Catalytic Conversations

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
October 25th 2009

Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“Catalytic Conversations”
John 4:7-10, 16-29

As some of you may have heard we are making changes to the churches website. We are not intending to change the website address but I did come across a unique name of another churches address: www.transformedlives.com. It is a site for a church that is growing and baptizing more and more adults into the faith. At every meeting they only address one priority. At staff meetings, session meetings, committee meetings and any other kind of meeting the one question is: tell me one life that has been changed this week because of our ministry. They believe the main message of the gospel is that Jesus Christ changes lives. It's what they are all about and they are willing to place everything else in their ministry under that priority. And clearly it works for them.
Transformed and changed lives are at the heart of Jesus’ ministry. The woman at the well is a prime example. She was a woman at the margins of the community. The fact she came to the well hottest time of day, when no one else was around lets us know something is not right. Why was she there alone? Did it have something to do with the multiple marriages? Was she dealing with grief or shame, or what? We do not know for sure. But we do know that she was alone that day at a time when she could have gotten water without running into anyone. But on this day she ran into someone who would change hear life.
Jesus was waiting by the well she arrived. And when she got there Jesus spoke to her. Not just a simple "hello" as he passed by. This conversation between Jesus and the woman was the longest of any of Jesus’ conversations recorded in the gospels. And the longest recorded conversation begins because Jesus just asked for a drink of water. But that simple request broke down barriers that had existed for centuries.
These few words between a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman violated social and religious rules about interactions between men and women and ethnic groups. But once the barriers were down, the floodwaters of conversation flowed. Jesus and the woman talked. They talked about spiritual thirst. They discussed her marriages. They talked politics and religion. (All things I was taught that we do not discuss in polite society.) By the time the conversation ended the woman was so moved by their conversation, she ran off. She went to tell her whole village about Jesus. She even left her water jug! She forgot her original purpose in coming to the well. She left with a new purpose. Jesus changed her life. This woman once isolated herself from others. Now she went searching for people. She wanted to tell the world about what Jesus had done for her.
What had Jesus done for her? In other gospel stories, Jesus transformed many lives. He healed diseases. He gave people sight. He raised the dead. He called the powerful to account. But here at the well all he did was talk to a woman. But because of this conversation cultural barriers were brought down. In that conversation, both Jesus and the woman revealed something about themselves to each other. The cultural script which dictated interracial interactions were blown apart. In this, somehow, the woman was deeply transformed. "He knows everything about me!" she exclaimed to her neighbors. A conversation changed a life.
The story goes that a self-proclaimed liberal church held a class on World Religions. Their goal was to study the major religions of the world and compare them to Christianity. Someone in the class had a co-worker who was a Muslim man. She asked if the class would like her co-worker to come when they talked about Islam. Everyone enthusiastically agreed. They thought it would be very helpful to have a firsthand expression of that faith. One class member summed up the class' feelings by saying, "Please invite him. Tell him we don't want to convert him; we want to learn from him." Kamal, the Muslim man, did come to the class. He spoke for a while about his faith.
Then class members asked him questions. Soon, he was asking class members questions about faith. They hadn't planned on that! By the time class was over, they had discussed many things. They talked about traditional Muslim dress. They talked about arranged marriages. They talked about why Christians pray "in Jesus' name." They talked about how Kamal felt when people treated him with suspicion. No one seemed to want the time to end. Then a class member said, "Could we have a prayer together?" They all agreed. The class circled, held hands, and prayed. When the prayer was finished, Kamal had tears in his eyes. He told the class: "I have never felt God's love this strongly before. I cannot wait to tell my friends about this. We didn't know there were Christians like you." It was just conversation. But it changed his life. It changed the lives of everyone in that classroom. Just conversation! God's power can make genuine conversation into a life-changing experience.
In the book we are reading together, Unbinding your Heart, the author's research shows what brings people to church and what makes them stay. What do you think brings people to church for the first time? Great sermons, good ads, beautiful buildings? Nope. It's you. Almost 60% of people who join a church came because someone invited them. 60 percent! People come to church because someone asks them to come. And what makes them come back? What makes them want to come again? Surely it's the pastor's fabulous sermons or the music program
or the updated children's room. No. It's you. The number one reason people say they return to a church is because they received a warm welcome from the people there. Those others things are important, but they are not the main thing. The main thing is whether or not someone said hello to them, or remembered their children’s names, or went out of their way to get them a bulletin. New people have a fine tuned sense of authenticity and can tell if the congregation actually cares about them and doesn’t simply see them as potential new members.
Marta came to church because a couple she knew invited her. After knowing hear for a year they finally moved beyond superficial interaction and asked her about her family. She told the couple that she had moved here to escape an abusive husband. She was raising her two boys on her own. Her own parents had died years ago. On impulse, the couple invited her to their church. At first, she demurred. She said she didn't have the proper clothes. "Oh, come casual!" the couple said, "We do! We’ll meet you at church about 10:30. Then we’ll take you and your boys to lunch afterwards."
The following Sunday Marta did come to church and she had her boys in tow. The couple left their normal seats and joined her on the back row. The sermon that Sunday was on the woman at the well. Marta sat at attention through the whole service. The couple that had invited her kept her boys busy with crayons and bulletin airplanes. Marta was entranced. When the sermon was over, she turned to the couple and said, "That story was for me. That woman at the well is me! I have been so alone!" As people greeted Marta warmly after the service, she beamed at the attention. Afterward, she commented to the couple who had invited her, "This is like a family!"
I am convinced that we all know someone like Marta. We know people who need Jesus and this church in their lives. We all know someone who needs a changed life. But I am not going to ask you to invite them though. No, instead I want to pray, for now. Yes, pray for two minutes right now for God to bring to mind a person in your life who needs you to be in conversation with them. (Prayer for two minutes) This conversation may just be the thing that changes someone's life in unexpected and healing ways.
After Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman, he preached to his disciples. He said to them, "Look around you! People are so ready for the gospel! All you have to do is bring them in." Look around you. Who are you going to talk to and even invite to church next Sunday? Will you go and pick them up? Take them to lunch afterwards? Introduce them to a group of friends? This week, talk to someone you’ve never talked to before. Or, talk to someone you chat with all the time, but this time don’t be afraid to talk about your faith. You could start a conversation that will change someone’s life. Amen? Amen!

The Prayer Plunge

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
October 18th 2009

Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“The Prayer Plunge”
I Kings 19:11-13; Luke 5:1-10

Can you imagine a day when Westminster will host a youth lock-in where twenty high school students would willingly participate? Can you imagine that those youth claim Westminster as their church? When that does happen it would be something to celebrate. On Friday night this occurred. What are we supposed to make of this? On Monday night I asked the session where they saw the Spirit at work in the life of the church. And two members pointed out that they had noticed more young people around, and actually excited about being here as a sign of the Spirit at work. We have just gotten our six week study underway and I amazed at the stories I have heard about the surprising things going on in the life of the church. If you have not joined a small group, there is still room for you.
In the first week we have looked at the struggles we often have with the word evangelism. We have also wrestled with the question of what difference being a Christian has made in our lives. This morning we are going to look at what makes faith sharing effective. Since we are good at and like being effective this may come as welcome news.
Westminster is a church where people know how to work hard. In fact, we are masters at hard work! We know how to have church dinners, organize committee meetings, raise money for the latest UCM project, how to organize for CROP walks (which is next week by the way!) And when we have give our best to the church we drag ourselves home, exhausted! And we do it again the next day, and the next day, and the next day! In fact, we have even seen some of our hardest workers finally go away because they are burned out. But this is not a story unique to Westminster. Church people are determined, committed, hard workers for the Lord. One thing we can claim with certainty is that mainline churches are not shrinking because they are lazy!
Five years ago I met with a long term member who said to me. “I have been here a long time. We have tried everything. Nothing has worked. If we couldn’t figure out how to grow the church before you got here what makes you think you can?” I do not remember my response but I do remember how it tapped into my need to prove nay-sayers wrong. But in light of this week’s passage I can almost hear Peter saying these exact words to Jesus. Now do not here me wrong, I am not putting myself in the shoes of Jesus. After all when I got home after that meeting I prayed pretty much the same words that had been directed to me only hours before. No, what I hear now is the same feeling Peter must have had. We have been working at this all night and nothing has happened. And now you want us to do what? "We’ve already been fishing. We didn’t catch anything! But if you say so . . ." So they pulled up the anchor and headed back out to the deep water, this time with Jesus as a fishing partner.
Moving into the deep waters is scary even if we are trying to keep company with Jesus.
We are working hard at doing a lot of good things. But are we doing the God-things? Are we experiencing the peace and trust God intends for us, or are we just tensing up and kicking too hard? How’s our fishing going so far? Jesus wants these disciples to join him in his work for God. He’ll soon invite them to become “fishers of people.” But before he signs them up for employment with God, it seems that he wants to be sure they “get” something. He wants them to know that if they’re going to be effective in this new work, they will have to follow his guidance. They will have to have him along.
When Luke wrote this story down, it was for a church that was working very hard to pass the gospel on to the next generation. Maybe, in just a few decades after Jesus’ physical presence, the church had started getting tired with all the work they were doing. Maybe their efforts weren’t producing like they once did. Luke gives them, and us, this story to remind us. Hard work alone doesn’t cut it. Only going to the deep waters with Jesus will be effective. Only trusting Christ’s guidance will produce real results for the church.
Prayer is one way to go into the deep waters with Jesus. Prayer is the most effective way I know to hear and heed Christ’s guidance. Now, it’s not that we don’t pray as a church. But I suspect we work a lot more than we pray. We pray before our church meetings. But how many times do we meet to pray? How many times has the session spent all of its meeting time praying? What could God do through us if we spent half of our meeting times in prayer? What wouldn’t get done if we prayed more? What could God get done through us if we prayed more?
In the book we're reading together, Martha Grace Reese tells about a church that tried prayer as the meetings rather than just before meetings. Three high-energy, go-getter women were the new evangelism committee for Benton Street Church. They were fired up to do great things for God that year. They brought in Reese as a consultant to get some direction about what they could do first. A calling campaign? A bring-a-friend Sunday? Maybe direct mail marketing? No, the consultant said. Not that. Not yet. She told them to pray for three months before they did a thing!!!
The evangelism committee at Benton Street was looking for activity, for hard work, for something to do! But instead, Reese told them to stand still and pray. Stand still for three months!!! Prayer is a different kind of hard work, of course. Most of us don't know how to do it, at least not for very- long. But this evangelism committee learned. They prayed together for one hour every week. At board meeting, when it was their turn to report, they would say, "We're still praying. She’s making us do it. We’re just praying." People giggled. Then board members started giving them prayer requests. After three months of "doing nothing but praying," interest in evangelism had skyrocketed. By the end of the year, 65 people were helping with evangelism. New visitors came in droves. Twice as many people were baptized as the year before, twice as many babies were dedicated.
"When they had done what Jesus commanded, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break!" Apparently, going back into the deep waters with Jesus makes a difference. Prayer expresses our willingness to do what Jesus wants us to do. Prayer prepares us to be effective in whatever work we do for Jesus. Prayer helps make room for the Holy Spirit in our lives. So let's try it. Some of you already have prayer as a part of your daily life. Many of us do not. But we can all grow in prayer. And so can our church. For the next month, let's pray as a church like we’ve never prayed before.
Will you pray with us for this next month? You are already using the "40 Days of
Prayer" guide. If not, start! We have a copy for you right outside the sanctuary. We're going to pray right here, so we can get started. Yes, right here in the middle of a sermon. Let’s put our money where our mouths are. Let’s pray, not just talk about thinking about maybe drifting towards praying . . . sometime pretty soon. Let us do it right now. Grab one of the pink prayer request forms. I want you to hold it while you pray. I’m going to explain this first, then we’ll all pray together.
Hold your prayer request form. First we’ll sit quietly and breathe slowly. Then, ask God whom to pray for. This is important because many of us have our own agendas when we pray. This time, ask God for whom to pray. As soon as God gives you a person or a situation, imagine them shrunk down so they’ll fit into your hands, right in the middle of your prayer request form. Hold whomever God puts into your hands and pray for them. I’ll say Amen at the end. All right? Any questions? Everyone got it? Okay, gently breathe and let's start. [Pause for two minutes.] Amen.
How was that? Thank you for your willingness. What an amazing church to try something out of the ordinary like that! Now write the initials of the person you were led to pray for on the prayer request form. After worship place this on the prayer wall. Maybe you’ll want to add some other notes, or update this one, next week, and the week after. What’s most important is that you keep praying for whomever, or whatever, God has asked you to pray.
You know, a lot of us know we should be praying more but we don't. We think we don't have the time. We think there are other important things that must be done. We want to be responsible and get the "to do " list done before we take the luxury of prayer. Today, I'm giving you permission. Let’s be less responsible to the world and more responsive to God. I don't mind if all the Stuff doesn’t get done during this month. Things can slide a little as long as you're spending time praying instead. You heard me. The church's grass may not get mowed. As long as you're praying instead, for one month, that is okay by me! Let’s agree among ourselves. We are going to make prayer our priority for four more weeks. Then we’ll see what God has done with us . . . and through us. I believe God will start doing some amazing things with us during this time.
I don't know what it will be . . .Maybe new visitors . . .maybe a new unity . . . maybe old wounds healed. Most likely it will be something we never imagined. I believe making room for prayer always brings new blessing. But here’s the catch: If we're anything like the human disciples, we may not be ready! Like them, our response to whatever great thing God does will be, "We're not worthy!" After Simon sees what success Jesus has given him, he falls to his knees. He says to Jesus, "Go away, Lord! I don't deserve this!" If we go deep with Jesus, we might find ourselves in deep water! We may have the same reaction. We might feel ourselves resisting the blessings God wants to bring us. We might want to bury our heads and ask God to go away.
Maybe we're not sure God should do something in our lives. We don't feel worthy for God to use us. Maybe we’re afraid of the change in our lives if God did do something in us. How’s your future mapped out? Peter went from fisherman to traveling preacher. Maybe some of us don’t really believe God can do anything new. Let’s face it. Staying on the familiar treadmill is a lot less scary than going deep with Jesus. But Jesus says to Simon, "Fear not. From now on, we'll be catching people for God." Then these hard working fishermen parked their boats and their fish and their nets right there on the shore. They left their work and followed him. In this next month, let’s leave our work and pray like we’ve never prayed before. Let’s go back into the deep waters with Jesus. Amen? Amen!

The Problem with Paul

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
October 11th 2009

Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“The Problem with Paul”
Isaiah 61:1-5a; Acts 9:1-19

As a child I was always fascinated with people who had dramatic conversion stories. Those folks who were not Christian and had come back from the brink of death or situations my young mind could not even imagine seemed like superheroes of the faith. And in the back of my mind I secretly hoped that I would have a dramatic story to tell one day. But no matter what would happen in my life, I could never deny that I had grown up in the church. No matter where I might travel or where I might go, I knew and was shaped by the body of Christ.
But this was not Paul’s story. Paul was not shaped by the body of Christ. Paul had a dramatic "before and after" testimony of how Jesus Christ has made a difference in his life. In fact, Paul hated Jesus and his followers. Paul did everything in his power to persecute the followers of Jesus. But after Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, everything changed.
But in truth, Paul was not changed until Ananias put his hands on Paul’s eyes. It was the laying on of hands, by this slightly reluctant follower of Jesus that opened a whole new world opened for Paul. For the first time, Paul could see a whole world of people who needed the gospel. Paul’s new faith in Jesus sent his life in a brand new direction. Instead of being an enemy of Jesus, he was an envoy for Jesus. He traveled the world telling crowds of people about the gospel. He wrote most of our New Testament. Paul was someone who had no problem explaining what a difference it made in his life to be a Christian.
For those of us who grew up in the church that may not be as clear. After all, asking us what difference being a Christian makes in our lives is like asking us what it means to breath air. It is just not something we give much thought. Christian faith is that natural to us. Trying to talk about it can be difficult especially without a definitive before and after. Most of us cannot remember the first time we knew that God loved us. We cannot recall the first time we heard about Jesus. We have always known about baby Jesus in the manger. It is hard to articulate what we've always been, what we've always known.
Not all of us, but many, who have grown up in church can feel somewhat inferior to people like Paul who have a dramatic testimony to tell. For some we might actually feel a bit superior; because after all that conversion stuff sounds a bit weird. But either way we still have a hard time sharing what our faith means to us. The problem with Paul is that those who have come after his dramatic conversion believe people like him are the only ones who have a “real” testimony. We think that testimony, or telling people about our faith must have something to do with: “I was lost, but now I’m found.” Since we don’t have a powerful before and after story, we act as if we do not have a faith story at all.
As a result, we say nothing about our faith. Pastors are not exempt. In Unbinding your Heart, Martha Grace Reese writes about a group of pastors she took on a retreat. She asked these pastors what difference being a Christian made to them. She says it was extremely, painfully quiet for a l-o-n-g time. Just silence for a very l-o-n-g time. Finally, one pastor said, hesitantly, "Because it makes me a better person ???" -Surely there’s more we can say than that! But putting words to our faith is hard for many of us.
I would like you use your imagination with me. Imagine that you do not go to church on Sundays, not even at Christmas and Easter. Imagine that you do not know any hymns or Christian songs. Imagine that you do not know any Scripture. You don’t know even the simplest Bible stories. Imagine that you are not sure if God hears you when you pray, or what words you should use to pray. Imagine that you do not know whom to call to pray for you. Imagine that you don't know how God feels towards you. What if you didn’t have a church family? What if you didn’t even know that God exists?
Imagine.
Now let me ask you, what does being a Christian mean to you? Lawrence Lewis agreed to tell you his answer to that question.
What a powerful story of how our lives are shaped, and saved through the faithful community of believers. We all need to step back and ask ourselves the question what difference Jesus makes in our lives. And we can give a witness that God is saving people, everyday, for a whole lot more than just life after death.
There are a lot of people living in various kinds of hell right here on earth. When Paul, who was known as Saul lost his eyesight he sat in total darkness for three days. He is so upset that he could not eat or drink. He had to be wondering what sort of punishment God had in store for him because he had rejected Jesus and his followers. At the very same time, Jesus was working on a guy a reluctant evangelist named Ananias. Ananias was right to be worried. Being sent to Saul was no easy task. After all, Saul had been a part of the killing of the first Christian martyr. Christians were running scared because "Saul was breathing threats against them." Saul was an unlikely candidate for evangelism.
So were the prostitutes that loitered on the corner of First Church in Florida. Most people in the congregation were upper-middle class, African-Americans who had been in church all their lives. They were not happy that the neighborhood was changing. They were really not happy about the prostitution that was creeping into their parking lot. They grumbled over the cigarette butts by the sanctuary steps. They worried about the "bad P.R." the church was getting. The last thing anyone was thinking about was that the women hanging out on the corners were candidates for evangelism. Candidates for jail, yes, but not candidates for evangelism! Not in their beloved church!
But one day, a faithful church member, a retired school teacher, left choir practice on a Wednesday. She saw one of the prostitutes, leaning against a lamppost singing. And of all things it was right by the member’s parked car. She felt pushed by the Spirit (she couldn’t find other words for it) to go talk to this woman in the pink leather hot pants. “Hi. My name is Mary. I was just singing with my choir in there. You have a beautiful voice.”
“Yeah, I love singin’,” the young woman mumbled. “I’m Sheena.” “Sheena, you ought to be singing for the Lord, you want to come to sing with me in my choir?” That sweet church member almost fainted as she heard the words come out of her mouth! But Sheena finally said yes.
She showed up on the corner the next Wednesday before choir practice. Mary took her in. Sheena did have a beautiful voice. With the encouragement of the church, with tutoring from Mary, her dear new, retired school teacher friend, Sheena got her GED. She went to college! She finished medical school. Now, that former prostitute runs a medical clinic. Out of her church.
What motivated Mary to talk to Sheena? What possessed her to go into that prostitute's personal hell and walk her out? Maybe it was what motivated Ananias to go talk to Saul. We know nothing about Ananias’ conversion to Christianity. It was likely that he had a pretty ordinary existence up to this point. Maybe, like us, he didn’t have a dramatic story to tell about his faith. At least, not until now! The Lord Jesus appears to Ananias in a vision and tells him to go visit Saul. This is a powerful moment of truth for Ananias. Will he go talk to Paul? You can almost hear him say: “Can’t you choose someone else?” Look at the ninth chapter of Acts, the 15th verse. Why does Ananias go talk to Paul about Jesus? First, Jesus told him to go. Obedience to Christ is a major motivation. Yet, I hate to admit it, I sometimes need more than that. Just because I know I should do something doesn’t mean I will. Look at the 15th verse again. Jesus gives Ananias another motivation. Something besides “because I said so.” Jesus says, "Saul is an instrument I have chosen." Jesus had plans for Saul. Jesus needed Saul for the ministry of God. And Jesus needed Ananias to reach Saul. Ananias gets to be a part of what God is doing in the world. He is a key player in God’s plan to get the gospel out.

He gets to be the domino that tips another person into God’s love. He gets to be the hands of God that heal someone’s pain. He gets to be the light that shines on Saul’s dim path. He gets to do something for God that only he can do. He gets to be a part of God’s redemption of the world. Now, that’s some motivation! Not guilt . . . Not, “because I should” . . . Not, “because it makes me a better person ???” Not some begrudging obedience . . . Just a sheer, passionate desire to be a part of what God wants to do in the world.
Ananias had the opportunity to make a difference in the world by going where God sent him. Verse 17 tells us, "So Ananias went." The Paul Problem has an Ananias Answer. No extraordinary story needed. All you need is an ordinary willingness to see what God can do through you. Who knows what lives you may touch and change? Who knows, your simple willingness to be a follower of Jesus may bring some small portion of hell on earth for another person to an end. The Saul’s in our lives await our response. Amen.