A Church as Diverse as the City We Serve

IMPACT
(VIDEO PLAYS)

WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
These are exciting times at St. Mark for sure. We’re just some really cool things going on. Good morning everybody. My name is Chris Paola. I get the honor of being called the senior pastor here and it’s great to be with you today. But yeah, we are in the middle of really an exciting time. It is more than a campaign. This is an effort that we’re a part of for the next 50 years, and if you’re a guest with us today and you’re like, man, I came on a day where they’re having this housekeeping conversation, I’ll just say this, you picked a good day to be here because honestly, we are going to be talking about what it is that we value, what we’re passionate about, what we care about. It’s like a vision for the future for us, and you’re evaluating us by what we care about, which I think is a good thing.

So yeah, so if you’re just a guest here today, it’s a good day to be here and if you’re irregular, it’s a chance to be reminded of these things that are important to us. Now for this series, what we’ve done each week is we’re looking at one of the six different vision statements we have. Here are the things that we care about. Here’s the things that we’re going to walk forward if a vision is a picture of the preferred future. So these are the things that we’re going to do for the next 50 years, and we’re heading in this direction and each week we’re looking at a different one. We’ve talked about prayer, we’ve talked about the next generation, and today we are talking about being a church as diverse as the city we serve. A church as diverse as the city we serve, that we are a reflection of the community that we are called to reach.

RACIAL RECONCILIATION IN SCRIPTURE
And that doesn’t just happen. It takes some intentionality. We’ve talked about this before, but this is a good chance as any to dive into this a little bit more because this isn’t just God’s or our vision for the church. This is God’s vision for his church, capital C. This is what God wants for his church. You could see it when you open scripture. It’s hiding in plain sight really from the first pages in the first book of the Bible to the last book of the Bible.

…. Your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.
          Genesis 17:5

It’s all in there like Abraham in the book of Genesis, Abraham, Abraham, that guy, the father of the faith, God calls him. It’s interesting when he renames him, he says, “your name will be Abraham for I’ve made you a father of many nations,” meaning it’s your faith in me that will other nations will share this faith and you will be the father of many nations.

…all nations will stream to Mt. Zion.
Isaiah 2:2

Abraham. And then that just continues through all the Psalms and the prophets of the Old Testament like Isaiah, and he talks about how all nations will stream up to, it’s kind of an interesting word, picture, but all nations will stream up to Mount Zion and then we see this.

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations…
Matthew 28:19

Then when Jesus shows up on the scene, he talks and is recorded in Matthew’s biography of him, but he tells the church, go, you guys go. I’m sending you. Go make disciples of all nations, not just the Jews, not just the people who look like you all nations. And they do. They start planting churches and telling people about Jesus all across the Mediterranean, all across the Roman Empire. We get churches in Africa and Spain and Greece and Turkey and all over, and the Apostle Paul notices when there’s all this rich diversity, and he would show up at one of these house churches in the Mediterranean and he would see black, white, Asian, European, African, all worshiping together and he would go, hold on.

God’s intent was that now, through the Church, the {multi-colored} wisdom of God should be known…
Ephesians 3:10 

 This is what he was talking about from the very beginning, making disciples of all nations. All nations will stream to you the father of many nations. This is what he was talking about, and he called it the manifold wisdom of God on full display or that word manifold. I love asking pastors, what do you think that word manifold means? The word manifold. It’s not like a part of a car or an engine. Manifold means multicolored. And so Paul is walking into these churches and he’s like, oh my goodness, the multicolored wisdom of God is on full display. This is spectacular.

…there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language…
Revelation 7:9

And then John, the apostle John gets the vision of heaven at the end of his life and he sees every nation, every tribe, every tongue gathered around the throne worshiping Jesus, wow, wow, it’s pretty spectacular.

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE NEXT 50 YEARS
And you see this and you go, well, why aren’t the nations here this morning? It’s like Dr. King said, 10:00 AM on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, which is why every week we’ve looked at these vision statements and then we ask two questions. One, what will happen in the next 50 years if we don’t live out this vision? And two, what will happen in the next 50 years if we do so?

IF WE DON’T LIVE OUT THIS VISION
Let’s talk about what will happen if we don’t live out this vision to be a church as diverse as the city we serve. What happens if we continue to just do what comes easy? Well, it’s a slow and suffocating death. Pew research, like the research company, pew, whatever, but they did a study of the racial makeup of the major denominations in America and the Lutheran church, Missouri Synod at we’re a part of ranked third from last.

And this is just like major denominations. The Methodist church is 94% white Presbyterian church. USA is 88% white American Baptist, 73% white. I stopped there because technically the definition of homogeneous is anything where one ethnic group makes up more than 70% of your worshiping body. So that’s what the definition of diversity is when it’s less than 70%. Now, you and I may not describe ourselves as a white church, but to people of color, that’s absolutely what we are a white church. And I look at that list and I promise you there are really, really, really good churches making up these denominations, and I promise you that the vast, vast, vast majority of them say, we welcome all people. We’re a welcoming church. We’re so welcoming. I promise you’re welcome to come. We welcome everybody, but it’s obvious that everybody doesn’t feel welcome. There’s something we do either intentionally or unintentionally that isn’t welcoming.

Otherwise we would look differently. In my estimation, as I’ve researched this topic for years now and looked into this, a lot of churches that are well-meaning and well-intended, they will say, all are welcome, but there’s this subtext of assimilation. You’re welcome to come and do our thing with us. Come be like us assimilates versus integration, which says, come do your thing with us. Change us. And it’s hard for organisms that are built for self-preservation to have this openhandedness and be like, change us. We’re very self-serving and church very quickly becomes about us. But this vision of being a church as diverse as the city we serve means that we’re open-handed, and you are welcome to change us have influence here.

Now these statistics are what they are, but they’re even more harrowing when you realize that research has been done that by the year 2050 minorities will be the majority in our country. For the first time in our nation’s history, there will be more people of color in our country than white people by the year 2050 for kids 18 and under, this is already true. They walk around school, they see this 2050, that’s not even like the next 50 years friends. That’s like the next 25 years, 2050. And that means for all those churches we were just looking at, that means that half of the country that they are irrelevant to half of the country, that they’re unable to reach them.

And that’s just not an option for me. It’s like the best time to plant an apple tree is 10 years ago. Now is the time to be making these choices and making these changes. And then let’s talk about Battle Creek. Then these numbers look a little bit differently. We’re already around 63% Caucasian. Battle Creek is 63% white, 16% black, 7% Hispanic, and 4% Asian. So I think we’re actually on the inside track to that 2050 flip. I think it’s a lot closer than we realize here in Battle Creek. And that is what God wants St. Mark to look like that.

WHAT IF WE DO?
And we’ve got some work to do. I thank God that in the last couple of years, our church has continued to diversify. Absolutely awesome that we have representation on our council, even on our staff, our teachers at our world, people of color serving in those capacities. It’s awesome, but we’ve got a long way to go. And so let’s talk about what happens if we do live out this vision when we are a church, as diverse as the city we serve in the next 50 years.

FOR YOU
I see a Sunday morning where somebody walks in and sees an incredible diversity in this room, and rather than our lack of diversity, undermining our confession of what we say about Jesus, that he loves all people. God so loved the world, and we do too.

We are one in Christ. There’s neither slave nor free Jew nor Greek, rather than our lack of diversity, undermining our confession of Jesus, our diversity will actually validate what it is we say about Jesus. We’ll walk in and be like, how is this happening? How are the nation’s presence here in this church? What’s going on? And our only answer will be the cross of Jesus. Jesus. Because here’s the secret of this, okay, the reason racial reconciliation is so elusive to the world and they so desperately want it, but it is always out of reach. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Reconciliation requires confession and what forgiveness. You guys were listening, great reconciliation requires confession and forgiveness. When I hear conversations about race relations in our country, I hear a profound lack of confession. Here’s the things that we have done and the people I represent. Here’s the things that we have done and failed to do to contribute to this problem, this inequity.

And then I also hear profound lack of forgiveness. I forgive you, I don’t need anything else from you, but that’s why the church has an incredible opportunity to lead in this. The church has what the world so desperately wants. This is what Paul is talking about in Ephesians, and he says, the cross had just destroyed the dividing wall of hostility between the nations. And it goes on to say that there is one new humanity in Jesus because it’s only because of the cross. Somebody who I have wronged again and again and again can look at me and say, I forgive you. Not because you deserve it, not because of what you have done, but because of what Jesus has done. I forgive you.

FOR THE CHURCH
And reconciliation is possible in the next 50 years because we are a church as diverse as the city we serve. I see multilingual things like bulletins printed in multiple languages. We already do this actually. I write out all my sermons by hand. And then if we have a family come in, who is English second language, Nate and Jackie, our hospitality directors, they let me know and I run to Google Translate and I translate my sermons into their heart language. And actually dozens of times now, we have handed sermons to people in their heart language and said, this might be easier for you to follow along today.

Every time their eyes are like, wow, what a gift. I love that. Love that. And the next 50 years, because we are a church as diverse as the city we serve, I actually see us having Spanish services here or Burmese services. I can’t help but notice that God keeps bringing people here who are Spanish of speaking. And I’m like, okay, I’m listening, and I would love to call a pastor who is fluent to pastor a congregation here. I love it. I don’t know where I’d put ’em. We will talk about that, but that would be amazing. Which means also that I think our music is going to continue to sound a little bit different. We don’t always have to use German Western scales for our music. I like German music, but it’s not music. It’s not only music. There’s scales out there and instruments out there that man, I would love to feature them and have them up here on the worship, leading worship. I had love to sing choruses in other languages. I’d love it. It’d be amazing.

I’d love for people to be able to walk in and not only see a glimpse of heaven, but hear a glimpse of heaven as well. I think a lot of people are going to be really surprised when they get there that it doesn’t sound like the church I grew up in or look like it in the next 50 years because we are a church as diverse as the city we serve. I see us celebrating festivals that other nations do, not just October Fest. We could do that too, I guess. But Cinco de Mayo, the Chinese New Year, and then afterwards having delicious food trucks out there too. I mean, come on. Who doesn’t want to do that at in the next 50 years? Because we are a church as diverse as the city we serve. I actually having ESL English Second Language classes here on our campus.

ESL CLASSES
About a year ago, a lady approached me and she says, I’m tutoring these Japanese women who a lot of them actually go to your school, our world for children. I would love to teach them English on campus so they could just drop their kids off, walk down the hall and get lessons here. And I was like, yes. And then she’s like, great, well, I’ll come on campus and we’ll kind of walk and we’ll figure out what this looks like. And I was like, well, okay, great. And so she got here and I introduced myself and we got to know each other. And I said, okay. And we went to the conference room where I was picturing these classes happening. If you’ve never seen our conference room, it can hold eight people. It’s like a table in a closet basically. And it makes for some very stuffy meetings.

But she walked in and she was like, oh, this is too small. We can’t do this in here. I was like, okay, okay, well what if we have it in the cafe out here? And so I walked her out to the cafe and we started talking about it. And while we’re doing it, one of the classrooms for our world, what do you guys do when you push kids in the carts? What are you doing? It’s like a tour with little kids in carts and they push ’em around and it’s what they should be able to do. This is the campus, right? They’re giving kids a push tour. I don’t know what it is, a field trip. And then someone rang the doorbell, was the postman, and he came in and then he was talking to somebody at the front desk here and we’re standing in there and she’s like, this is too much traffic. This is way too distracting. There’s no way we could have classes in here. And I was like, okay. And we looked at the youth room and that didn’t work for a bunch of different reasons and it doesn’t work. And she had to tell me, thank you, but I don’t think it’s going to work here. And a little piece of me died, not just because I think it’d be a cool opportunity, but it was a moment where we couldn’t live out the vision because we were limited by our facilities.

That’s why we’re doing this campaign, you guys. We have to address our campus and we have to make more room here. We have to. And on that list, I’ll be honest with you, okay, so if I’m just dreaming up, if I had a hundred million dollars, I could spend it all on this campus. I promise you, I’m not telling you to go buy lottery tickets for the campaign. Don’t do that. Give us the money instead. Don’t give it to the state. But you can come up with a lot of things that are very expensive ideas. And so we started dreaming about what we want to do on our campus, and we eventually had to create a priority list of this is what comes before this. And so we’re sitting here and we’re like, okay, well what’s first? And first is adding seats up there. This room is starting to feel full at 11 o’clock, nine 30 is worse. And that number, that 70% capacity, 75% capacity, right around there, you actually, you run counterintuitive. People will stop inviting their friends. It feels full already. And we don’t ever want to be at that point. And we don’t ever want our facilities to limit the growth of the kingdom of God.

And so we’re going to add seats up there. It’s like a terra seating style. That’s priority one. And then more room is needed, right between the services, especially after the nine 30 and that lobby cafe, it is packed with people and everyone’s like, I can’t wait to get out of here. It’s too full. Especially if you’re like an introvert, you’re like, no, thank you. And so what we want to do is push like 2018 to 20 feet, push that wall 18 to 20 feet into the parking lot and make a larger fellowship area. You’ve seen the renderings. If you haven’t grab a booklet in the lobby on your way out, there’s a bunch out there. So we want to make more space out there for people to mingle. That’s priority two. And then priority three would be, well, because we tore up our parking lot, we need to put in a new parking lot.

We have 2000 cars every week drive onto and off of our campus, and our parking lot is in need of some serious attention, and this is the time to do it. So we’re going to tear it up even more, and we’re going to expand our parking lot further west or further east there. So that’s item number three. And then that brings us to the multipurpose room, which is a shared space. Our world of children uses that every single day. And then we use that space every Sunday morning with our kids and a rocking kids ministry. And then every Sunday night with our youth ministry, that space is used all the time and hasn’t been touched in 50 years. Give me a break. And then the next one would be this step, actually right here. This is kind of a low cost thing, but I think it’s a huge priority.

And a couple people have asked me about this and we realized we weren’t communicating it clearly. So to just explain it clearly, this step right here, I bump into it all the time. I’ve seen people trip over it, but we would like to lower this step. So it’s flush all the way across the chancellor all the way across the stage here. So it’s just one level that way because okay, if we have an R World program or if we have a Easter program here with kids, we put bleachers up here and the kids are up on bleachers and tempted to swan dive all the way down. It’s happened once. Jonathan, Dennis and he barrel rolled on his way down the aisle. It was pretty amazing. We were all like, ah. Or if we have VBS and decorations up here and kids are dancing, they’re precariously on the edge here, and it’s just not safe.

So we want to lower the steps. So it’s safer up here, but you do all of those projects and you can spend $2 million really quickly, really quickly. And so if we want to call a pastor to start other services, where are we going to put ’em? If we want to have a classroom for ESL classes or Bible studies, we need to do some more construction and that’s where we need to get north of that 2 million number. So we are asking every person at St Mark to make a three year commitment. So we raise $2 million for the next 50 years. But I have a hunch that we’re going to raise more. I do. I’m looking at a really blessed group of people, incredibly blessed group of people, and an incredibly generous group of people.

COMMITMENT SUNDAY
And all we’re asking people to do for the next few weeks. And we’ve been doing this for two weeks now. That’s our third week, is to pray one simple prayer. I’m not going to tell you how much to give, but this is the prayer and I’ll invite you to pray this with me this morning.

God, what do you want me to give to the next 50 years?

That’s it. Whatever he tells you to do, whatever the Holy Spirit impresses on your heart, do that. Nothing more, nothing less.

COMMITMENT SUNDAY
OCTOBER 6^TH
ALL SERVICES

This is not me twisting your arm to give more, trying to squeeze more. No, this is just you being faithful. And that’s it. And I have a hunch that because this is God’s vision, it’s not going to lack God’s supply and he’s going to provide the funds through his people. So thank you guys for your generosity, and as we close this morning, I invite you to pray with me. 

PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank you so much for just this invitation to be a part of your kingdom. We all were foreigners at one time, and yet you included us. God forgive us if there’s any part of us that hasn’t intentionally or unintentionally ostracized a group of people. Forgive us if there’s things that we’ve done or failed to do to include others. Forgive us for any of the ways we’ve exacted hatred ourselves or our ancestors. Forgive us for any prejudice or preference that we’ve held onto. This is sin God. And for this, we need your forgiveness. So forgive us, and as you forgive us, I pray, very simple prayer this morning. Would you make Saint Mark A. Church as diverse as the city we serve? This means something different for each of us as individuals. Maybe it’s volunteering with new organizations, or maybe it means supporting charities that work for different minority groups or learning new hobbies or introducing ourselves to a neighbor across the street that looks different than us, whatever it is, for each distilled down to each and every one of us.

God, would you show us and continue to change the complexion of this church to be a reflection of this community, but also a reflection of your kingdom. It’s right there in the prayer. Your son taught us to pray so we say it together. Our Father, who arts in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.