How many gathered here this morning know what the Mission Statement of Central United Church is – and, I wonder, would it surprise you to know that our Mission Statement is not “To know Christ and to make Him known”? I suspect that most would probably be surprised to learn that those words that appear at the top of our Order of Service Sunday after Sunday are not this congregation's Mission Statement. In fact, the mission statement of Central United Church, according to our Constitution, is as follows: “In response to the message of God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ our mission is to foster commitment to Jesus Christ and His church; to be an open congregation that welcomes all people into the church family; to worship joyfully and faithfully; to provide opportunities for children, youth and adults to grow in knowledge of the Christian way of life; to be a community that speaks and lives its Christian values; to reach out to people in need in our community in word and action; to share with God responsibility for the well-being of the world spiritually, socially and environmentally.” I don't know how that statement came into being, how much debate there was about it or how long it's been our mission statement, but it's a pretty good summary of what Central United Church has declared to be its mission. Now, very aware of the fact that a lot of hard work was probably put into producing that mission statement, I want you to reflect on the following words: “the church of God doesn't have a mission; the mission of God has a church.”

 

     What's the church about? What's the church for? What does the church have to offer – to its own members and even more importantly to the community and world as a whole? When you think about mission those are questions that come to mind, and an equally valid question that arises out of that last statement I offered you is this: does the church define its mission, or does the church accept its mission? Last Sunday was Pentecost. The story of Pentecost is pretty well known, and most people focus on the sound like a rushing wind, or the tongues that seemed to be fire, or the strange languages that people began to speak as the Holy Spirit fell upon them. There is, however, another way to look at the Pentecost event. In Jerusalem, 2000 years ago, there was a tiny group of people who knew the gospel, but they were lost - they didn't know what to do with this message. Then, suddenly, the Holy Spirit came upon them and blasted them out into an unsuspecting world that's never been the same since. They went with something brand new. They had no traditions, no doctrines, no buildings, no money, no ministers – they had only a message to share. Ever since then, though, it seems that the church has been rebuilding the walls that the Holy Spirit had broken down; sometimes keeping out the very people that the gospel had meant to include. In other words, ever since the event of Pentecost forced Christians into the world, Christians have had to confront the questions about the nature of the church that I mentioned earlier. Indeed, what do we have to do to be the church – especially to be the church of the 21st century, where so much has changed, but where the church sometimes fights fiercely against change. A few years ago in England, a new movement started called “Fresh Expressions” - which basically attempts to redefine what the church is all about and how the church proclaims the gosel in the 21st century to people who aren't church connected – who are, of course, the people we need to reach. The movement has reached Canada, and I've had the chance to attend a couple of presentations about it, and Heather and I have actually discussed some possible “Fresh Expressions” plans for the fall here at Central. But I want to reflect today on the questions of what the church is and what the church should be, using some ideas from the “Fresh Expressions” movement.

 

     Basically there are three ways of being church. The first says “we'll sit back and wait for you to come to us.” For the longest time (for about 1500 years in fact) that's been our model. The church adopted a kind of “if you build it they will come” type of mentality. Just put up a church building, and people will fill it. That was the philosophy. For many people that's the only way they can think of being church. The lament is lifted to heaven “we're here – why don't they come?” but nothing really gets done to attract “them.” The second way of being church says “we'll come to you and bring you back to us.” The goal for this type of church is to ensure the survival of the instution. We want to find people, turn them into replicas of ourselves – because we know how this is supposed to be done - and then let them keep doing things the same way. A few days ago I had lunch with a colleague. He's recently begun a ministry at a new church, and he was lamenting that while his church is undergoing a generational shift (the older generation is giving way to the newer generation) that older generation is only willing to let the newer generation do things the way they've always been done. In this model of church, we'll reach out to people – but only if those people we reach out to don't ask us to do anything too different. Those first two models of church are failing. The good news is that there is a third way of being church – and it's summed up with the words “we'll come to you and we'll stay with you.” In this model, the church doesn't expect people to come to us; the church acknowledges (as did the earliest disciples after the Pentecost experience) that it has to go to the people, and that requires that we do a lot of soul searching about what it means to be the church.

 

     In the Book of Acts we read this morning of the beginnings of the church at Antioch. This was one of those post-Pentecost communities that had begun when the Pentecost event blew everything wide open and pushed the gospel out of Jerusalem and into the world. This was an interesting community. There was no real plan for how to plant a church at this time, and there likely hadn't been an intention to do so. The Christians who found themselves in Antioch were driven there by “persecution” we were told. And yet they saw their opportunity, and they shared the good news – they invited others in rather than judging them for being out; they told people not how bad they were but rather how loved they were; they offered people not membership in a club but a relationship with Christ; they didn't insist that the people become “like them,” but became themselves a part of the community that already existed. That was the church in its earliest and perhaps purest form, before we got burdened with buildings to maintain and salaries to pay and committees to staff and budgets to adhere to and traditions to abide by. It's no surprise then that, in the words of Acts, “the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.” They were given a new name there, because what they offered was so new and so life giving and so soul nourishing and so love offering and so spiritually affirming. It wasn't like anything the people of Antioch had seen before.

 

     We can't go backward in time; we're the products of our time. Whether it's good or bad, we have buildings to maintain, salaries to pay, committees to staff, budgets to adhere to and traditions to abide by. But maybe we can do some things differently and more effectively. Maybe we start by concerning ourselves less with things like how we worship and more by offering a relationship to a society which is losing its sense of what relationships are truly about. As a church, we want to build relationships. We want to build the relationships we already have with each other, yes, but even more perhaps with those who aren't here today; indeed, with those who may never be here. But we want to share good news with them. We don't want to judge people on welfare – we want to tell them that they're beloved children of God. We don't want to judge the unemployed – we want to tell them that they're beloved children of God. We don't want to judge pregnant teenage girls - we want to tell them that they're beloved children of God. We don't want to judge alcoholics or drug addicts - we want to tell them that they're beloved children of God. We don't want to judge gay people or lesbians - we want to tell them that they're beloved children of God. Whether they ever enter our doors is immaterial - we just want to tell them that they're beloved children of God, because that's the message that Jesus came to share. 

 

     Our mission is clear. It's not to sit back and wait for people to come to us; neither is it to try to make people to be like us. It's to find those who don't know that God loves them – and it's to tell them that they're beloved children of God. That's a tough change to make, because for so long our main strategy has been to get people into the building, not to move ourselves out of the building. But our call from God is to let go of our own needs, to entrust ourselves to God and to offer loving service to those in need - and to do it all for the glory of Christ. Remember; “the church of God doesn't have a mission; the mission of God has a church.” If we really set ourselves to fulfilling God's mission, that would be a truly “fresh expression” of church for the 21st century.