that they wouldn’t know love if it sat on their lap – people who simply don’t realize that God, who IS love, has not only sat on their lap but knows them in their deepest selves, warts and all, flaws and all, mistakes and all, and loves them anyway, without condition, without merit, without confession of some creed, without playing by my religious rules, or Super Dan’s religious rules – people who simply do not realize that God’s love for them surpasses our reasoning, our understanding, and way before it has surpassed our understanding, it has gotten out of our comfort zone. People who have so bought into their own personal mythologies that they don’t even know who they are anymore. People who simply do not know this one simple truth:
2 Corinthians 5:20 (MSG)
20 …Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.
What Wildwind has always done, and what we do better than any other church I’ve ever known, is assure people that God is already their friend – they may not know God, but God knows them. They may not love God, but God loves them. They may think their guilt is God, but it’s not . They may think their harshness with themselves is God, but it’s not. They may think their perfectionism is God, but it’s not. They may think their strength is God, but it’s not. They may think their obsessive need to root every single sin and vice out of their lives is God, but it’s not. They may think their independence – their not needing anybody – their going it alone – is God, but it’s not.
This is what Wildwind is about. We’re about saying, “God is closer to you than you know – closer than your own breath, and your own heartbeat.” But the truth is that God is simply not in much of the things we think He is in, and God is in a lot of the stuff we think he has nothing to do with. God’s not in a lot of the stuff I just mentioned, but you know where God is? God is in your weakness.
2 Corinthians 4:7 (MSG)
7 If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us.
God is in that thing in your life that is dogging you and driving you crazy, perhaps the very thing that you think is keeping you from knowing God:
2 Corinthians 12:9 (MSG)
9 and then [God] told me, My grace is enough; it's all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.
The more you become part of Wildwind Church, the more you learn to find God in your weakness – know why? Because that’s all you’ve got. Compared to God, all we have is insufficiency, and if we cannot find God in our weakness and insufficiency, we cannot find God at all. Likewise, all we have is this present moment. The past is past and the future doesn’t actually exist yet. If we cannot know God in this present moment – no matter how chaotic, how dull and boring, or how seemingly meaningless it might be, then God simply cannot be known. That’s why ministry is not about programs and what are you offering my kids and what kind of music do you do. That stuff can have some validity to a limited extent, but about 90% of the time our objections and arguments over that stuff is a smokescreen to cover up one fact: we do not know where God is in this moment. We so often think that if the music was right, I could find God. If my neighbor weren’t so noisy, I could find God. If I went to church in a beautiful building instead of a school, I could find God. If my wife or husband or professor or boss understood me better and would give me some credit, I could find God. If my pastor preached more inspiring sermons, I could find God. If only that person would love me, or apologize to me, I could find God. None of this is true, and at Wildwind Church you will continue to learn how to find God in this moment. As you go out and invite friends to Wildwind, this is what you are inviting them into – not simply some talk to get them to come up front and pray a certain kind of prayer that will get them “saved,” but rather helping people to enter a life where we understand salvation as happening now – we are either responding to God in the present moment, or we are not. We are either connected to God in this moment, or we are not. Wildwind is a terrible place for people simply seeking fire insurance. For people who are lost in their own denial and illusion, who have bought into their own mythologies, hell is already here. As as great saint once said, hell is hell all the way to hell, and heaven is heaven all the way to heaven.
Now to shift gears for a moment, I was talking earlier about numbers. What difference do numbers make? Let’s go back to that email I wrote. I said we want to…
Organize so as to see the God-life springing up
in 30 people. In 100 people. In 180 people. In 300 people. In not more than 200 people. No in AS MANY AS POSSIBLE. See, there’s nothing we can do to make people encounter God, but we can expose people to God, which we do almost completely by simply learning to love people well, and thereby help them to become friends with the one who is already friends with them. We can shock them with our love, our openness, and how impossible it is to get us to look down on them. People who’ve really confronted their own dark sides are simply not shocked by, or afraid of, the dark sides in anyone else. So as we continue to see our own mythologies and confront the lies we tell ourselves, we will not be surprised or disappointed by the mythologies of others. No, we organize so as to see the God-life springing up in as many as possible.
Here we are in this beautiful building. With a sign out front. [Some of you may not know that 6-9,000 cars A DAY drive past that sign.] What for? Well, I’ve already explained much of that. It’s cheaper for us to be here than to keep throwing our money down the rent hole. But what will be the value of being here? Well, first, look out these windows and you might see God there. Go out and stand on the property and you might experience God there. Come in during the week and sit in this sanctuary and you might hear God here. All beauty comes from God and we can thank God for the expressions of his beauty that are here. Second, we have opportunities here we would never have in a rented building. Opportunities to serve our community, to fellowship with one another, and to dive ever more deeply into the experience of finding God in this moment. Third, we must remember this is not the end of our journey but just a step along it. We have landed here because circumstances pointed us here and doors were open, but we must remember that we are here because life is a journey and this is what it meant for us to keep moving. God never works the same way twice but when God is working, his stamp is on the work, and I pray we can be a congregation who is able to see that as much in hard times and adversity as in these moments of joy and celebration.
In closing, we must remember that it’s not simply about more, more, more. It’s about what your more is for. If you want more people just so you can get more money and build the reputation of your church, more is not better. If you want more people to satisfy some guilt complex about the numbers of souls that need savin’, more is not better. If you want more in order to be bigger than the church across the street, or in order to help your pastor sell his book, more is not better. Even if you want more because you really want everyone else to believe what you believe, more is not better. But if you want more because you know how deeply you continue to need the light, truth, love, and grace of God, and you simply want to help other people who are seeking the same thing you are seeking, I think you’re on the right track.
If you’ve been at Wildwind for a while, you didn’t hear much of anything new this morning, but I hope in this new place, this new season in our history, you heard it with new ears. If you’re new to us today, you should have gotten a pretty good picture of the kind of place Wildwind is and wants to continue to be. If you think you might be interested in that, we’d love to have you. If not, God bless you as you continue your journey. And of course, if we can answer any questions for you, just grab a greeter, or me, or Christy, or someone you recognize, and we’ll do our best to answer your questions. Let’s pray.
