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Rector's Address
St. James Annual Parish Meeting
January 20, 2008

When I graduated from Albion College in 1980, I had a small portable typewriter, complete with a fancy orange carrying case, and then three short years later, upon entering the School of Theology at Sewanee, I bought a Commodore 64 computer. I had to tell it to do everything I wanted, i.e. underline, bold face, italicize. It didn't have enough memory on a big old floppy disk to hold more than 9 pages, so I had to make a link to the next part of my papers. Once, I had a malfunction and erased my paper at 11:30 p.m. the night before it was due. Almost 22 years late, I have a laptop that has more power, storage, and capabilities than all the computers put together that sent the Apollo spaceships to the moon.

When I was first ordained in 1986, the parish newsletter was the primary means of communications. To get info out quickly, we had a phone tree that contacted parishioners about a whole host of happenings. Today, even the smallest of parishes have websites to disseminate parish information. Twenty-two years ago, if you wanted a copy of the preacher's sermon, you asked for a copy, but now, many sermons are accessible via the parish website and many can be heard over the computer or downloaded onto an iPod.

The Church I knew as a child growing up is an entity of the past, just as my old portable typewriter is. In his book The Once and Future Church, written in 1991, Fr. Loren Mead makes a very prescient claim that the church is in a new era, and all the old assumptions have to be laid aside. We can no longer assume that everyone is a Christian, nor can we assume that our culture is Christian, and we have to come to grips with God calling us to something new as God's people. In essence, he says all churches have reacted in several ways. We've tried to revamp the old structure and add some new bells and whistles, but that's not going to help. Some have tried to hope for the best. Lastly, he says, we need to come to grips with the new reality that God is calling us to a more apostolic age understanding of mission and ministry. Both the laity and the clergy have to make changes in "the way we've always done it" for the last 800+ years. What he means is that mission and ministry are done by all of the baptized. It is the job of the ordained to help the ministers, the laity, to minister. We do ministry together.

I liken this new period of church history to the Wilderness experience of the ancient Jews as they wandered from Egypt to the Promised Land. We want to return to the fleshpots of Egypt even though it means slavery, sometimes we moan and groan against Moses and God, but the only answer is to walk, together with God and each other, through the wilderness to get to the Promised Land.

In many respects this past year, 2007, has been a blessed year for St. James. We've seen what having Mother Eunice as our assistant has done for us, Fr. Gus blessed us with his teaching and organizing our Christian Formation, Stephen Ministers were added to an already highly functioning Pastoral Care group, a number of youth and adults went on Mission Trips, we held a Faith Alive weekend in April. Many other good ministries are happening, too. These are all staff positions and programs that we said were important to the life and ministry of St. James. In a number of respects, we had a good and productive year hopefully furthering the mission and ministry of Christ in our world.

A group of people have been meeting for several months now to begin what we're calling Neighborhood Ministries. We've been doing a lot of praying, listening to you, to our neighbors, to the people who run businesses on 7th Ave., and others in Hendersonville. After meeting with a business owner and parishioner of St. James, we understand that the issues and challenges are bigger than we alone can meet. I am handing out some sheets to enlist your help in ministering with our neighbors. You will be trained and sustained in this ministry. At present, it looks like we will be having a ministry of presence in the neighborhood, we believe we can use the Cox house to great advantage to help in a number of ways - by the way, we have a number of NA meetings being held at the Cox house already, and we're looking at forming a worship service on 7th Ave. This will change as we discern God's will. I am beginning to wonder if we don't need to consider an Outreach Center building for the community. Please keep that in your prayers. It could be a place for day laborers to gather in the morning waiting to be hired, it could be used during the day for classes and ministry, it could be used for tutoring and mentoring students, it could be a place of hope and the light of Christ. It could be a place of mission and ministry.

But we have a problem. We don't have enough money to fund the ministries we say we want. Now I realize that those of you who are here are most likely financially supporting members of St. James, and I thank you. You should thank yourselves, too, because it's your parish family. Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." He was very smart, very pragmatic about money. It's all sheer and utter gift from God - our abilities, our minds, our good bodies, all are from God. The Scriptures hold up a tithe, the giving of ten percent of our income, our time and talents, too, as the standard of giving, and our Episcopal Church concurs.

I have been tithing since I was about 23 years old, and I say this only because if I can do it, you can, too. I am blessed, and it has little to do with money. You are blessed simply by living in America, and it has little to do with money - even though we need it. I had a former parishioner of mine who played football at Clemson after coming home from the Second World War, Bill used to say that if we were all on welfare and tithed to the parish, there would be more than enough money to do all God called us to do. It's about faith.

The bottom line is this: only you know what your financial situation is, and I'm asking you to do the very best you can. St. James is your parish family, and without your support, we all suffer. Worst of all, the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ suffer. I say this to encourage us, not to castigate anyone.

I believe we are being called to be bold for God in this part of the world that is Hendersonville and the diocese of Western North Carolina. We are supposedly the largest parish in the diocese, and I believe we should be leading the way in mission and ministry in this diocese. We should be helping to raise the bar, so that the whole of the diocese is encouraged and empowered to do Christ's ministry. I'm not sure we're doing that at present even though we have many wonderful ministries going on. St. James, like every other church, should be a mission and ministry station that is in the business of changing lives - of those who are members and those who are not yet members.

I am asking each of the six SWEEPS areas to begin looking at ways in which those groups can become more missional in ministry. Our call is to welcome all, love all, serve all, through Christ. Each of us ought to be asking ourselves, how do I do that every day? WE must have a good mix of caring for one another and making a difference in this world of ours. To that end, after the new vestry has returned from our Retreat in mid-February, along with the vestry representative to each group, I am going to meet with each of the six SWEEPS areas to begin the process of planning Christ's ministry through us over the next 5-10 years. I believe money follows mission, and we'll support what we believe God is calling us to do. Also, I want to meet soon with the Education Committee about planning for a parish wide course such as Disciples of Christ in Community. DOCC, as it's called, is a course in Christianity originally written by the Reverend John Stone Jenkins, one time rector of Trinity Church, New Orleans. It will be a way of learning and living the Gospel that can and will make a difference in our corporate life and make a difference for Christ in this world. We are called to be a Christ's beacon of hope, love, service, and encouragement to a world greatly in need of Jesus. Together, with the Holy Spirit, we can do just that. What can you do?

Here's a story for the right side of our brains, and it's what I'm trying to say: On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was no more than a hut, and there was only one boat; but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea. With no thought for themselves, they went out day and night, tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to be associated with the station and give their time, money, and effort to support the work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of these new members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those who were saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely because they used it as sort of a club. Fewer members were interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club's decoration, and there was a memorial lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them were foreigners. The beautiful new club was in chaos. Immediately, the property committee hired someone to rig up a shower house outside the club, where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's lifesaving activities because they felt they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. A small number of members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. The small group's members were voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, however, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old station. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the passengers drown. As disciples of Jesus, our primary task is to go and make disciples. (See Matthew 28:19.) To put it another way, we are to go and save lives. Unfortunately, we sometimes forget our purpose. We need to recover our passion for lifesaving. We need to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. (See James 1:22.)

Author Unknown


©  2008