Telling the Story Part 4: Talking about Faith

It was well over one hundred degrees outside when I heard a knock on the front door of my air-conditioned third floor walk-up. When I answered the rush of heat in the foyer nearly knocked me backwards. Standing before me I saw two young men dressed in white dress shirts and ties, with backpacks on their backs: Mormon Missionaries.
"Come in out of this heat!" I insisted. Dazed and a little surprised, they sat down and removed their backpacks.
"Have you been taking regular breaks?" I asked, concerned.
"Not really, " Elder Number One responded.
"Let me get you some cold water," I said, running to the kitchen. I brought each of them glasses of ice water.
They thanked me and and then started in on their spiel. Had I heard about the church of Jesus Christ?
I laughed. "Yes, but I'm not interested. I was just concerned about your safety on this hot day."
"Well, maybe you could try to convert us to your point of view," Elder Number Two suggested. Again, I laughed. This was clearly a clever gambit that they had been trained to use on us non-Mormons.
"No, thanks. I think you're fine just the way you are." Maybe because the heat had gotten to them, they gave up trying to evangelize me at this point and we just made polite chit-chat as they finished drinking their water. After I finished lecturing them about how they really should carry ample bottled water in their bags, they left and resumed their appointed rounds.
Most people, myself included, can't imagine doing anything like what those young men do. They must face near constant rejection every day, not to mention angry dogs and doors slammed in their faces, during their terms of service, which usually last two years. I did once have a job that involved walking door to door, for the City Directory (a book rendered useless by the Internet), but people tended to be nice to me once they figured out all I wanted from them was a little information. These days I don't knock on the doors of strangers very often, but I talk about my faith all the time. It comes with the territory of being a Pastor. It's like pretty much anything else--it gets easier with practice.
Most mainline Protestants don't like to talk about our faith. Most people work in secular settings, and we don't want to offend anyone or even get in trouble. We don't want to alienate our neighbors and make our friends feel awkward. But we tend not to even talk about our faith with each other--even in church. That's sad. The Congregational tradition talks about "testimonies of faith, not tests of faith" but we don't make testimonies very often, either. I think that's too bad. It's also endangering the future of our tradition. Mainline Protestant churches began to decline seriously right around the time that our members started having a lot fewer children. If we want our churches to survive, we need to do something that our forebearers in faith probably have not done for hundreds of years: many more of us need to start opening up about our faith. Some may not ever feel comfortable with it, and that's okay. But many more might find, as I have, that it isn't as tough as they feared.
This is part of a series. Read the introductory post here:
Read Part 2, about Offering Hospitality, here.
Part 3, about Telling the Story without Words, is here.

Telling the Story Part 1

Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away!--Isaiah, Chapter 49, verse 1

This month I am focusing on the concept of "telling the story." We are people of the book, like the Hebrew people with whom we share our spiritual ancestry, but it took a while for the book to be written. What we now call the Old Testament started out as stories and rules for living passed down from one generation to the next over a period of hundreds of years.  The actual writing of the Bible is estimated to have begun around 1000 years before the birth of Christ. However, it was not until after the Hebrew people experienced a painful forced exile in the foreign country of Babylon (land that today is mostly part of Iraq)  that the Hebrew people began to really organize the texts into something one could call scripture. For most of their early history the Hebrew people were people of the land, but with the codification of scripture they became people of the book, an innovation that has enabled their religion to survive periods of persecution, hardship and exile.

Modern day American Christians tend to feel as though this is a period of hardship or even persecution. Most churches are shrinking in membership at a time when the United States population is growing. Churches are growing older in average age while the overall US population remains young.  At first glance makes it seems as though the churches that are growing offer stadium seating, surround sound and a variety of other expensive amenities. Most churches cannot compete with that, and few even bother to try. However, appearances can be deceiving. Some non-mega churches are in fact growing. They are growing because they have found a way to focus on telling their stories of faith--both the stories of individuals in the congregation, and the larger story of the faith that we all embrace. 

We are part of a great tradition of testimonies of faith, and we need to put our focus on telling our story more often and in more ways.

How can we tell the story? Each of my blog entries in January will focus on a specific way that churches can tell the story. 

What is your favorite way of telling the story of your faith? Share in the comments below.
This is part of a series. 
Read Part 2, about Offering Hospitality, here.
Part 3, about Telling the Story without Words, here.
Part 4, Talking about Faith, can be found here.

Abundance

2 Corinthians 9:8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.


Last week I preached a well-received sermon on the concept of Abundance. Abundance is a powerful Biblical concept which, if applied regularly (one might say religiously)  has the power to transform everything in your life.

What is Abundance?

Abundance is not just gratitude, although gratitude and counting blessings is good.

Abundance is not just generosity—it is possible to be generous even with things that are scarce in our lives. Sometimes poor people are the most generous. It is possible to be down to your last crust of bread and to share that crust with someone. Sharing from scarcity can be a deeply moving gesture, but it is an adaptation to a crisis, and if you are not in a crisis you need to adjust your thinking. 

Living a life from a viewpoint of abundance is taking an honest look at what we possess in abundance and making our choices and decisions based on the fact--not the idea, but the fact--that God is providing us with abundant blessings.

It means leading with our strengths, and with confidence.

It means recognizing we all have blessings to give and concentrating on sharing those blessings rather than focusing on any perceived deficit or lack in our lives.

This time of year, most yards are covered with dandelions. Many people look at their dandelion-strewn lawns and see persistent weeds. I see abundant free food for my dandelion-loving pet bunny.

What do you possess in abundance?

It may be material abundance.

It may be land.

It may be time.

It may be a lot of pet-able, adorable animals.

It may be wildflowers.

It may be pennies.

It may be rocks.

It may be patience for handicapped people.

It may be friends.

It may be faith.

Whenever my thoughts turn to what I want or need, instead of practicing scarcity thinking and dwelling on the things I do not have, I am learning to inventory what I possess in abundance and figure out how to use that abundance to get what I need, or to re-examine whether I really need it in the first place. Abundance teaches us that even though other people have more of some things, God is providing each one of us with not just enough, but more than enough. We just need to look with eyes of abundance to see it.

Also, and this is really important, we need to figure out how to share from our abundance with others. Sharing from our scarcity, in many cases, can make us feel resentful and can lead to more scarcity thinking, but sharing from our abundance grows our soul and multiplies our abundance according to God's plan for humanity.

Resurrection Garden

I love the look of this Easter Garden. I planted mine in a clear serving tray from the dollar store, and I got a bag of small stones there too. The rest of the stuff is from my house and yard. For the empty tomb I used a short plastic see-through glass. It hasn't sprouted yet, and if it doesn't sprout in time I plan to transplant some grass from my own yard.