Back to Egypt

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The scripture was Exodus 17:1-7:

For the past few weeks, I, like probably many of you, have been receiving notifications on my computer that Microsoft would like me to upgrade to windows 10.  I was not one of the 10 million people who upgraded on the first day.  And to be honest, the real reason I have been putting it off, is not because I am opposed to technology, because I’m fine with the way things are now and I don’t want to have to learn a new system, because let’s admit it, change is hard.  I remember the transition when Microsoft came out with office 2007 and the substantial changes to the tool bar that came with it, and I couldn’t stand it.  But now that I’ve been using it for so long I realize on the backside how much better the changes actually were.  I didn’t like it when I was going through it, but now you couldn’t get me to go back.  Now there are times in which I want the newest updates because the current product is inferior, but those are fewer and farther between.  But that means there are some changes we like and there are things we are opposed to.  And this is true for all of us.  Even people who seem to love change and are always waiting for new things to be coming out, there are changes that they would be opposed to, and on the flip some people who seem to resist everything will suddenly be behind some other change because it’s something that they want to see happen.

With the completion of our Healthy Church Initiative consultation weekend last week, we stand on the precipice of change.  And I use the word precipice here deliberately, because the prescriptions that have been given to us by the HCI team can cause us to go one of two ways.  The first is to take a step away from the cliff.  That’s the safe and the easy way to go.  That’s the way that says, I don’t want to change, I don’t want to do anything different, I don’t want to take a risk, I don’t want to go anywhere new, and while I can be convinced to stay right here, my preference would be to take a few steps backwards right at the moment to make sure we are safe.  There is nothing necessarily wrong with that position.  We have an innate desire to protect ourselves, not to take unnecessary risks, and this goes all the way back to our caveman days when going outside the cave could get you eaten by a tiger, and so our self-preservation tendencies kick in and we want to do the safe thing.

Try The Other Side

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was John 21:1-11 and it represented my State of the Church Address:

Today marks the end of my second year, or the beginning of my third year, here at Mesa View, depending on how you want to look at it.  I would like to begin today by thanking all of our volunteers and people who give of themselves in some many ways to this church and in service to the community.  But in particular I would like to thank the members of the Staff Parish Relations Committee, some other key members, and for the prayer partners who were lifting me up in prayer this past year, because it was by far my hardest year in the ministry.  Every organization has cycles of ups and downs, and I firmly believe that this past year we hit the bottom of our trough and are now on an upward climb.  Our attendance has seen continued increases each month this year, until last month, but we always see a drop off when school lets out, and let me remind you that your presence here is really important.  Not because of numbers, but because it’s a lot better, and to be honest it’s more fun, when the sanctuary is filled then when it’s less full.

I was appointed by the Bishop to Mesa View for many reasons, but one of the biggest was to get our finances in order.  Many churches approach their finances by using the mushroom communication model.  Do you know what the mushroom communication model is?  Keep them in the dark and shovel in lots of manure.  Hopefully you know that’s not the way I want to operate.  The truth is we are doing better.  I would like to say that we no longer have financial worries, and that everything is great.  I’d like to say that, but it’s not true.  We are better, but we are not out of the woods yet.  We didn’t get here in a few years, and we won’t get out of it in a few years.  If you have been reading the newsletter, then you should have seen that our last financial report was a little bleak.  The last number I got from Don Coates this week was that we were projecting to be somewhere around $2000 in the hole at the end of June.  So don’t stop giving just because you might go away for the summer, because our work doesn’t end.

But here is the good news.  Our electronic giving options are helping us to create a stable, reliable income stream, and thank you to everyone who has signed up for electronic giving, and I would strongly encourage others to do the same.  The good news is that for maybe the first time, but definitely the first time in a long time, we created a savings account, in which we had $5000 when we entered the summer.  The good news is that last month we paid off our debt to John Deere for the purchase of our lawn mower and this month we paid off the conference loan we took out to help pay for the roof repairs.  The good news is that when we started here two years ago we owed more than $10,000 to the conference for back pension obligations and we will have that paid off in October.  The good news is that we refinanced our mortgage, which freed up resources that we have needed.  We ended up having to put in a new HVAC unit in the annex, a $7000 charge, but we covered the entire thing in cash, and that allowed us to bring in the YMCA and turn that building into a revenue source for us again, while also serving the community.