Virtue #2: Flourishing Churches Integrate New People – Ruth 1:16–17 and Matt. 4:18–22, 25:31-40

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Lectionary Readings for Jan. 16, 2022         2nd Sunday after The Epiphany, Year C
Isaiah 62:1-5         The Vindication and Salvation of Zion
Psalm 36:5-10       v6 Your justice is like the majestic mountains. Your judgments are as deep as the oceans, and yet in Your greatness, You, O Eternal, offer life for every person and animal.
1 Corinthians 12:1-11     v4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.
John 2:1-11 The Wedding at Cana – Water into Wine 

But this week we’ll look at Ruth 1:16–17 and Matthew 4:18–22 and Matthew 25:31-40 as we continue an eight-part series looking at the virtues of flourishing churches.

Weekly Meditative Exercise

Christianity includes a long and rich tradition of embracing meditative practices as a way of keeping us connected with God, ourselves, and each other. I encourage you to spend some time each week (ideally 10-30 minutes) trying each weekly exercise. You will naturally find some more appealing and effective than others. You’ll like some but not others, and after 6-12 months you’ll better understand what’s available and what helps you.

This week’s exercise focuses on Community (pages 149-151)
From Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun. InterVarsity Press, 2005.

  • Desire: to express and reflect God’s self-donating love by investing in and journeying with others.

  • Definition: Christian community exists when people connect with each other in authentic and loving ways that encourage [healing and] growth. They cultivate, celebrate and make evident God’s love for all.

  • Scripture: “The community [of Jesus-followers] continually committed themselves to learning what the apostles taught them, gathering for fellowship, breaking bread, and praying.” (Acts 2:42)

As you engage with this exercise, I encourage you to look for opportunities to connect with at least one person each day this week that you don’t normally talk with. Invite them into conversation. Invite them into shared time. And if someone shares a personal concern or struggle with you, ask them, “Would you like me to add that to my prayer list?” Sharing time, conversation, joys, and concerns with each other is a powerful way to grow and interconnect our community of faith.

Peace through Leadership Quotes

“Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. Love is the active outpouring of one's whole being into the being of another.”  ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

We “can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.”  ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., December 1964

This week, let us all look for opportunities to be voices reason, sanity, and understanding. Sometimes it can be hard work, a deep effort, to be that voice. But it is good work, and God calls us to good work – especially when creating moments and spaces of peace is difficult.

Any time I preach or lead a group, regardless of age, I start the same way. I’m going to say three short sentences. Please repeat each sentence, with enthusiasm.
God made me. God loves me. God has plans for me.

Preface to Today’s Scripture Reading

Last week we began an eight-part series based on the book Eight Virtues of Rapidly Growing Churches by Matt Miofsky and Jason Byassee. As I mentioned, I prefer the term “flourishing” to “rapidly growing.”

To recap, the first virtue focused on miracles. Flourishing churches believe that God has worked in the life of their church in miraculous ways, they celebrate how God is currently working in miraculous ways, and they act in a way that expects God will continue blessing and guiding them in ways they cannot anticipate or explain.

The second virtue is that flourishing churches quickly integrate new people into the life of the church.
Flourishing churches grow because church members celebrate your successes and joys with you, and “if you don’t show up for church, someone will notice, and miss you, and call about you. If you’re hurting, someone will pray with you; and when they are hurting, you will pray with them. Folks look around in one another’s souls, ask where it hurts, and apply healing balm there” (Eight Virtues, 490). Churches flourish when they are personal – when they have a genuine interest in and compassion for each other.

We have three short Scripture readings for this week’s virtue.

The first story comes from the Hebrew Bible’s (aka Old Testament’s) book of Ruth. 2,500-year-old story short, Ruth was a non-Jewish woman who married into a Jewish family. Her husband died, and her mother-in-law (Naomi) tried to convince Ruth to return to her birth-family. Ruth loved her new family so much that she became Jewish so she could remain with her new family.

The second story reminds us of how Jesus personally invited people to join Him in His ministry.

In the third story, Jesus shares specific expectations with His followers, so they know what it looks like to Love God, love themselves, and love others.

Let’s open our ears, minds, and hearts as we hear Biblical stories of invitation, inclusion, and integration.

 

Read Ruth 1:16–17 and Matthew 4:18–22 and Matthew 25:31-40.

I love this church sign that so succinctly communicates one of the great tragedies of our modern society: “No one ever talks about Jesus’ miracle of having 12 close friends in His 30s.” Today, we have more ways of connecting with each other than ever before: phone, email, text, video, social media, and don’t forget good old-fashioned letters in the mailbox. Despite all of those options, a recent Harvard study confirmed that loneliness is one of the biggest mental health issues of our day. “61% of young people aged 18-25 and 51% of mothers with young children” report feeling seriously lonely – a crisis the nearly two-year-old pandemic has only exacerbated.

Organizations that help people feel wanted, connected, and included are healing that wound, are making the world a better place, and are growing. I am convinced that if we continually work to live into the core teachings of our Christian faith, we too can continue being a place where flourishing happens.

That sounds great, right? And throughout my life, from east to west and north to south, I have heard church people at all levels say, “we need to get more people into church; our community would be better if more folks were going to church; if only they knew how great we are!” And yet... not only are Christian churches across America not attracting people, we’ve been steadily losing members for the past 50 years. So what’s the disconnect?

The answers to that question – and our path out of decline and into flourishing – comes through some brutally honest self-reflection and cultural change. I love what Ruth says to Naomi, “Stop pushing me away!” We are more likely to flourish when we ask ourselves (especially our newer members) how we might be pushing people away.

Throughout my life, I’ve seen all sorts of new people getting involved with churches and bringing their ideas of new ways to love God, love ourselves, and love others. And all too often, their suggestions and efforts have been met with “well that’s different; how about you learn to like doing it the way that makes us happy.” Or maybe they hear, “We don’t have any money budgeted for that, so there’s no way that could ever happen.” (I would refer you back to last week’s virtue of believing in miracles!) Or maybe they get the dreaded, “that’s interesting; you should join a committee so people can review your idea.” Consequently, new people, understandably, often take their time, their energy, their ideas, and their talents elsewhere.

Churches across the globe have suffered as a result of this cycle. A slow death is the danger of NOT integrating new people – and their ideas, their concerns, and their struggles – into the life of the church, our church. More importantly, how many people have not heard how much God loves them because we were unwilling to take a risk and try something new?

So here’s the good news: we can ALL live out this virtue! And... we don’t need to build or buy anything to become better at integrating. Integrating people into the LIFE of our church family means welcoming them into our family, ensuring they feel welcomed, and finding places where their talents and interests become interwoven with our church life. Integrating people means we flourish together.

HOW do we quickly integrate new people into our church family? I suggest we start with Jesus’ Great Commandments: love God, love yourself, and love others (Matthew 22:36-40), but in this case we work in reverse. We include others by loving them. We include others as an expression of how each of us feels loved by God. And we include others as an act of worship by letting God’s love, grace, and mercy for them flow through us.

We include others by loving them when we celebrate with them, when we mourn with them, when we share time and conversation with them, when we pray with them, when we serve them, and when we call them to say, “It was great to see you this week – OR – I missed seeing you this week, how are you?” By doing all those things, we begin to integrate their life into our lives. As Nef pointed out during our Bible Study this week, “You may be able to learn to love yourself when you experience other people loving you.” That’s a blessing we can offer to all people.

Following Jesus’ method, we include others when we personally invite them to join us in a church activity that we love doing ourselves. For example, “I’d love for you to join me for a day at the food pantry... for a special song with the choir... for a shift selling fireworks with me... or for a Sunday worship service.” Any of those are great ways to create introductions and new connections, AND we also need to be sensitive to pushing people too far, too fast and turning them off.

And finally, we include others when we love God by allowing God to speak and act through us – when we remind someone that God made them, loves them, and has plans for them.

One of the verses we read last week applies equally well this week: Acts 2:42, “The community of Jesus’ followers continually committed themselves to learning what the apostles taught them, gathering for fellowship, breaking bread, and praying.” These are four great ways of inviting, including, and integrating people into the life of a flourishing church. FYI – coming to our Sunday worship and sticking around for coffee, snacks, and conversation afterwards checks off all four of those activities; how easy is that?!?

The Good News of God’s love for us is that all of us – with our great diversity of talents, interests, and wisdom – we are ALL welcomed into and needed in the Kingdom of God. THAT is Good News the world needs to hear.

Amen? Amen!