Sermon - The Way, Part 5

 Each Sunday, we share a Breakthrough Prayer together.  This is a time when we invite God, through prayer, to mold and shape us as a church.  That prayer is printed in your bulletin – take it home with you and pray that prayer this week. As a community, as a church, let’s pray together.

We hear this passage from Acts, and maybe we long for God to add to our church day by day, but an increase in members is a symptom of a church that is on the way, following God. Increases in membership is not the goal – the goal is to be open to the leading of God and to be reshaped into the church God intends us to be. If we can do that – through opening ourselves up to the means of grace God offers through study, fellowship, communion, and prayer – then I believe we will find “success” in God’s eyes as a church.

Everyday, our church community makes decisions – will we follow God and allow God to reshape us or will we resist the work of the Potter?  Sometimes, as I mentioned before, there are watershed moments when the community faces choices that have a profound impact on its future life.  I can imagine for this church that when we decided, as a church, in 1844, to be a Methodist Episcopal Church, South in support of slavery, that the decision was a watershed moment.  One for which we should repent. Who knows what damage was done to God’s children as a result of that decision.

In July of 2015, our church voted by an overwhelming margin to become a Reconciling Ministries Church, stating out loud that our doors are open to everyone.  I think that was a watershed moment for us. I hope it has brought grace and hope to many.

In 1927, Fairlawn Community Methodist Episcopal Church laid a cornerstone that, along with bulletins and buffalo nickels, held hate and racism. I’m grateful that when the church closed, the misshapen clay was not hidden, but reshaped into repentance. I’m grateful that around $400,000 was added to the In Our Time Fund at their Foundation to work for racial justice. It seems to me to be a fitting turning back to The Way.

What will our next watershed moment be? I don’t know. Maybe it will be something huge, like our alignment as a denomination was in the 1844. Or maybe it will be opening our doors and our hearts to one person – one person who needs the grace of God who we can help.

May we clear the way to be clay that can be shaped by God into the church we should become.