Christian Practices: conversation in conflict

Mt 18:12-17
12 "What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13 And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.
These are the stories we like don’t we. The ‘Blessed-are-the-poor-in-spirit’ stories. Many of us connect with them somehow. Blessed are the people who get laid off at 50, blessed are the single mom’s struggling to pay the rent, blessed are those crushed in credit card debt, blessed are those been to re-hab… over and over again, blessed are the high school drop outs, blessed are those called loser, failure, unfit… There is something comforting about knowing you are in the presence of people who will find a new name for you, a new way of describing you, that doesn’t call to mind past failures and present struggles, but future victories. Find that one place on earth where you are valued and valuable. And there is something inspiring about being THAT community… that group of people who in the name of Jesus, find the worth in those whom the world calls unworthy, who remember the forgotten and love those whom other’s ignore and judge.
This is what I enjoyed the most about the beginning our Visioning Process, which still continues. We started the process with people stories and we heard so many stories about ‘I felt unloved, but here I was loved. I didn’t feel like I had anything to offer, but here I feel important and valuable. I was looking for a family, and I found a family here. ‘
Gathered around Jesus, as he preached this sermon, we know it as the sermon on the Mount, were hundreds of outcasts, the expendables, these were the little ones he referred to… who suddenly heard that the kingdom of heaven was for them, that the God who created the Universe chose them to reveal his love and his power. Suddenly they were no longer the left-over or the left-out… suddenly, Jesus proclaimed… they were vital to God’s purpose and plan, an integral part of Jesus ministry in the world.


But just as we were feeling SOOOOO GOOOOOOD
Comes an IF, Walter Brueggeman coined this phrase ‘the Earth-Shattering If’
He was talking about an IF in Deuteronomy but I think it applies here.
15 "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.
This is an earth-shattering if because it pulls us out visions and dreams and parables of lost sheep and the comfort of theory, back into the everyday reality of living a shared life together in community.
Recently Isaac started taking drum lessons. You see we have this game we play at home, the boys and I. We put on a CD or a Live DVD of one of our favorite bands and jump around and play rock band…air guitars, air bass, air drums. Isaac loves air drums. He flails his arms and kicks his feet and has a great time. THEN he started taking drum lessons… learning the basics of reading music and breaking down the rhythm of a song. He had to stop flailing and kicking and start practicing the basics, One and Two and Three and Four, One e and a, Two e and a, Three e and a, Four e and a….
I give him credit, he did it, and he even practiced… but the practice was much different than dreaming about being a rock star and playing air band with dad and brother.
It is to this place, the difference between dreaming and doing, Theory and practice, that Jesus’ word, IF, takes us to. And it takes us to the very heart of our peace-making mission in the world. As radical as it is to welcome and accept others who have a past of writing bad checks or cheating on their wife or loosing job after job… it is even more radical to forgive them when their human failures affect us directly. If your brother sins AGAINST YOU …
Our witness of peacemaking, the very core of our witness to the watching world of the love of God starts when we sin against one another… when we hurt one another, disappoint one another, fail one another. The gathering of lost sheep, rejected sheep, begins in this moment, it begins in that fearful moment of direct conversation.
Its hard for me to even decide where to start because there is just so much to talk about in just this one sentence.
Jesus doesn’t command the person who is wrong, who has sinned to apologize… His command is toward the one wronged, the one hurt, the one sinned against is given the command to go and repair what they didn’t even break.
What do you think? Why would jesus want the process of conversation in the midst of conflict to start this way?
The second aspect of this sentence that I think challenges us is the phrase ‘just between the two of you.’
We don’t do that well do we? We call someone else who is not involved and talk it all over on the phone. We have conversations at coffee hour or in the parking lot with those not involved. Why? Why do we do this?
Because its natural that is why. When we feel hurt or wronged we do not want to be alone in that feeling so we go to someone else so that we don’t have to be alone. As a matter of fact, when you think about the first part of today’s reading, being alone, being the lost sheep is baaaad. Seriously, we see ourselves as those who comfort the hurt and the lonely and the rejected and so our first instinct is to what? To listen, to sympathize, to support.
Now jesus isn’t trying to short circuit that process of supporting one another when we are hurting. BUT. What can also happen when we are hurt is that we can try to gather support… when we are hurt we can want to hurt back and bring others along so that the hurt we give back is greater than what we received. We may not like the terms gossip… or revenge… but these phenomena do happen. We experience them at work, perhaps within our extended families, in the various group we belong to in the community, the school improvement team or business association or what have you.
Why does Jesus push us to go, at least at first, to the individual who has wronged us? To preserve their dignity. So that we do not become a community where there is gossip and whispering and rumor mongering.
And this leads to the third piece of this sentence that is SOOOO different from the world. What is the end result of this Christian conversation process? ‘You have won your brother or sister over. What is the end result? Not punishment but repair. Reconciliation.
What has Christ told us about the lost sheep? That God’s will is that they not be left alone, but sought after and brought back… God’s will is that they are won. The person who has hurt us is the lost sheep who needs to be found and rescued.
Do I really need to say what is so different about the conversation that Christ is teaching us? The end result is healing and a continuation of the relationship.

So let’s just make sure we are all tracking this... Jesus is telling us that the great mission of seeking the lost sheep begins here, at home, in the church, among our brothers and sisters. That the process is a conversation that the hurt or the wronged person begins, initiates. That this conversation is one on one. And does not involve others at the start. And that the end result is not vengeance… it is not making sure that they get their’s… it is winning the person who has hurt us back… So that the body of Christ, the community of faith maintains its full integrity, so that the relationship can move forward.

Now what if we are not heard, or there is no reconciliation what happens?
16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'
This is important, but it does not change the values that Jesus has infused our conversational process with. We are still working for the dignity of the one who has been wronged, while preserving the dignity of the person in the wrong, by limiting the number to whom we speak. And the end result is still reconciliation. The one or two others bring an objective opinion to this impasse. The one or two other’s ensure that each party, sinner and sinned against get to speak their piece appropriately and are heard and understood by the other. The one or two others may judge that the accused sinner, has not sinned. This may be a difference of opinion with no one clear solution or answer, so The one or two others seek to find peace that both parties can move forward together, with.
Now if peace cannot be created at this point we hear…
17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church ; and if he refuses to listen even to the church , treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
Jesus is probably imagining a smaller church than even we have. I think we could honor this third part of the process by going to the deaconate and not airing an interpersonal problem before eighty or ninety folks. But the point here is that there are three steps in which a dispute, through open and honest dialogue is reshaped into peace and reconciliation.
The greater point is that there is a specific process for dealing with controversy or conflict in the church… conversation, dialogue and there is a particular shape, a Christian way of having a conversation that Jesus is teaching us, so that we will teach it to the world.

The Practice of Confession

Couple of things before reading the sermon. I didn't type the end... I just went with that last thought and connected confession with peacemaking. I got the idea for this sermon from a Rob Bell sermon on confession, but if you listen to his sermon, mine is VERY different. Still his did inspire this. Finally, I mention my friend Jonathan Malone, who helped with some history and theology. Thanks Malone.


Intro:
There has been a lot of apologizing in the news this past week. Taylor Swift, who is apparently a country music singer, won an award for a music video. A Rap star named Kanye West interrupted her acceptance speech to give the audience a lecture about how Taylor Swift didn’t deserve the award as much as Beyonce did. Afterword… he had to issue an apology. Serena Williams a tennis pro challenged John McEnroe when a line judge made a bad call… she verbally accosted the line judge in with a barrage of obscenities and threats, which eventually cost her the match. She had to apologize twice. (I’ll come back to that). A football player () had to apologize for having custom cleats made that challenged his team’s owner to pay him for money… he already make 9 million dollars and he feels he is getting cheated. And he had to apologize.
The interesting thing about these apologies is that most of them weren’t apologies. Kanye Apologized to Taylor Swift, but in his apology basically defended what he did by saying he was ‘keeping it real’… which is to say that he was just being honest… and so he apologized if anyone was hurt by it. That is how the football player apologized too. I’m sorry if anyone was offended. Now notice those apologies. I’m sorry if anyone was offended is not actually admitting that you have done something wrong. It isn’t taking responsibility for your actions. Its basically saying that the one’s offended are at fault.
The interesting thing about Serena Williams is that her first apology didn’t sound sincere so she issued another apology which sounded more sincere. I read one sports-writers opinion of this and basically he said that it didn’t really matter if Serena was sorry or not… she just needed to sound apologetic. It didn’t really matter is she meant her apology.
At issue here is honesty and integrity. We live in an age where both seem not only lacking, but it apparently doesn’t seem to matter to people that it is. One president tells the nation there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq… which were never found… the claim never substantiated. And to be fair the previous president wanted to quibble about the meaning of the word is… remember that famous phrase.. it depends on what your definition of is, is.
Which got me to thinking about practice of the early church… a practice that we as Baptist’s don’t think of as a part of our heritage… but I want to suggest that we need to revisit it… just because the culture around us… the culture in which we raise children and grandchildren sets such a low standard for honesty and integrity. That practice is confession.

Turn with me to 1 John 1

Jn 1:8-10; 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

The Greek word translated confess is homologeo or exomologeo homou means at the same time… logos… word or say… to say or speak …homologeo… so speak at the same time. One translator suggests To be in harmony.
Just to add another perspective Hebrew word for confess is Yahdah… meaning to throw or cast away…
But to get the full effect of what the writer of 1 John is trying to say we have to read the verses that come before what we just read.
1 Jn 1:1-8
1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We Write this to make our joy complete.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Now, you tell me… what does the first phrase of I John 1… That which was from the beginning… remind you of? It should remind you of the beginning of the gospel of John… which is… In the beginning was the word… and that in turn reminds you of? Genesis 1… In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In just a few words… just one word in greek really arche… beginning… the writer of first John has taken the story of our human failings and frailty… our sin and connected it to a cosmic story… the story of God creating all things.

This is amazing stuff. Sin is such a difficult word because it carries such baggage doesn’t it. Often it is religious baggage… listening to preachers who attack and berate and judge from the pulpit… No wonder we avoid talking about it… thinking about it… facing it. It can be so painful to remember how isolated we felt, perhaps as kids , when the priest or preacher started condemning and warning and frightening us with sin and hell and punishment and God’s anger.

Notice what is happening in 1 John 1 though that is really quite amazingly different. There is honesty first…6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. Ok, so the writer is warning us to be honest with ourselves. And that alone can be a challenge right? The time to honestly stop and take a good look at ourselves is difficult to come by… and if we are carrying baggage then to honestly look can hurt…7 But…the writer pens for us… if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
Fellowship in Greek is koinonia and it means at its very root sharing….
But the writer of 1 John isn’t talking about sin and confession through scare tactics, judgment, self-righteousness or threats… He is telling us to remember creation. Remember In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

1 John isn’t inviting us to a horror show of guilt and shame… but to be a part, a participant in this creative act. Whatever failures, mistakes, poor decisions, unhealthy habits… all summed in sin…whatever that sin is that is the formless, empty, deep, darkness that we are avoiding… we can confess… we can honestly admit… because honestly admitting sin leads to a new creation… in us.
Confession, according to 1 John 1 is meant to be a creative, life-affirming and confident act that frees us from the emptiness and darkness of sin and frees us to live into a full life freed from guilt and regret.

Now, lets look at another scripture where confession is mentioned.
Jas 5:15-16
15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
Where the writer of 1 John talks to us about the benefits of confessing to God our sins… so that we can be freed from darkness and emptiness, toward a new creation… James is a bit more challenging.

Confess your sins to each other, he says
Now, I was raised to believe that confession was all well and good, but that confession to priest or pastor was not necessary or appropriate for Baptists. That was a catholic thing…

I asked my friend Jonathan about confession and he told me something that was shocking. Some Baptist churches in the 1700’s, including the Swansea church, practiced confession. Now individual’s did not come to the preacher to confess. They held a Wednesday night meeting and confessions would be made before the group that had gathered… they would listen, discern, and pray.
Now, before you completely shut the whole idea out of your head…just follow me for a minute.
Remember that in 1 John we had the word fellowship… koinonia in greek… which means sharing. In James why does the writer, James say we should confess to one another? Healing.
Sin is isolation. In Genesis 1 before the Fall, Adam and Eve and Yahweh walk together in the garden. Adam and Eve eat the fruit and then they hide… they are isolated from God. Sin is a separation from God and from one another. And sin is isolating. When we are struggling with sin… we can feel like we are the only one, like no one will understand, that people will think poorly of us, not like or love us anymore… and so we avoid it. What James is urging us to realize is that the best way to deal with the isolation of sin… is to be a community that uses confession so that we can support one another. The church hearing the confession isn’t meant to judge, to banish, to gossip, to punish… but to listen and pray and offer support. I think that what James has in mind is a bit like a twelve step program and meeting… a place where we can confess that we are addicted to whatever… and the people listening do not judge or condone… but understand and offer support.
James idea of church is not that this is meant to be a social club for those who already have it all figured out… but that it would be a family in which the burden of our failings and mistakes wouldn’t have to be carried alone any longer. This isn’t meant to be a social club for those who have it all figured out and straightened out… but a place to come with our brokenness to find support… to find mentors who have had similar struggles… to be isolated no longer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book Life Together suggests that confession should be a regular part of the church’s life. He doesn’t suggest that we start admitting things to the whole church… but that we create partnerships… one on one relationships… where we can seek guidance and support with our struggles.
Jesus himself in Mt 18:15 "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.
Notice that although confession isn’t mentioned specifically… what is described is confession. And the end result is not vengeance, anger, punishment… but reconciliation. And it just needs to be between two people who have experienced an event that caused isolation and break in their relationship.
I do think that as Baptists we can reclaim the practice of confession, not to a group, perhaps not even as Bonhoeffer suggested a regular practice with a partner… but just in those instances where we have wronged another… to start confession there. The tough part… but important part.. is that the wronged person… being confessed too… becomes the prayer partner… the supportive mentor…
1 John 1: fellowship comes from koinonia –sharer
James 5; the point of confession for James is healing… sin need no longer be isolating… through confession we are no longer alone or ashamed of our failings because we have the unconditional love and support of our sister and brothers in Christ. Confession leads to intimacy, community, confidence…
Confession is a part of the foundation of peacemaking

The Fullness of Christ

I left this script behind in the actual preaching... but you will get the point

Sunday October 11, 2009

I Cor 12: The Rule of Christ

Every Member has been given some gift by the Holy Spirit

Intro:

Over the past few weeks we have been learning about Christian Practices. The point is for us to ponder together not simply what we believe uniquely as Followers of Christ, but how those beliefs cause us to behave uniquely as a result.

There is a book that was one of the causes of my beginning to think about this issue of Christian practice and unique behavior. Its call UNChristian; what a new generation really thinks about Christianity. It is based on the research of the Barna Group who spent countless hours interviewing young Christians, mature Christians, and young people who were not involved in Church, for simplicity sake I suppose, called ‘Outsiders.’ One of the things they discovered was that a vast majority of young ‘outsiders’ automatically assumed that Christians were hypocrites… that there was a vast difference between what Christians said and did. Statistically, 85% of these younger ‘outsiders’ had been exposed to Christianity and concluded that Christians were hypocritical. 47% of these young people were active churchgoers… and they too felt that most Christians were hypocrites.

To sum this up notice, whether we agree or not, that the perception among young people is that there is a disconnect between what they hear us saying we believe and how they see us behaving.

Furthermore, the Barna Group did surveys of Christian Adults and found that while in some areas there were differences like; going to church more often, owning more Bibles, donating money to religious non-profits. But, they found that the substance of people’s daily choices, actions and attitudes contained few meaningful gaps between ‘born-again’ Christians and non-religious adults.

Are you starting to get the picture that we have to deal with

Let me give it to you one more way… 84% of young outsiders interviewed said they know at least one committed Christian. 15% of those thought the lifestyles of those Christ-followers were significantly different from the norm.

This is why I started this sermon series and once wrote that is was one of the most important of my ministry. It seems obvious to me that if we cannot reclaim the uniqueness of a Christian lifestyle, we will soon be considered, if we are not already, irrelevant.

So we have talked about how Communion makes our view of money and wealth unique… we share wealth. We have talked about how Baptism makes us unique. We offer outsiders, misfits, ne’er do wells, others, welcome and hospitality instead of fear and mistrust. We have talked about Confession and how that practice teaches us to be uniquely honest about our failures and mistakes and how it also builds a community that helps the individual move beyond past failures and into something new…. That something new is what we are going to talk about today

Turn with me if you will to 1 Cor 12 and we will start by reading verse 4

I. The Church Chosen vs. The Church Created

1 Co 12:18 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.

I want us to think about that for a moment. Does Paul think that the Corinthian Church was chosen by each individual member? OR Created by God.

It is common, especially in our culture for us to assume that we choose the church that meets our needs, lives up to our standards. Many even use a phrase… church shopping. When we say ‘church shopping’ or think that we have chosen the church we are buying into the idea that the church is like a great number of other goods that we own, like cell-phones and flat screen TV’s; or service providers that we use; PC or Mac, Verizon or AT&T.

I suppose you could say, what is so bad about that? But the thing is… TV’s and cell-phones get replaced don’t they… and we go to service providers who provide the best…. Well…. Service and if we don’t get what we want, we can move on.

But what is the church? 1 Co 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

We aren’t a service provider, a social service agency, a social gathering. Paul see’s the church as the body of Christ… and we do not choose the church according to Paul… God chooses us and places us in the church.

How does 1 Cor 12 challenge the way we think about church? First of all, Paul does not see the church as something we create or choose to participate in… Paul sees the church as something God is creating. When we are drawn to church we are being drawn into the creative activity of God, that began when God spoke over the chaotic waters and hung the starts and placed the planets and caused the sea to teem with life… the creative activity of God that cared for and guided rebellious humanity that God created… Adam and Eve, Cain, Abraham, Sarah, Moses and on and on… when you are drawn to church you are drawn into this long, long story of God creating and calling that creation good… and when it goes wrong… God starts over again to recreate because God won’t give up on this creation…

And you and… this is the exciting part… we are here to discover how we can play a role in that creating!

II. Gifts we have vs. Gifts we discover

1 Co 12:7-11 7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

What are your gifts? What gift do you bring to church?

Did you notice how odd some of the gifts that Paul describes are? Did any of you name those gifts? No. You see, churches, all churches in my experience, tend to assume that what we mean by ‘gifts’ is the skill set that we have acquired through education, work experience, hobbies, natural talents or interests. And while that isn’t wrong, and in another letter Paul encourages the followers of Christ to put to good use these gifts in the church… what Paul is talking about here isn’t the skill set that we already have… but something new, outside our history and experience, something super-natural…

The church is meant to be the crucible in which we receive, where we discover just what part God has created us to play in this on-going creating… that we may have had no idea of, no inclination of. Let me tell you, preaching does not come naturally to me… public speaking is not my favorite thing to do… I don’t come by it easily

(feel free to insert your jokes about my preaching here)

But in all seriousness… I don’t preach because I think I’m good at it. When I leave this place and specifically you, my church family, I get very nervous and uncomfortable. I sweat and my hands shake. I don’t like public speaking. But I preach because God has called me too.

Notice that I said that I get nervous when I’m not with you. Paul says that these gifts are given, in verse 7… for the common good… in the greek this is sumferon… to carry to together.

This too challenges some of the common assumptions of church. Many people tend to think of the church in terms of what they are getting out of it. What am I receiving? Paul here is talking about what we carry together… what gifts we already have, what gifts we have to discover… to be used for the common good…

I often say to potential members… I don’t ask where you have been, if you haven’t been to church, because of my own ego, because I think you are missing something. I ask because I am missing something because you are not here… you have been placed here by God to share some special gift… if you are not here, we suffer the loss.

This also challenges the way we think about ourselves.

Again, think about my example. I don’t preach because I want to… but because I’m called to, for you… and I get nervous when I’m in front of other folks… I am who God called me to be when I am with you… John Howard Yoder wrote, and I included this quote in your devotions for the week, ‘Every human being, Christian or not, is less than he or she could and ought be if not part of a body of organic, interdependence with many peers. ‘

Think about how different that is from the world. In the world we are taught the value of the rugged individual. We are taught to leave behind associations and question the authority of the group in order to discover who we are. And yes sometimes we do have to question the authority of the group. But Paul says here that we only discover who God created us to be, who we have the potential to be… when we have a group to share ourselves with, to be shaped and challenged and encouraged by.

III Women

The sad history of the church shows that much of what Paul is talking about has been missed. Especially when he talks about being baptized into the body of Christ, jew and greek, slave and free. God gives the gifts to whom God wishes according to the needs of the community. Yet women for most of our Christian history and even today in places are denied the chance to use the gifts of ministry God has given because they are women.

It is important to realize that there were women in leadership roles in the early church. Paul depended on women to lead the early church. If you look at the first page of your devotions I included just one passage, from Romans 16 and bold printed all of the women that Paul named as key leaders in various churches.

The common assumption in both Roman and Jewish culture was that women were not equipped to be leaders, especially of men. The common assumption was that slaves (people of other ethnic groups) would not have the skills to teach or instruct. The common assumption was that poor people would not be able to take important roles in a community… and this is what made the church different, unique…

The Holy Spirit empowered men and women, rich and poor, of a variety of ethnic groups and from diverse places in the social world, to preach and teach and serve and heal and pray and spread the good news. It wasn’t past experience or education or gender or economic status or societal status that defined them empowered them… it was the call of God… the Spirit that breathed on them and made them what God created them to be…

IV. Instruments

School has started. Some of you perhaps have children in school learning instruments for the first time… or you remember what it was like when the French horn or trumpet or saxophone first entered your home. What did it sound like?

I mention this because I bet there are two reactions when the horns start bleeting and blatting. I bet there is some pride at that first trembling rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb. Pride not at what is, but what might be. And there is probably a headache too.

My point is this. The church is meant to be that one place in all the world, where we are not only free, but encourage and supported as we learn to play our part in the band. It is meant to be a bit noisy and sometimes seems a bit disorganized. But here is the place where everyone gets a part, everyone plays an integral place in the song… it won’t sound the same, it won’t sound right without them. From the greatest of gifts like teaching or handling finances, to the simplest, like greeting or making coffee, are important, all are vital.

I think that is very different than the message people get in the world.

You are valuable. You have a part to play, in important part to play in God’s ongoing creation. Regardless of your education, or lack of it, your experience or lack of it, a police record, a history of rehab; no matter what you’re your parents or teachers or coaches have said about it, in this place, at Berean Baptist church we believe that you are here because God has brought you to us to play an important part in our lives, in the body of Christ, in God’s redemption of all creation. We see the potential in you, we believe that you are here to discover that image of God that you were created in and created to develop and share. We are here to support you and encourage you, to share our gifts with you, to take risks with you and to receive what you have to give.

God Bless you all