Deuteronomy 8:1-5 Psalm 46 Acts 20:17-24 Matthew 9:35-10:7 November. 18, 2007

Community of Hope David Drum

Absence of Paul Anderson

Youth “Everything” skit

The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. So Christ-followers will want to do the same thing. Had Paul Anderson been able to be here today, his sermon title was “The Hell There Is”! Because there is a hell, not only in the next life, but a smaller version here, we want to do everything God calls us to to keep people out of it. When He speaks, His words are life itself. When the Lord enables us to see how ripe the fields are for the harvest, he instructs us to pray for more people to be sent out to seek and save the lost. And sometimes, when we pray for people to go, God calls us to be the answer to our own prayer. That’s about as far as I’m going to take the sermon today. The rest is personal application.

The last two weeks have been as intense a time of hearing God speak to me directly as any I can remember in my life. But they also represent the culmination of things that have been brewing in me for quite awhile. So to set the context, I need to back up a bit. About 15 months ago, at the beginning of August, 2006, I heard God speak to me quite clearly through two conferences I attended, and as a result, came back with a new focus and energy. If you were here, then, you undoubtedly noticed a change. Then, this spring, upon returning from Tanzania, I knew that the kind of preaching and teaching opportunities I had there, I somehow had to get more of. I was surprised at how fulfilling I found those experiences. I voiced in several settings my desire to re-orient my weeks so that I could spend more time in the parts that were the most fulfilling. But after several months, I had made little progress. This last August, our whole staff was introduced to a leadership tool developed by Marcus Buckingham. And since that time, we’ve consciously worked as a staff on identifying those areas of greatest strength for each of us, as well as those areas that weaken us. The goal, obviously, was to see if each of us could make sure that our areas of greatest passion and skill would be at the center of our job descriptions. Parts of that process had proven helpful, but parts, frankly had been personally frustrating.

Fast forward to November 1. Valerie, Cheryl, and I attended the Alliance of Renewal Churches (ARC) conference in Minnesota. Each of us went with some specific questions that we were hoping God would speak to. I heard God answer one of mine three or four times. But being a skeptic in a way that comes naturally to me, I decided to go forward one last time for prayer to two guys I didn’t know. I chose them intentionally, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to speak in the natural to my situation, because they didn’t know anything about it. Here are a few of the words God spoke prophetically to me. “I picture a mountain climber. You’re climbing a mountain. The important thing to remember is that you’re climbing; no matter how things might seem, you’re going up.” “You’ve been wondering if this is a season for rest. (I had been planning on bringing a proposal for a much-needed sabbatical to our church council this last week.) Well, I believe God is saying to you… that it is not a season for rest. You’ll need to take short breaks, as any climber would, but this is a season for pressing on.” “You have a pastor’s heart. You always look around, trying to draw those on the outside in, and you like to make sure everyone’s with you when you move. God will set a line before you, and He wants you to cross it, without worrying about others. You cross the line, and they’ll follow.” Finally, “This word about a season for pressing on is not just for you, but for your congregation, too.”

Well, I wasn’t sure of all that those words meant, but I came back and told the staff that I wanted to hear more specifically what each of them felt called to do, but that it was going to be my job to lay out a staffing proposal, and I would do that once I gathered all the data. That seemed like one of the lines God was calling me to cross. Almost immediately I entered into a period that was a “pit” experience. It was as dark a time as any I can remember. One of my struggles all along has been that there are many ministry responsibilities that I enjoy doing, and really very few that I don’t. So prioritizing has always been a challenge. Part of what God was doing in the middle last week was helping me out! He took that portion of the continuum that’s on my “love it” side of things, and magnified it about a thousandfold. The things that were on the high end of love became incredibly fulfilling, a light in the midst of the darkness. Everything else felt like darkness, with a tremendous sense of dread surrounding them.

I described this time to Valerie as feeling something like being in labor. As if I would know about that! Well, delivery came on Thursday. God spoke to me again, quite clearly, and the fog immediately cleared. I had direction, and knew what I was being called to do.

I went to congregational prayer Friday morning, though, with another sense of dread. I knew what I felt like God was calling me to do, but didn’t have the first clue as to how to do it. I didn’t share any of this with those present, but the ways in which God spoke during that time were amazing. One member of the prayer circle asked another one out of the blue, “Has God given you a message for us today?” I don’t ever remember someone asking that question before. The other person answered, “As a matter of fact, yes.” Here’s what she shared: In a vision, she was driving near a school, and came up to the school crosswalk. Children were all around. The school crossing guard, recognized as having authority, waved her on through the crosswalk. At the same time, flashing lights above the crosswalk were red, telling her to stop. She was completely confused, being told to stop and go at the same time. Another authority, a man in a hard hat, came up to her, and motioned her on. The lights were still flashing red. Then, a police car pulled up beside her, and the officer got out of the car. She noticed his badge (authority) and gun (power). He motioned her through forcefully. She followed him as the ultimate authority. The message from God – in the midst of lots of voices, some of them from godly authorities, follow only the ultimate authority. Do as Jesus did, separate from crowds, take time to hear Him alone, and do what He says regardless of what anyone else says.

I mentioned how I was living in this vision, without sharing details. I said I felt I had heard from the man with the gun and the badge, but was unsure exactly how to follow his ultimate authority. People prayed and laid hands on me.

One person said, “Act on what God is telling you. Just do it. Don’t delay. If He says to put foot on accelerator, push it to the floor. If He says to put foot on the brake, push it to the floor. When you know what God is telling you to do, don’t keep praying about it – do it. You’ll know you’re moving when the scenery changes.” Another said, “God has called you to preach and teach.” Still another, through another vision, “God will use your engineering skills to show you how and which way to go.” And finally, through yet another pair of visions, “God will do things naturally in you. As you move in His Spirit, things will naturally (without effort) take place.

God provided a few hints through the course of the weekend of how this might all work out. But He also told me through Valerie that Tuesday was the day to share it, whether I knew how things would work out or not. So I shared with the staff in the morning, and with the council at night.

God is calling me to be a church planter. My primary gifts and passions are preaching, teaching, and outreaching! The pastoring gift that God has given me has turned into an unquenchable desire to see those outside the Christian community be brought inside. I had written up a job description for someone else in the area of outreach several times, until it finally dawned on me a week ago, that I’m writing my job description. I’m the one who’s supposed to do many of those things. In some ways, I’m at a similar place as I was back in 2000. I told the council president, who at the time was Ruth Mathews, that I was certain that God was calling me out of the ELCA, and that I had to obey. If that meant resigning as pastor at COH, then that’s what I would do, but the next move was the congregation’s in determining what God was calling them to do. As you know, God called us to take that journey together.

Over the weekend, I began writing out some of how I would approach the whole task of planting a church from scratch. I found it incredibly energizing to do so! I want to share with you now some of what I wrote. Some of it for me would be non-negotiable; other parts are just ideas right now.

If I were a church planter…

· Keep current COH values

· Streamline a constitution dramatically

· Change “membership” language to “partnership”

· Leadership structure of elders; congregational meetings would be for communication and discernment purposes

· Target audience – depends on area, would include families with kids

Start with small group of interested people

· Develop strong covenant between one another on a cell group model, so that we all were certain we “had one another’s backs”

· Go through Alpha Course together?

· Study nature of church from Acts together, until it was deeply embedded in our DNA

· Develop common expectation of servant leadership; it’s not about us. Being able to speak to one another about areas of improvement would be an expected way of operating.

· “Prayer triplets” or some such model, with expectation of new growth. Each meeting would end with groups of three sharing our “walk across the room” stories with one another so that they can be commonly owned.

· Monthly social events as way of building relationships with those for whom we’re each walking across the room (Matthew party)

· Build bridges in every way possible into community – both me and others

o Meet and pray with local schools

o Meet and pray with local businesses

o Meet with (pray for, probably not with) neighborhood associations

o Apartment complexes, new housing developments – welcome packets?

o Knock on doors?

Develop a marketing strategy

· Define target area

· Uniform, current, high quality literature for lobby and elsewhere

· Direct mail on scheduled basis

· Use of other media: newspaper, yellow pages, radio, TV

· Public signage

· Web site

· “Branding”

Larger events for community 2-4 times per year – these would be something of the rhythm that the church would follow from year to year.

· VBS

· Fall Festival

· Spring rummage sale to benefit local cause (school?)

· Christmas (caroling) and Easter (egg hunt for kids?) are already high awareness times in the community, and we’d do all we could to capitalize on that

Worship

· High quality music

· Prayer ministry integral

· Testimonies integral

· Teach through gospels for first year (?) on nature of Christ

· Every sermon with practical application elements

· Sermons available in print and on web in mp3 format, because new people would be joining all the time and some would want to know where we’d been.

· Strong emphasis on hospitality to guests – if we’re all praying for and actively seeking to reach the lost, motivation to greet them and do it well won’t be a problem

Missions would be integral from the beginning

· No money given to an organization or missionary until there was a champion within the congregation, and an apprentice to the champion

· Cross-cultural opportunities regularly, supported congregationally (1/2 general fund, ½ individual and fund-raising)

My time

· Study and prayer time daily as a non-negotiable

· No ministry tasks without bringing along an apprentice, everything I do would serve a double purpose of training others

· Bridge-building time by me in the community every week; people coming to me or the church wouldn’t count

· Teaching opportunities with adults, youth, and young adults

· No ongoing counseling; partner with Renewal Counseling

· Minimize administration

o No programs without self-motivated trained leaders – no exceptions

o Personal administrative assistant?

o Executive “pastor?” (personnel manager) to run any staff, interface with any programs

· Additional training ASAP as church planter

Now, how all of this takes place, and the specifics from here, are unknown at this time. There’s a spectrum of possibilities, for sure, with multiple variations in between. 1) At one end, I’m called to plant a church, COH isn’t, I’m released and COH calls another pastor. 2) In middle, I’m called to plant a church, COH is called to partner, and some kind of arrangement is worked out where a new church is birthed without killing/injuring the mother. 3) At other end, I’m called to plant a church, and COH is called to be a church plant – I continue pastoring COH, but in a new way.

Several things have happened in recent days that lead me to believe that God’s call for me is also in some way God’s call for Community of Hope. Last Friday morning, we received news from Tucson Water that they’d signed off on something we’d already agreed to pay for. If God had wanted to stop our building program right now, that sure would have been an easy way to do it! A week ago Saturday, I felt led to ask our cell group leaders, “If your cell group were to plant a church, how would you do it?” The response was immediate, positive, and enthusiastic. The morning I was preparing to share these thoughts with the staff and council, I read this in my morning devotions: You can’t be a lighthouse some place else until you’re a candle where you are. The information class we had about COH on Thursday night was amazing. God’s presence was incredibly real, and conversations happened in that group that haven’t happened in any previous membership class we’ve ever held.

“We do not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.” If we concentrate on holding the hand who holds us, we have nothing to fear.