Today I drove to Williamsport PA for a meeting at the Community Arts Center. I serve on our conference worship team. Because we are becoming a new annual conference, myself and several others on the current team joined our new brothers and sisters at this venue. Here we discussed what out two opening worship services might look like in June and September as we become the new Susquehanna Conference.
My drive from home to Williamsport was through a lot of rural areas that I covered years ago when I was a paramedic. I actually was on one road where I responded to a one car accident years ago. At that time the unit I was a part of, we responded by ourselves in the vehicle. I got there and people were standing around this women. I beat the ambulance there. The group of first responders was not into having medics in "their territory." But as I began to treat the patient one of them began to help me. I greatly appreciated the extra set of hands in helping my patient in the midstof a hostile atmosphere. I knew what I needed to do and I did it becase someone needed me to do what I knew how to do.
Today many communities embrace paramedics. I started my EMS career in 1980 and paramedics were just beginning to come on the scene. My favorite heroes were Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto. If you don't get the reference try Googling the tv show "Emergency". The idea of people not wanting to help or even call paramedics is a unheard of. EMTs, Paramedics and Pre-Hospital nurses and doctors are dedicated to giving the best care with the latest technolgy. I can remember using a monitor/defibrillator called a LifePak 5. They came out with a LifePak 10 bigger and better. Some didn't trust is as it was new and we knew how the older model worked. But again, in time, the newer model grew in use. I wonder what model number they are up to now? Is that company even in the business of making those anymore?
The church is in the same place I think that paramedics were when I was beginning my career. The church is seeing all these new churches, house churches or otherwise and saying, "We don't need that." Our church is good enough. Look at our facilities. Or maybe some have said, maybe if we just do what we did 10 or 15 years ago like our dinners or some other fundraiser we will come back. Here is one I have trouble with: "How do we get more volunteers in here(the church)?" Volunteers? You mean the people outside the church are the church's salvation? I thought salvation was found in Christ? In the book, "Pathway to Renewal" the authors share that one of the symptoms of a dying church is the people see those outside the church as those who will save the church from extinction.
Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ so as to transform the world. Under that umbrella each church needs to find what it does best and who God is calliing them to reach out to. Is our ministry with families, singles, elderly, youth? Where are we called to focus? We could do everything and do it all halfway or we could choose one or two things anddo the ministry well. The key is being able to come out of our comfort zone, casting a vision together and taking aleap of faith into ministry.
At our meeting today we are nearing the end of this journey in the wilderness with moving from Wyoming Annual Conference and Central Pennsylvania Conference to the new Susquehanna Conference. Many if not all of us have never been here before. But here we all were gathered around the table talking about the birth of something new. It started out as scary and maybe a little frightening as we started this journey. Moments of joy and frustration, grief and celebration, darkness and light have been experienced along the way. While the dates in June and September are the culmination of this part of the journey, we soon will be part of a new one with other brothers and sisters of the faith.
How about the local church? Where are we being called to head out into the wilderness? We will the journey take us? Who will come and who will stay back in Egypt? We will never know unless we take those first steps of recognizing who we are in Christ, what we are called to do in our mission statement and then act on it with a vision that leads us to ministry in our communities, counties, country and the world just as Jesus called us to do in Acts 1:8
Peace
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