A lot is at stake in being thankful!

 

Yesterday I had the opportunity to preach a sermon about thankfulness. 

And I’m thankful for that. Taking some extended time to reflect on thanks has led me to want to advocate even more for identifying myself as a person of thanks and encouraging others to share thanks.   

During my work on the sermon, I came across a video produced by Steve Hartman on a story of thankfulness. At the time of the video Frank Grasberger was a 95-year old man who lived in a Care Facility in Ohio. He received a thank you note for his military service from a third grader. The note touched him deeply. He carried the note with him in his wheel chair and told his wife, Delores, that nothing mattered to him more than that letter. His wife noticed the difference the letter made on Frank. She shared that when Frank has the letter he has a feeling of faith and trust and love. 

Giving thanks is powerful!

Frank wanted to get in touch with the author of the letter who identified herself as De Shawna. It took a while, but after a long search De Shawna was found. She agreed to meet with Frank at the Care Facility. Coincidentally (or maybe this is a God-thing) De Shawna serves in the National Guard. She showed up to meet Frank with a bouquet of roses. When De Shawna showed up his wife thought, “Where’s Frank's heart pills. This is the big one!” 

Frank and De Shawna have developed a friendship. Frank shared that De Shawna is like his third daughter. 

This is the power of thanks. A 95-year-old veteran was so touched by a letter of thanks that he sees the author, an African American young woman, as his third daughter. 

The full story can be seen here: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/kindness-101-a-lesson-in-thankfulness/ 

I went to Mass at St. Joseph’s of the Lakes Catholic Church on Thanksgiving. At the start of his homily, Father Mark Anderson said we need Thanksgiving. I cannot agree more. Our spirits need to be touched frequently by the power and importance of thanks. We need to be reminded to respond to the events of life with thanks. Without living and sharing thinks we are limited as people. 

In my sermon yesterday I preached about the story of the ten lepers. You probably know the story. Ten lepers were healed of their skin disease. One leper returned to Jesus to give thanks. Nine did not return to give thanks. Jesus wanted to know, “where are the other nine?”

I believe that each of us make choices every day that determine who will we be in the story. Will be the person who returned to give thanks or will we be part of the group who didn't give thanks. And I don't think we are always in one group. Depending on the day we can be part of both groups. 

Where we find ourselves is a choice that we make.

Let me ask you, "which group will you choose to join?"

I spent some time last week thinking and doing research on what prevents people from giving thanks. I came up with two reasons—and certainly others exist. The two reasons are entitlement and grievance. 

One reason is entitlement—it’s easy to believe that we deserve what we get. I live in a beautiful home and have two beautiful cars and enjoy a beautiful family. It’s not hard to conclude that through my efforts I have achieved this beauty. I’m entitled. At one level I am entitled—just as everyone who is human is entitled to a beautiful life. But it’s easy to forget the force who created the world and provides the gifts that allows me to live this life. 

Oops! I guess it’s easier to be one of the nine than I might have thought. I don’t want to be part of that group. Thank you, God! 

Another reason is grievance—folks who believe the world is out to get them or have been hurt in the past and respond to life from that pain. That person is going to have a hard time being thankful. 

In my sermon yesterday I asked four questions about thanks. The questions are just as relevant today as yesterday.

           How many times have you said the phrase, “thank you” in the past 24 hours?”

           How many thank you notes have you written in the past month?

           How many times have you told a group of people, “I’m thankful for you?”

          How many times have you shared with your spouse or a friend in the past 24 hours, “I’m thankful for you.” 

Congregations can be laboratories of thankfulness. I shared that I’m surprised that I’m not familiar with any congregation that has named themselves, “thankful.” I get it, it would feel a bit weird to say, “I go to Thankful Church.” That probably doesn’t work. What does work is to have thankfulness be expressed frequently from the people in a congregation. I hope that when guests come to Chain of Lakes they will experience thankfulness. I want the people of our congregation to be known as people of thanks. 

The relationship between thankfulness and suffering deserves much reflection. More reflection than I am going to share right now. Certainly, events exist for which I would never give thanks—rape, indiscriminate violence, abuse and many other horrors. However, even when we suffer we can find ways to look at our situation with thanks. I shared in my sermon that last week I did my best to respond with thanks to the inevitable occasions during the week when things don’t go as I wanted. When that happened, I did my best to respond with thanks for the growth opportunities these occasions presented to me.  

Ultimately my hope or aspiration as a person is to have thanks be my first response to the events of my life.  

I don't think that responding to the events of life with thanks is inevitable. I do think we can train ourselves to do this.

I’m going to take some concrete actions to respond more with thanks. I’m going to write a thank you note every Thursday. I’m calling this Thankful Thursday. Certainly I could do more than one, but this is my starting point. And I will continue to pray that I will see my own identity as a person of thanks.  

I might not be able to change the world, but I can influence my sphere of influence by sharing thanks more often and encouraging others to be people of thanks.  

The full sermon that I shared yesterday can be found at the fifteen minute mark at this link:  Worship Service November 26, 2023 (vimeo.com)

Growing Young in the PC(USA)

Yesterday at Chain of Lakes we focused on the theme of “Growing Young.” I shared a vision for children’s and youth ministry. This is the theme of the stewardship drive at Chain of Lakes this year. We showed a video about the campaign and had someone speak about it. It was a joyous day of celebration. It was close to being the largest attended service of the year. 

The entire service can be watched at: vimeo.com/manage/videos/883769099

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about church growth this past week. And I know that this term, “church growth” is not one that everyone likes. Other phrases could be evangelism or church development. I’ve heard many say that to use this phrase is to turn people into numbers. Of course, I believe that people are not numbers. Everyone who comes to a faith community has a story that needs to be heard and honored. I don’t want anyone at Chain of Lakes Church, the place I serve, to be thought of as a number.

I still like this phrase. I believe that all congregations are called to grow in their worship attendance and in numbers of people. Certainly this is not the only objective of a congregation, but congregations who aren’t growing will inevitably encounter problems.

This is an issue for the Presbyterian Church (USA), a denomination that I love. My love is deep. I share with people that I bleed Presbyterian; and because I’m on blood thinner I bleed really fast. I want to see our denomination thrive.

Right now we’re not growing. In 2017 the PC(USA) had 9,451 churches; in 2022 that number declined to 8,704 churches. Total membership declined from 1,482, 767 in 2017 to 1,140,665 in 2022. In fact we haven’t grown for a very long time. I talked about this last week in my blog I wrote after leading worship at my home church in Worthington, Minnesota. That congregation has a special place in my heart. Because of their decline in numbers they are moving to a new phase of ministry. They are selling their building and purchasing a new building. I’m glad that the congregation is making this move, but the move came because they weren’t growing.

I wrote a blog about this. More people read that blog than any blog I’ve written in a long time.  Something resonates with people about this issue of decline and growth.

Which brings me back to the theme of growing young.

I wonder what it would look like if the PC(USA) spent five years focusing on youth and children ministry. If we made an intentional effort to grow young. What would happen if we raised money so each congregation could have at least a twenty or even thirty hour a week person doing youth and children’s ministry?  Or what if more resources were shared with congregations about how they can grow young?

I know there are people who are doing outstanding work at the wider denominational level. And though I haven’t attended an APCE conference for a while. They have video resources on their web site regarding previous conference at this site: 2022 Annual Event Video Resources - Association of Partners in Christian Education (apcenet.org)

I don’t claim to have any magical answers. I do know that when I came to my last church the congregation has less than five children and when I left we had over thirty. It took a lot of focus, and creativity, and financial giving. At Chain of Lakes we’re going to hire a thirty-hour a week person to coordinate our volunteers who do ministry with youth and children. This is a big increase in cost for us. But the potential for growth with children and youth is so high, that our Session has decided that we can’t afford not to take this risk.

I see our congregations declining and wonder if a five-year focus on youth and children’s ministry would help.

For the purpose of this blog, I’m not going to go into what that might look like. Though providing staff resources to congregations would help. And I know that my Stated Clerk sister would tell me to write an overture. For now I just want to stay on the big picture question.

How about a five-year focus on helping congregations develop ministries with youth and children?

And for all of my Presby friends who are immediately thinking, “that will never work or happen” let me ask you to start out by thinking, “what would happen if this was our focus?”

Preaching at my home church with sadness

Yesterday I had the opportunity to preach at my home church, Westminster Presbyterian Church in Worthington, Minnesota. The web address to the entire service is on that church's Facebook page: facebook.com/WestminsterPresby. 

The congregation celebrated their 150^th anniversary on the Sunday after Labor Day. As part of their celebration, they invited all of their previous pastors and people who grew up in the church who became pastors to attend. My sister and I are part of the latter group. I wasn’t able to attend the anniversary celebration as we had a very large event happening at Chain of Lakes Church that day. However I told Galen Smith, the pastor at Westminster, who is doing a terrific job as their pastor, that I would be willing to preach on a Sunday when he was gone. Yesterday was the day.

Westminster has made some significant decisions in the past two months. They agreed to sell their building to a local Pentecostal church and buy the church building of that congregation. They also agreed to share Galen with the Presbyterian church in Round Lake. The move to the Pentecostal building will take place in January.

I’m not attached to church buildings. Though I have to admit that I’ve spent a lot of time in my ministry raising money for buildings. At Community Presbyterian in Plainview we did a complete remodel of our building and bought the two adjacent lots next to the church. That involved three capital campaigns. Here at Chain of Lakes I’ve participated in two capital campaigns and was part of the leadership team that made decisions for our new building. Our next captial campaign will be in a year.

Despite the thousands of hours I’ve spent raising money for buildings, I’m not attached to church buildings.

However—I know the reality that church buildings are important. At their best they help the congregation be successful at their mission; at their worst they become the most important mission for a congregation.

Westminster’s building has a lot of memories for me. I started attending worship when I was one-year old. I certainly don’t remember that, but I do remember being quite bored in worship as a child. During that period of my life, I spent a lot of time gazing at the beautiful stain glass windows during worship. In high school I shared a violin/piano recital. I enjoyed singing in the choir and looking out at the congregation from the choir loft. As a young adult I was ordained to the office of pastor, now called Teaching Elder, in the sanctuary on February 7, 1993. I helped officiate my sister’s wedding in that sanctuary and spoke at my sister’s ordination service. There isn’t a space in Westminster’s building where I don’t have a memory.

For what it’s worth I completely support the decision of the congregation and Session of Westminster to sell their building and buy the Pentecostal church building.

But I’m still sad.

The decision will keep Westminster going, but it reflects the decline of the congregation. When I was one-year old the congregation had to set up folding chairs in the large sanctuary. Over 650 people attended every Sunday. Yesterday I preached to about forty people. And I might have been the youngest person in the room. And I'm not young!

I have hope for the future of Westminster. I’ve told my parents many times that I believe the church needs to hire a full-time youth/children director. I believe that if the church made this move many new children, youth and families would come over time.

But it’s still hard to see the decline of a congregation I love dearly. And it’s hard to know that the decline at Westminster has happened in many other Presbyterian churches. In 2022 the Presbyterian Church (USA) had 747 fewer congregations and about 340,000 fewer members than in 2016. No business would tolerate that without making significant changes.

Though these statistics are shared every year, I’m almost astonished that these statistics haven’t been a clarion call to focus more on church growth as a denomination.

This call to church growth doesn’t have to come at the expense of the outstanding ministries of Presbyterians. I’m proud to be a Presbyterian partly because we are so concerned about what happens in the community. At Chain of Lakes Church we have an extensive ministry with homeless organizations. At Westminster that congregation went out of their way to be a part of the community in multiple ways. Both Westminster and Chain of Lakes have been successful in this ministry.

But a ministry that focuses on social impact at the expense of church growth and evangelism won’t work.  The numbers of the denomination I love dearly bear witness to this reality. 

This week we’re taking in a new group of people who will join Chain of Lakes. When they go through our process for joining I share that at Chain of Lakes we are as passionate about prayer, Bible Study, and worship as we are about serving the homeless. I tell them that we support LGTBQ ordination and marriage, but if a person doesn’t share that support he or she will still be welcomed. For what it’s worth I sometimes tell them that in my thirty years of ministry the worship attendance of the congregations I have served has increased in 26 of those years. And two of these were COVID years!

The consequences of decline in the PC(USA) are significant. Without a congregation in Worthington, a strong ministry of service in the community won’t exist. And a group of people won't have an opportunity to grow in faith. I don’t anticipate that will happen, but Westminster, like all congregations, needs to grow. 

I believe that Presbyterian congregations are thirsting for resources and leadership from the leaders of the Presbyterian Church to help them grow in numbers of people.

I don’t believe that the leaders of the wider governing bodies are responsible for the decline in congregations and people, but I do think that there hasn’t been enough focus on growth at the Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly level. I’m not trying to call anyone out, but I think that most Presbyterian congregations want to grow. And part of the problem is most have not been resourced well from our wider governing bodies. I’m not solely talking about money—though money helps. I’m talking about focus, success stories, a willingness to talk about what is working and what is not, and the expectation that congregations will grow. A culture that desires growth hasn't existed enough.

I’ll continue to exhort the people at Chain of lakes to grow in numbers while serving passionately in the community. And I carry the sadness of a necessary change in my home church that I love.