Reaching More- We Have A Dream
Glenville/Calvary Joshua 3:1-7 Luke 4:14-21
How many of you have had the experience of wanting something really badly but you couldn’t get it right then because there were a few things you had to have in place that were not yet quite in place.
You would have liked to have gotten that car, but you didn’t have the right job yet. You would have liked to have dated that girl, but she still liked Thomas. You would have loved to have had that promotion on the job, but you hadn’t finished your degree yet. You would have liked to have been the star on the team, but you had not developed your skills yet. The dream was there but the timing wasn’t right. You still had to get some things in place.
In our Old Testament reading, God’s people had a dream to enter a place called the promised land. They had been slaves for 430 years. God had sent Moses to lead them to their freedom. Just when they got to the promised land, that God wanted to give to them, they got scared and the fear of what might happen caused them to let go of their dream for something better.
God had told them the land was theirs, but they said “ the people in the land are bigger and stronger than we are, we will not go”. God said fine, “because you will not believe me, you will wander in the desert for 40 years until this whole generation dies out.”
They spent 40 years thinking about what could have been. As Pastor Kellie in her sermon last week, they were the “Would Be Victors” who never were because of unbelief. God had seen them in the promise land, but they couldn’t see themselves there, so it never happened.
Well it’s been forty years, and now the pieces have come together again, and once again the people are on the verge of seeing a dream become a reality. They are at the Jordan River on the other side is the promised land. Now imagine this, the Jordan River is at the flood stage.
It is a mighty raging river at this time of the year. You have a million people needing to get across, with their animals, and baggage with no boats and no bridges. Joshua tells the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow, the Lord will do amazing things among you.” After 40 years, God has put everything in place once again. God tells Joshua to tell the priest to go stand in the middle of the river and for the people to follow them.
How many of you know some of them yelled out “we can’t swim.” “We’re not getting in that dirty water.” “What kind of plan is that for crossing a river.” “If we don’t see a boat, we are not going anywhere.” “Why can’t we just stay here, and wait for the river to go back down.” “Who came up with this plan anyways.” “Living in the desert wasn’t that bad. It’s better than risking our lives to try to get to the other side.”
One of the strengths of both Calvary and of Glenville, is that neither church is content with just wanting to exist. Both of them have a dream inside of them to make a difference by reaching more people for Christ. If you come to one of our joint meals of sharing in feeding the community, the people we feed are glad to be here.
They don’t ask if Glenville or Calvary cooked the chicken. They’re happy for the chicken. They don’t care who served them at the table, set the table, or brought over the juice to the table. They just like the service being given to them.
They don’t ask if you’re from Calvary or from Glenville. They just know you made them feel a little bit more honored through what you did. They don’t try to figure out who smiled more at them while they were here, they just know somebody brightened their day. They tell us Rev. we like it when your church serves. They don’t say which one.
They know there is something different about the meal time they share with us, compared to the other meals they get from other groups. They now come to us with prayer requests during and after the meals. They see us as one group serving the community. It’s all because we have a dream to not only feed your body, but to minister to your soul. Some of the people from the meals program are now here as your brothers and sisters in Christ who have joined Calvary church because of a joint dream we shared.
There is something in the DNA of both of our churches in which we love Jesus Christ. You may say, how come we have not worked together sooner. It’s because there were some pieces that had not been put into place to allow to this happen. Let’s look at our history.
Calvary has been one of the flagship churches in our presbytery. It had a very high status. Started in 1890 It has a rich history of Christian Education (300 members), Community Involvement (voted to remain in the city), Youth Activities and senior programming. It sent missionaries to China. It has a rich history of Presbyterian style of worship and it was made up of people who had money. At one point it had over a million dollars in endowment funds. The headquarters of the Presbytery was in the upstairs of this church.
At the time Glenville was being started as a church, Calvary was still a very strong and vibrant congregation. Calvary was generous in that it sent funds to help Woodland Hills and Garden Valley. It gave funding to the Presbytery to give to Glenville during Glenville’s struggling years. Yet over the years as more people moved to the suburbs and some inner turmoil in the church, the church declined in membership, attendance and finance. It was forced to use up much of its endowment to help maintain the building and operating expenses. As it was declining in the 90’s and 2000’s Glenville was growing.
Glenville started in 1962 and got off to a strong start in terms of numbers, but not in finances. It was supported financially largely by the Presbytery. Presbytery had suggested it merge with St. Marks Presbyterian Church to survive, but that was not going to work because of the differences in the church. Presbytery ended financial assistance to the church in 1988 and expected the church to have to close. Glenville had a reputation for civil rights involvement and education.
Pastor Toby and I came in 1989 and we worked together to turn the church around. Our giving increased, our programming increased ,our membership increased, and throughout the 90’s and 2000’s we were on a roll doing some wonderful things in the community as well as in ministry opportunities in the world.
Glenville never had any endowment funds, but we did several successful financial campaigns. Glenville built a great reputation for youth work, community involvement, lively worship and use of technology. Glenville was never close to being a status church. We were sort of like the church on the other side of the railroad tracks.
Our churches did not communicate to each other directly but we had our own stereotypes of each other. Glenville thought Calvary was made up of wealthier and richer, somewhat snobbish Presbyterians, whose worship service was more like the frozen chosen than anything the Holy Spirit had to do with .
Some at Calvary liked that Glenville was growing, but they were not excited about that wild Pentecostal worship service and the talk about tithing in worship. It seemed as though Glenville was becoming more evangelical in its theology and Calvary was becoming more liberal. At presbytery we found ourselves voting on opposite sides of issues.
If you had looked at us10 years ago, neither church would have thought today’s service would have ever been a part of God’s strategy for us. You see from our perspective, the pieces were not in place to share a common dream.
How did we get here? Well for Glenville, we were ready to vote to leave the denomination in the early 90’s, but we agreed to simply change our name. We had a campaign to build a new church building with a gym, but we fell short in our funds and felt led by God to rebuild and remodel the sanctuary we already had.
We then felt led again to leave the denomination, and though I’m sure we had the votes to leave, we felt that God said to stay and make a difference. We thought we should be here to help with First Church East Cleveland, St. Marks, and Calvary since we were now the strongest of the predominantly African American congregations. We decided to focus on ministry and not on fighting with the denomination. We had another Campaign to finish the work on Glenville that we started, but again we fell short.
Our outreach to First Church East Cleveland, did not go very far. They were not really open to us and that church closed. We then looked at how we could hire Pastor Kellie full time and help out Calvary. In so doing we came up with a Partnership Agreement to work with Calvary by sharing Pastoral Leadership for two years.
Calvary a few years ago was working out some issues among itself in the congregation. There had been tension over disagreements with some pastoral leadership. Presbytery became more and more involved with Calvary in an effort to assist the church in moving forward. Calvary’s loss of membership and income forced the church to use more of its endowment funds, a lot of which went into repairs for the building.
Presbytery established a commission with the authority to overrule decisions made by the Session. Calvary was trying to do ministry, at the same time it was feeling a lot of pressure from Presbytery to meet some unrealistic goals. There was talk of a possible merger with First Church East Cleveland, but that died out fairly quickly.
Calvary’s session was very open to the Partnership Agreement from Glenville’s session, but initially the Commission opposed it. The commission had no other plan other than to take steps to close Calvary as a church. But there was a prayer group meeting here Friday mornings praying that God was going to open the door for Calvary to have a pastor. That group had a dream. Not only did they pray for a Pastor, they prayed God would send some funds into the church.
Finally the Presbytery approved the Partnership Agreement for two years. The prayer group not only got God to send one pastor, God sent three. I don’t know how much money they asked God for, but two weeks after Presbytery approved the Partnership Agreement, God sent in a letter stating that Calvary had received an inheritance of nearly $300,000 dollars.
Calvary has made significant progress in terms of ministry and outreach during the past two years. We have had a desire to reach more people and its been happening. We went back into the neighborhood knocking on doors to reach others for Christ. Many of the ministries done at Glenville were simultaneously being done at Calvary. Our offerings went up by nearly 10 percent for the year. We didn’t reach as many as we needed to reach in terms of adding members, but we were impacting the lives of others.
Glenville, we did not reach the goals we had set for ourselves in the two year period to be able to gain enough members to continue to have three pastors. In 2011 and 2012, we had some very difficult years financially. 2012 we ended with a deficit that was large enough to force us to terminate some workers and cut the salaries of others.
Earlier I said that 10 years ago, nobody would have thought we would have been here today in this service, but I believe God did. I even believe God set it up. Twice Glenville wanted to leave the denomination, but God kept us here. Twice we wanted to build an addition, especially a gym, but God closed the door. This last time we had a campaign we wanted to build a new kitchen for Glenville, but God said no because our funding fell short.
At our leaders’ meeting, we learned that if were going to take our church to another level of growth we needed additional parking and a larger sanctuary. We just did not have everything in place to bring into reality some of the dreams that we had. Could God have been steering us toward Calvary without us knowing it? Calvary offers the various things we had hoped to get on our own.
Could our setbacks have been because, God knew this day was coming and he was putting the pieces together?
Let’s look at it from Calvary’s perspective. Why did some of you keep hanging on in this church, when so many others were leaving? Why did you fight so hard to keep Presbytery from closing this church? What gave you faith, that new families and new youth would once again fill this church? What made the prayer team here dedicate itself to praying this church on to a new life? Why were some of you elders discussing among yourselves the possibility of a merger, even before we as pastors mentioned it in Session.
Why did you decide to open your worship services to a different kind of music and worship style? Why was Session bold enough to start upgrading this building with remodeling even before we started to talk about coming together. You were already adding some soul to your music with Blossom before we arrived. Could it be that God was preparing you for your brothers and sisters from Glenville?
Could God have been preparing us both for each other without our permission? Calvary has the building Glenville needs. Glenville has the income that Calvary needs. Both churches have talents and gifts and ministries that the other church needs. Everything is in place to give birth to a new church that can be greater than Calvary or Glenville could hope to be in the future.
As your pastors, we’ve got a dream got a dream today for a church that God has been building without us even knowing about it. A Church that will have worship services, that are filled with people of ages, of all races and of all colors. We want to create worship services that are different in their approaches.
A service for those of you who want to shout, sing and dance, and another service for those of you who like things a little shorter and a little quieter. We got a chapel, so maybe we might have a Saturday night service.
We have a dream of expanding our youth ministry. Our gym will be a ministry tool to impact young people for Christ. We want to bring forth those of you with coaching and mentoring skills to build basketball teams, volleyball teams, dance troups, drill teams and exercise classes. We got a dream of church that will indeed adopt a school and provide kids with tutoring assistance. We have a computer ministry in the making with the first $3000 already in the bank waiting to be used to purchase computers.
We have a dream that instead of using up our Endowment Funds for operational ministry, we can leave most of it in the bank and use the interest to fund summer camp, spring camp, and scholarship funds. We can be known in the city as the church that loves kids for Jesus and sends them on to college.
We have a dream of raising up leaders who are going to take the gospel to their neighborhood by simply agreeing to lead a bible study. If you say I can’t lead, but I’m open to hosting the bible study, we want to put a lay pastor or a teacher there in your home. That’s how we are going to reach more for Christ. We want to raise up leaders who we can support in their desire to raise up ministries. They will do the new singles ministry. They will do the recovery ministries. They will take our drama ministries to a new level.
We have a dream that the money we would receive from selling Glenville, would transform this sanctuary into something super beautiful. The walls, will be smoothed out and skimmed, the painting done professionally, the carpet replaced, the cushions redone, the sound booth set up back, a new sound system installed, and the projectors hosted down from the ceiling. People will just walk into the place and say “Praise God”. Our building is going to be second to none. Everybody is going to want to get married and have their funeral in the new church.
We have a dream that the new church will go to Presbytery and say give us back the $50,000 you made us set aside to close Calvary. We will take that money and name it the Glenville-Calvary Fund so that everytime a new ministry wants to start, we can give them $500 to get going. The fund that was taken for our demise, will be turned into a fund for producing new life in the new church.
We have a dream that our music and worship ministry is about to get even better. We see new variations of choirs and duets getting ready to form. We see voices developing that we have not heard before. We see the opportunity to build teams that will take their music into the nursing homes once a month. We see a choir concert that will bring in funds to meet the needs of others.
We have a dream that each year we will find a need in the world and make it our own. Just like we are doing with freeing slaves this year, we will be setting captives free of a different nature next year. We plan to keep on funding the Deacons, the Prison Ministry, the Prescription Fund, and the Revolving Loan Fund, so that nobody in our midst is falling through the cracks.
We have a dream that our leadership team can stay together. Pastor Toby is going to build an army of saints willing to visit the sick, the shut ins, and those in need. She’s going to lead those of you who want to go deeper in God, into the deeper things of God on your spiritual journeys. She’s going to keep us excited about worship.
Pastor Kellie is going to build an army made up of young people, who when they graduate from High School, they are still going to want to serve Jesus, go off to college with Jesus, and come back with Jesus still serving in the church. She will continue to partner with Sylvia, in building upon our evangelistic outreach as we focus on reaching more college students.
I want to keep using my technology skill to take this church around the world with the web, with Roku, and with whatever else comes on the scene. We are going to have our own I phone app and Android App on the phone. There will be no reason for missing out on worship, because it will be coming to you live. You can pay your tithes in the offering plate, on the web and on the phone. I want to use my administrative gifts to keep our money coming in and going out to make a difference in this world for Jesus Christ. I want to use my teaching skills to further enhance our Life-Sharing lessons.
We have a dream that this new church will be known for preaching the truth of the Word of God. We are going to love everybody, and welcome everybody, but we are going to be true to the teachings of the Scripture. I see a welcome center right there in the back of the church.
You will hear the truth about the gospel. You will hear God loves you, but Jesus that died so that you can be saved, and once you’re saved, the Holy Spirit is going to come upon to make a change in your life.
I’m excited about the New Life that we all can find at Calvary. In the new church, we are going to be say with the same conviction as Jesus said but changing the me to we, Luke 4:18-19 (NIV) 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on us, because he has anointed us to preach good news to the poor. He has sent us to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He wants us to let others know, you can find New Life At Calvary because together we made it possible.
