Sermon from November 26, 2006
Today is the last in a series of sermons on the mission and vision of Brandywine Valley Baptist Church. Let me review briefly the highlights of the previous five sermons.

First, the mission of this Church is to be followers of Jesus Christ, known by our love. In our jaded and skeptical world, the credibility of our message depends on the authenticity of our love.

I want you to remember this mission. So, would you say it aloud? The mission of Brandywine Valley Baptist Church is to be ... (you finish the sentence): followers of Jesus Chrust, known by our love. Say it again. The mission of Brandywine Valley Baptist Church is to be ... : followers of Jesus Christ, known by our love.

What would such a community of followers look like? What would be its vision of itself? I have expressed three answers to that question. These answers state our vision.

First, followers of Jesus Christ, known by their love, will engage God with heartfelt worship. John 4:23-24 says: "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Second, followers of Jesus Christ, known by their love, will engage their communities with compassionate deeds. Galatians 6:10 says: Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

Third, followers of Jesus Christ, known by their love, will engage our culture with gracious discernment. 1 Peter 3:15 says: But in your hearts set spart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

There is one word that occurs in all three statements: engage. That is a powerful word of action. It carries overtones of connections at many levels over long periods of time. We are to engage our God, our communities, and our culture. Would you repeat that? We are to engage ... : our God, our communities, and our culture. Again: We are to engage ... : our God, our communities, and our culture.

How are we to engage our God?: With heartfelt worship. How are we to engage our communities?: With compassionate deeds. How are we to engage our culture?: With gracious discernment.

As for developing short and long-range plans, we will be asking ourselves how those plans help us realize our vision and carry out our mission. One plan has called for the building of a new sanctuary. In terms of our mission and vision we have seen this as an attractive and more adequate platform from which to pursue our mission and vision.

We all know that new construction is expensive. That makes financial demands on this congregation. The sermon last Sunday was an attempt to look at the spiritual dimension of this demand. The point was this: Giving your money to the cause of Christ is a powerful way to say: "This world is not all there is to life. There is the Kingdom of God. I need to give to that what I can while I can."

Giving to Phase III and to BVBC's day-to-day expenses is a gracious and discerning way of engaging our culture's no-so-subtle message that this life is all that matters. With all this as background, I'd like to take stock of where BVBC is in this adventure we call "Following the Pillar of Fire."

An Apostolic Model
In taking stock of where we are I resort to biblical models of how God has worked with His people in the past. "In the biblical tradition God's purposes in history were understood to be consistent, and therefore his great acts of salvation and judgment in the past could be understood as models for what he would do in the future," (Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, 153).

The New Testament history of the early Church provides an illuminating model that I find helpful for our situation and would like to propose for your consideration. We know this New Testament history of the early Church as the book of Acts. Would you turn there with me to Acts 16:5-10?

The end of chapter 15 and the beginning of chapter 16 report the beginning of Paul's second missionary journey. He and his traveling companions spent the first part of their mission revisiting churches they had founded on their first missionary journey. Verse five offers a summary of the splendid results of their efforts. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.

I wish we could say that about every church in the Delaware Valley. I think we can say it about BVBC. But Acts 16 does not tell us the rest of the story. Growing daily in numbers may be every pastor's dream, but what space problems did it cause for those young churches, and how did they handle them? The New Testament is remarkably and wisely silent about administrative matters that faced the churches that were springing up all over the Roman Empire.

We know what we have done here over the past decade. We have gone from two to three and then to four worship services. We have added five new members of the pastoral staff and eight new members of the support staff. And now we are in the process of determining whether we can build a new sanctuary. The jury is still out on that; and that is where what happened next to Paul and his companions can help us.

They had revisited all the churches they had started, so the question was: Where should they go next? Verse six says they traveled through two provinces called Phrygia and Galatia. The writer, Luke, tells us nothing about their effort to preach the gospel in those provinces. What he does tell us is why they were traveling their. The reason is most illuminating. Look at verse six.

Paul and his companions traveled through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. Why would the Holy Spirit prevent an apostle of Christ from preaching the Word of God anywhere?

Luke tells us nothing at all about the reactions and conversations of Paul and his companions in the face of this strange turn of events. He tells us nothing of how the Holy Spirit prevented it. He doesn't explain why Paul and his companions thought it was the Holy Spirit prevented it. That's the kind of thing Satan does, isn't it?

What Luke does tell us is that Paul and his companions struck out in a new direction. Verse seven says: When they came to the border of Mysia (another province), they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. Now that is astonishing. Twice, the Holy Spirit checked their progress, and Luke gives no explanation, not even a theory as to why.

And remember: those traveling companions traveled on foot or at best by horses or donkeys. The provinces mentioned in these two verses cover hundreds of square miles. Cost conscious Americans would point out how inefficient and expensive all that wasted motion was. Luke offers nothing to soothe our American sensibilities; he merely records their next, seemingly random, way station on their directionless travels. Verse eight: So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas, a coastal town on the Adriatic Sea, whose romantic name suggested Homer's tales of Troy.

And there it happened. Verses 9-10: During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

If Paul were a modern, American missionary, I suspect he would hesitate to tell supporting churches the tale Luke has told in verses 6-10. Churches of the Assemblies of God would welcome the story. Most African-American churches would welcome the story. What do you think about BVBC? Would we be open to the possibility that his vision had merit, that God was behind it?

We don't have to offer an opinion about Paul's decision to cross the Adriatic. We can read about it without much emotion. So, in our detached, scientific frame of mind let's think a minute about where Paul went.

We got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, wrote Luke. Where was Macedonia? It was pretty much where modern-day Macedonia is: north of Greece and very much a part of Europe. Philippi, where they ended up for many days and had adventures, was a Roman colony. Its citizens had privileges commensurate with citizens, who lived in Rome itself.

All their inefficient, expensive, wasted, and directionless movement had a clear purpose after all. It wasn't Paul's purpose. It was the purpose of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church into all truth. The frustrating barriers He had placed in their path culminated in the passing of Paul and his understanding of Christianity from Asia into Europe, with momentous consequences for human civilization.

Applying the Model
This church had a plan for Phase III in the late 1980s, thanks to some forward-looking leaders. Nothing came of it. We resurrected it briefly in the early '90s, and it stalled. After building Phases I & II, we came back to Phase III in 2003. But in 2004 we thought we saw a chance to buy Pilot School. It didn't happen. This year, we returned to Phase III. And here we are at the end of 2006: hopeful but with unanswered questions.

A few years down the road, I hope we can look back and say of all this stopping and starting: The Holy Spirit stopped us at this point. The Spirit of Jesus did not allow us to go further at that point. Maybe the story will say that God gave us a vision that broke the 17-year impasse.

But Luke said what he did in those six verses, as he looked back on their experiences, perhaps many years later. Right now, we are "in the soup" of ambiguous circumstances and uncertain steps. We can see just far enough to proceed a few weeks down this path, and then, we have another decision to make.

My encouragement to you is: Don't be afraid, and don't lose heart. Don't let fear or timidity have the last word in your soul. The Lord says: "Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth – Psalm 46:10. And remembering Paul and his traveling companions, traveling from one region of the ancient world to the other and thinking, "This is it!" only to find out that it wasn't. And, then, on to the next place ... until they stepped into Europe, and they set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire.

The Humility of God
Paul's missionary journeys brought Christianity to the non-Jewish world. In a paradox his Jewish kinsmen often rejected his message, while Gentiles increasingly accepted it. That's all well and good, but those Gentile Christians were often no better morally than they had to be, and they were not about to accept Jewish rituals like circumcision and kosher meals.

As has been happening for 2000 years now, new people from new cultures bring new issues for the Church to wrestle with. It boggles our minds, but the issue that threatened the early Church with division was whether a person could become a Christian without first becoming a Jew – by means of circumcision and other Jewish rituals.

Paul, who was at the epicenter of that conflict, and who was no better liked by some people then as he is by some people now, didn't budge an inch. He taught that faith in Christ plus no ancient, venerable Jewish customs made a person a Christian.

The conflict became so intense that the Church fathers in Jerusalem called a general council to see if they could resolve it. Acts 15 tells the story of that council. Luke has told that story with restraint (our imagination has to supply the volatile emotions) and clarity (he clearly documented the outcome).

Today is not the time to retell that story. But in the official letter that expressed the decision of the apostles there is a little phrase that captures something of the agony and the adventure of what we are living through in our corner of the kingdom of God. Look with me at Acts 15:24-28.

We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul – men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements.

There's the miracle that is on display for all to see and take courage amid the uncertainties of Christian life and ministry: It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. Without God, the Holy Spirit, we can't; without us (O the humility of God), He won't.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
I don't know which side of the paradox will break my heart with goodness first. Without the Spirit, Phase III is futile. But without us, He won't! That is, without our false starts, committee meetings, Vision Meetings, private conversations, late board discussions, congregational meetings, pledge cards, sermons, disagreements, goofy mistakes, doubts, arrogance, and occasional bursts of brilliance – without our humanity, He won't act.

Whatever you think about Phase III, if you have an ounce of faith in you, don't miss the spiritual drama that is being played out in this congregation. You're part of it. Having eyes, do you not see? Having ears, do you not hear? Do you not understand?