Sermon from September 9, 2007
Ten months ago, the BVBC congregation pledged $4 million (and counting) towards construction of a new sanctuary. Of all the people who give $200 a year or more to BVBC, 83% made pledges and gifts – an astonishing percentage according to InJoy Stewardship Services, our capital fund consultants.

This past June, the congregation met to vote on whether to build Phase III. During the meeting, Dr. Les Burge, a charter member of BVBC, rose to his feet and said, "I think we need at least an 85% approval to go forward with this project." Howard Gerlach, Chairman of the Board of Deacons, replied that the BVBC Constitution did not allow that but that the board would take his suggestion to heart, if the approval percentage was low. The ballots were distributed, and the members voted in secret. When the count was announced, 85% of those voting had approved the authorization. It seemed a fitting affirmation of that important decision.

When construction begins in 2008, the church will need a temporary home for 15-18 months. Pastors Bill Parsons and Sam Stein held conversations with the principal of Concord High School to use that facility. During the week of July 8, the principal called Bill Parsons to say that he and his staff approved the church's use of the high school; but BVBC needed to negotiate a contract to use it with the Brandywine School District.

Pastor Bill Parsons called the appropriate person. She asked Bill if he was the pastor of the church. He explained that he was a pastor but not the senior pastor, and that it was his responsibility to carry out negotiations like this one. He went on to explain to her that being a pastor was a second career for him after many years in business.

The woman said that was interesting, because her husband was also a second career pastor, and in fact was the pastor at a local Methodist church. She herself directed the missions committee of their church. So, it was with someone sympathetic to this church's work that negotiations began. They appear to be close to a succeessful resolution.

Then came the July General Fund offering. Except in December, BVBC had never received a one-month General Fund that exceeded $190,000. The congregation did it in July, a mid-summer month, a gentle reminder and a strong encouragement that the congregation can and will support the church in the challenging days that lie ahead.

George Yu Architects should finish construction drawings this fall, and early in 2008 contractors will bid on this project. I am oversimplifying the project, but we hope to sign contracts during the first quarter of 2008 and begin construction shortly after Easter.

The project marks a major commitment of this church to the future of Christianity in Northern Delaware and Southeastern Pennsylvania. As we meet this commitment with all its risks and benefits, I'd like to propose the following challenge to this congregation: We need to make the good ship Brandywine more seaworthy for her voyage into unknown waters. This sea-faring image will give us a picture of ourselves in the years that lie ahead. Mark 4:35 expands and enriches this image.

Renovations at Sea
That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side." Put yourself in the disciples' shoes. Christ had once again drawn tremendous crowds. He had surprised everyone with His new teaching in parables. No one had understood. But privately, Jesus has told them the meaning of the parables. As dusk came on, it had become obvious that they were in the know. Accusatory Pharisee was on the outside; they were on the inside. All of this and now a ride across the Sea of Galilee. Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.

A sudden and short-lived regatta surrounded Him. There were also other boards with him. All who love the sea and sailing will cherish this nautical scene. The disciples experienced the familiar sound of oar in lock and of crying bird in search of fish, the water-wind-and-boat smells, the feel of the wind in their hair. Best of all, Jesus was there, alone with them, the privileged few. No doubt about it! They had fallen on their feet. Life was good.

At last they were alone on the open water. Some of them, Andrew, Peter, James and John, were in their element. They were fishermen. All of them, including Judas, chewed on their glad memories of that day.

We are like those disciples, with unknown challenges awaiting us before we moor safely again in port. We need to make the good ship Brandywine more seaworthy for her voyage into unknown waters. We the staff feel that BVBC today, good as it is, is not adequate for what BVBC a decade from now will need to be, and a new sanctuary is only a small part of that.

But BVBC a decade from now will not entirely be different from BVBC today. "'We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and drift-wood, the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction,'" (Otto Neurath, quoted in Alister McGrath, Realism, 34-35). As we make her more seaworthy, improvements will be gradual. If we build well, we'll walk around the ship five years from now and say, "I had no idea we had changed so much."

The Gospel of Mark adds one more master stroke to the picture of BVBC in the years that lie ahead. Jesus was tired, and the wind had picked up and night was falling. Perhaps night had fallen. It would have been dark in any case when the weather changed. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Verse 38 says, Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion, the still center of that wild, wave-swirling world. It bothered the disciples. Verse 38 expresses their almost terminal agitation. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" What exactly did they want Him to do: grab a bucket, bail and hope like the rest?

The ship's owner goes with us on our voyage into unknown waters, but we may at times think that He is disconcertingly disengaged when we need Him most. We will call out for Him, as did His original disciples; and like them we may often ask Him to act out of sheer desperation.

That sketches the picture I want us to have of ourselves in the years that lie ahead. I believe you will find that this picture wears well. It has a remarkable ability to absorb and make sense of life. It will do the same for our life together.

Early Renovations
We now turn to three initial tasks that we have to accomplish. First, if we want BVBC to be more seaworthy for her voyage into unknown waters. We need to make the months we spend at Concord High School a success. Doing that will present us with several challenges.

The environment of a high school will not look or feel like the environment of a church. We will miss what we have here. We have to remember the the Most High does not live in houses made by men – Acts 7:48. The Lord, who appeared in a burning bush and spoke through the mouth of a donkey, will meet with us at Concord High School.

We may need to accommodate the Sunday needs of Concord High School from time to time. Sports and drama teams, for example, may need part of the school that we normally use. We will do well to remember our Lord, who wrapped a towel around His waist and washed the feet of His dinner guests – John 13:5.

Most demandingly, three to four hundred of us will be needed every week for 15-18 months to set up, take down and store in an orderly fashion the equipment that we need to carry out the ministries of this congregation. You'll be hearing more about this in October or November.

The pastoral staff does not intend just to maintain the status quo during our months at the high school; we believe they can be a time of expansion into other people's lives here in the Brandywine Valley. We can do that, if we make the months we spend at Concord High School a success.

We have to carry out a second task, if we want BVBC to be more seaworthy for her voyage into unknown waters. We need to give generously to support the mission and ministries of our church. In addition to the pledges and gifts we have made and will make toward our Pillar of Fire campaign for Phase III, we need to give $2 million to make the BVBC general fund between now and the end of August, 2008.

That will take many givers and many generous gifts. BVBC has no single benefactor, who could write a large check to cover a large deficit. That means that all of us need to give. Here's my special challenge. If you have never given $1,000 a year to BVBC, would you make a commitment before God to do everything in your power to give $1,000 by September 1, 2008? You are the missing piece in our reaching the goal of $2 million dollars this fiscal year.

Finally, we need to build bridges to other people. The best sentence in Rick Warren's best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, is the first sentence of chapter one: "It's not about you." It's about the Lord. It's about the person sitting near you in a worship service. It's about the stranger. It's about the person in need. It's about the person who is different from you, antagonistic to you, friendly to you, a threat to you, a blessing to you.

2 Corinthians 5:20 expresses biblically our bridge-building task. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. A congregation of bridge builders will never get over that statement in the middle of the verse: as though God were making his appeal through us. In decisive ways God entrusts His reputation and His purpose to you.

To you! Not to me alone! Not to the pastoral staff alone! To you: overworked and out of work; struggling with a tough marriage situation or bad health or wayward children; up to your ears in debts, diapers or even doubts about your faith – to you, as you are, God entrusts His reputation and His purpose of reconciliation. He makes His appeal through you to the human family, or His majestic voice falls silent.

You don't think you can do it, do you? What do you think you have to do: get special training to share your faith? Get your problems under control? Be more holy? Those are worthy personal goals, but you don't have to reach those goals before you can build bridges to other people.

Tens of millions of people just want someone to care enough about them to listen to them and try to understand them without condemning them or fixing them or giving up your own convictions about right and wrong. It is no accident that the great unlicensed psychiatrists of our time are the bartender, the hair dresser, and the pastor. We don't understand all that we hear, and we surely can't fix all the problems we hear; but we care enough to listen. I want to say a lot more about bridge building next week.

Rough Waters
Have you ever opened an old scrapbook, and there before you lay the pressed flowers from your high school prom or your wedding day, or some photograph from an important day gone by? Left to ourselves, our faith in Jesus can become like pressed flowers and old photographs – occasions for nostalgia but unconnected with present reality. Even Jesus can seem a distant memory. The Lord of the Church will not allow His people to live long on nostalgic faith. Unsympathetic reality will come crashing into our little boat, and the Lord of the sea will be waiting for us to call on Him.

We may very well find ourselves in the position of those frantic disciples in Mark 4:38: "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" I don't expect calm seas throughout the next two years. Life doesn't work that way. He will come to our aid, as He came to theirs. He may also stun us, as He stunned them, with a question like the one in verse 40: "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"

No faith!? They were men who had bucked official Judaism to follow Him. They were men in whom His message had taken root and begun to grow. They were the ones made privy to the meaning of His parables. The storm at sea provided a crucible in which reality threatened to destroy all the Twelve had been so sure of, and in which they were forced to see Jesus, as they had never seen Him before. It's hard to know which was tougher: His question about their faith or their boat, as it filled with water.

We too could be in for the ride of our lives. I hope you wouldn't want to miss it for anything. You understand? We are not just building a new sanctuary. We're building a community of faith through whom God wishes to reconcile Himself to the men and women of the Brandywine Valley. Our faith is precious to Him, and He will test it and purify it, and He will do great things through us.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
I discovered something about this passage in Mark four many years ago, as I sat in my room at Dallas Seminary. I have shared it with some of you. I'd like to share with all of you now.

Earlier, I pointed out that some of the disciples, Andrew, Peter, James and John, felt at home on the Sea of Galilee; they were fishermen. They knew the sea and its moods. They knew their boat. They are just the people you want in a sudden storm. But it is unnerving, when they are tugging on Jesus' sleeve to tell Him they were no longer n control.

That's when I saw the great truth of this text. The disciples were in charge of the boat, but Christ was in charge of the sea. We have to make the good ship BVBC more seaworthy; but we'd better never forget who's in charge of the sea.