A David and Goliath Story
Stories
Contents
“A David and Goliath Story” by Peter Andrew Smith
“Re-crossing Galilee Lake” by David O. Bales
“Seminar: Working Together In Him” by David O. Bales
A David and Goliath Story
by Peter Andrew Smith
1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49
Laura took some vegetables out of the bag to chop. “So, I hear you are in a bit of trouble at school.”
“Who told you that, Auntie?” Joan asked.
“Your mother. She wanted me to see if there is anything I could do.”
Joan frowned. “Is that why you invited me over for supper?”
“No, your mother spoke to me after I invited you.” Laura grabbed some more vegetables. “Is it true?”
“It is but don’t get all bent out of shape about it.” Joan sighed. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“Is that why you’ve been home this past week instead of at school?” Laura handed her the prepared vegetables. “Rinse those would you?”
“Yes.” Joan put them in a pot, rinsed them off, and then put the pot on the stove. “Mom and Dad are worried I might ruin my future.”
“So will you?”
Joan paused. “What the school is doing is wrong. Someone had to say something.”
Laura pulled the meat from the fridge and began to season it. “You realize that you backed the school into a corner by going public.”
“I tried to speak to the vice principal and even wrote a letter to the school board. They ignored all my concerns.”
“Seems to me that you could have made your point with the reporter without calling the administration all those names.
Joan looked down. “Maybe I did get carried away.”
“Maybe.” Laura put the meat in a pan and put it in the oven. She motioned for Joan to sit down. “Are you right?”
“Do you mean about the school being wrong? Yes. I think what they are doing is discriminatory and prejudicial.”
“Those are strong words.”
“I mean what I’m saying.”
“Okay.” Laura tapped her chin. “You remember the story of David and Goliath?”
“From the Bible? Sure.” Joan tilted her head. “Are you saying that I’ll be okay because it’s just me against the school board. The small person triumphing over the big institution?”
Laura shook her head. “That’s not what the story teaches despite what you hear on the news. In this world the small person often suffers at the hands of the bigger more powerful person.”
“So are you telling me to go in there and apologize?” Joan looked at her aunt. “I figured that you being big into civil rights, that you’d have my back on this.”
“Do you want to hear me out or not?” Laura asked.
“Sorry.” Joan looked down. “I guess I’m more worried than I thought. I don’t want to lose my chance to go onto college or university because of this. But what they are doing is wrong.”
“You have good reason to be worried. A disciplinary hearing is no small thing.” Joan put her hand on her niece’s shoulder. “When you read about the civil rights movement sometimes people forget the pain and suffering and fear that was part of it. None of that changes the fact that what we were doing needed to be done.”
“So even when you are in the right sometimes you pay the consequences?”
“Sometimes you do and sometimes the change that’s needed doesn’t happen until you are older but that’s a conversation for a different day.” Laura considered the younger woman. “Do you believe in what you’re saying?”
“I do.”
“Why?” Laura asked.
“Because it is right.” Joan tilted her head. “So, does that make this a David and Goliath story? When you are right then no matter the odds you’ll win?”
Laura shook her head. “No, life doesn’t work that way either. As I said, being right doesn’t mean you can win against a giant.”
“Then what does?”
Laura smiled. “Now that’s the right question to ask. Did David win because he was smaller than Goliath?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“So why did he win?”
Joan thought for a moment. “He won because he was on God’s side.”
“Exactly. He didn’t win because he got God on his side. He won because he stood up and refused to let the Philistines insult and demean God’s people.” Laura took a deep breath. “Is that what is happening at school? Are you standing with God?”
“I firmly believe that I am.” Joan looked her aunt in the eyes. “What they are doing is what Jesus got so angry at the Pharisees for doing - pretending to help people but actually hurting them.”
“Okay.” Laura smiled. “What time is the hearing on Tuesday?”
“Nine in the morning,” Joan said. “Why?”
“I think I can be there.”
“Are you going to speak on my behalf?”
“No,” Laura said. “I’m going to watch you slay a giant that has terrorized people at that school for far too long.”
* * *
Re-crossing Galilee Lake
by David O. Bales
Mark 4:35-41
“It wasn’t the best time to set out across the lake. Evening’s when squalls come up, and we fishermen knew how long since a storm crashed through. We were due. Call it superstition or the feel in the air but we were attentive to such things. Those ravines on the west of the lake,” Thaddaeus pointed. “Evening air rushes in like a herd of demons banging on your door. But that evening, Jesus was exhausted. Had been a hard week—crowds, healings, then teaching. Not a minute to be alone and think, let alone to nap. We were struggling, rowing for our lives. I wasn’t thinking about what Jesus did the past week—or what he taught—just that he was the one who got us into this. Up and down, sideways and back, waves spilling in and swirling around our feet like we were a cup being dunked in a pool. Half of us fighting at the oars, half of us wildly bailing with pots.”
Thaddaeus breathed deeply and, with his hands behind his back, winced as he straightened, as if telling of the rowing hurt his back again. His two nieces and nephews sat with him on the hillside beside Galilee Lake. They’d been toddlers when last he’d seen them. He was home to Galilee for the first time in six and a half years and was answering the questions about Jesus that they’d saved for him.
“Once you’re on the lake, might as well be the ocean, because the only thing holding you up is the boat, and that dark night it felt like we were endangered on a foreign sea far from land. It might seem simple to you because it’s already happened and now we know that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Son. At that moment it was no story. Wasn’t obvious to us we’d get out alive, just that Jesus had gotten us into it.
“I was in the bow, front rower. That storm, from the bow to the stern, put me a lifetime distance from Jesus sleeping under the stern bench. The storm beat us up and wore us out. Only takes a couple hours to grind you down, like boxing an opponent you can’t see until your arms are limp. All in the dark, which made it twice as dreadful. Freezing cold, sopping wet, hands nearly paralyzed grasping oars so hard for so long. We were about to sink, but as a crew we’d already sunk into a jumble of crossed oars. Just a dozen fellows screaming to one another what to do next, disorganized, hopeless, not knowing which side to pull toward, and no strength to get us there anyway.”
He sighed, looking at the eager faces of his two sisters’ children, then gazed toward Galilee’s eastern shore. “The other boats that could’ve helped us were out of sight. And why go east anyway? Gentile territory over there. Didn’t realize that Jesus was getting us used to aiming our ministry to gentiles and, by the way, to the different kinds of storms we’d face in doing so.
“We were nearly dead in the water. Couldn’t stay headed into the wind. Water sloshing over our knees.”
His nieces and nephews squirmed in excitement as Thaddaeus paused, still peering east across the lake.
“I was beyond panic. I couldn’t row another stroke no matter what I told my arms to do. One of my oars was dragging and the other was hitting the oar in front of me. Not just that the craft was being swamped, I was also. They told me afterwards I was flailing and hollering.
“That’s when Peter abandoned his oars and stuck his head below the stern bench and yelled at Jesus. He and … and … , I don’t remember who else, were shouting to Jesus. They put to him our obvious question: ‘Teacher, don’t you care that we’re perishing?’
“Over the heads of the others I saw Jesus climbing from under the stern bench, I imagine something like when he was raised from the dead. Didn’t seem fazed by our approaching catastrophe. And, even from that far away through all the water blowing between us, I thought he was looking at me. No discussion. No immediate comment on the nasty weather. Just rebuked the wind and the storm fell away. He was staring at me. I thought he was speaking to me, ‘Peace! Be still!’
“From being dashed around toward death, it was as though we were lifted up and placed down in this great calm. We were encircled by silence. Our hearts pounded with exhaustion and fear. Jesus staring at us and scolding our cowardice and lack of faith. We were dumbfounded. Who was this man who’d been asleep in the stern of our imperiled boat, who made the wind give up its struggle, who spoke to creation and to humans and we obeyed?”
“Enough for today,” Thaddaeus said. He slowly stood and so did the children beside him. “I want you to know that’s why I travel telling others about Jesus and inviting them into the realm of his Spirit. If I’m not able to return again to Galilee, I want you to remember what your old uncle tells you: Jesus looking right at you—as he did at me—no matter the difficulties, no matter who else is around, Jesus granting you his gift and his command, ‘Peace! Be still!’”
Preaching point: Jesus’ peace in our storms.
* * *
Seminar: Working Together In Him
by David O. Bales
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
“One could charge the seminar organizers with false advertising because we lost a gob of members. That could be why they scheduled me to speak last. Our congregation had grown for fifteen years at a decent rate. How could we help but grow when our town was filling up seventy-five new single-family dwellings a year? We planned to call an assistant pastor.
“I fumbled to pick up my cell after I’d knocked it off the nightstand. It was the security company at 3 AM. I’d gotten calls from them before—a door ajar, a window smashed by a storm-blown limb. The fire alarm had gone off. Such things happen. However, that spark shorting an electrical box in the church basement occurred twenty minutes after an explosion shook the chemical plant across town—our county’s largest employer. All firefighting units were three miles from the church and quite occupied. The fire department finally did what it could, but our walls—sanctuary and its three wings—stood gutted. Total loss.
“As pastors and church leaders, you can imagine the shock and grief. It was as though the congregation itself had been bombed with an explosion as destructive as the one that leveled two acres of the chemical plant the same morning. Then, as I said, we lost members.
“I, not only in retrospect but at the time, was aware that I didn’t have the gifts, and certainly not the experience, to guide a congregation through a rebuilding project. Many in the congregation, looking at the building’s charred skeleton and assessing my abilities and inabilities, were in deepest despair. Details rattle me. Even the details of getting a temporary worship space in the Seventh Day Adventist building pushed my administrative energies. Some muttered that our setback in ministry was the beginning of Satan’s worldwide conflagration against the Christian faith. This touch of melodrama at least gave us a laugh.
“We couldn’t expect much assistance from the denomination. Those days are past. However, a few congregations took offerings for us. The greatest surprise is that we suddenly gained three couples in the church. As mere numbers on the membership roster, they couldn’t meet a tenth of those who’d abandoned our sinking Christian ship. Yet, their influence far outweighed our losses. These three couples came to serve Christ. This, they stated, was the appropriate thing to do. As fellow workers in Christ, they stepped in to help organize and inspire us.
“For me, being tasked with many physical details, I most benefited from these three men who instantly joined our middled-aged men’s group. To step back a moment. The fellows in the group had met for years before I came as pastor. They included me in their midst, and it was the best Bible study I’d been in. They all were smart and mentally well balanced—a combination, as you know, you don’t always encounter in a Bible study group. They cared for one another. It was the most congenial fellowship one could imagine. Just they didn’t do anything except meet, talk and enjoy one another. No ministry ideas struck them. I could light a spark here or there, but it faded to a cinder.
“The six missionaries, as I call them, came to work together with us, much as Paul and his compatriots did in the first century. The result being that in the same period when we began rebuilding the church structure, we also moved into ministry as never before. When the congregation first geared up to cooperate in a building program, it also stepped up—ignited mostly by the prayer groups with these three new women missionaries—into finding ways to spot needs and meet them in the community, from grade school children who needed someone to walk with them to and from school, to two nursing homes near full of lonely people, to not only feeding the hungry but helping them find housing and employment. Within a year of the county’s approving our rebuilding plans, the congregation, now meeting as small groups in members’ homes, was popping up weekly with new ways—actually, new callings—to serve God and others.
“Our men’s group moved its meeting to Saturday morning so we could have a meal, prayer and then work on the building together. These men gave up their days off to serve. They led me to do the same. Not by what they asked of me. They were careful I wasn’t destroyed by details. But they inspired me. One man stepped back from his raise and promotion, so he worked only a five-day week, allowing him to labor Saturdays at the church. Another man took a two month leave to work on the building. He was an architect who greatly aided our planning.
“I could go on. I’m sliding roughly over agonizing details. We met a myriad of problems, though not exactly Paul’s shipwrecks, beatings and riots. I could drag you through a two-foot stack of paper from the first page detailing the hazmat removal and dismantling the damaged property, through inspections and design changes, to the final roofing contract. Much of the time it felt as though a giant building project running concurrently with the congregation’s burgeoning ministry was twice as difficult as before the fire. It was worth it. We experienced ourselves as cooperating with God, an enterprise far beyond seeking heaven’s rewards … or fleeting its punishment. Our membership began growing again even as we worshiped in a rented building. Older members were there to introduce new people to the ways they could serve God by serving others, not, by the way, of serving the congregation. The orientation has almost completely shifted. I say ‘almost.’ Yet, when people come sniffing around our congregation to see if we can meet their needs, they find that, yes, we want to serve their needs. And we’re most concerned to aim them and train them to identify and develop our supreme human need of serving God and others.
“One thing I repeated through the rebuilding is that the new structure—now sailing the seas of ministry for seven years—isn’t the object or substitute for ministry. It’s our base for doing ministry. We leave there to do God’s joyful, compassionate work for others. A few people at the beginning chatted about ‘Build it and they will come.’ That might work in movies, a professional athletic expansion team or in 1950s America. You know that doesn’t work or you wouldn’t have signed up for this seminar.
“We’ve found that along with us and at times in spite of us, God’s power operates through our giving and serving others. It’s not automatic. It’s Jesus’ resurrection power. It’s Paul’s words: ‘As having nothing, and yet possessing everything.’ I can offer ‘nothing,’ no specific programs you can duplicate from our congregation. But, if you want advice about the ‘everything’ that could activate your older congregation into ministry, the only one I have any experience in is: First, burn down your church.”
Preaching point: Christian life is active cooperation serving God.
*****************************************
StoryShare, June 20, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“A David and Goliath Story” by Peter Andrew Smith
“Re-crossing Galilee Lake” by David O. Bales
“Seminar: Working Together In Him” by David O. Bales
A David and Goliath Story
by Peter Andrew Smith
1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49
Laura took some vegetables out of the bag to chop. “So, I hear you are in a bit of trouble at school.”
“Who told you that, Auntie?” Joan asked.
“Your mother. She wanted me to see if there is anything I could do.”
Joan frowned. “Is that why you invited me over for supper?”
“No, your mother spoke to me after I invited you.” Laura grabbed some more vegetables. “Is it true?”
“It is but don’t get all bent out of shape about it.” Joan sighed. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“Is that why you’ve been home this past week instead of at school?” Laura handed her the prepared vegetables. “Rinse those would you?”
“Yes.” Joan put them in a pot, rinsed them off, and then put the pot on the stove. “Mom and Dad are worried I might ruin my future.”
“So will you?”
Joan paused. “What the school is doing is wrong. Someone had to say something.”
Laura pulled the meat from the fridge and began to season it. “You realize that you backed the school into a corner by going public.”
“I tried to speak to the vice principal and even wrote a letter to the school board. They ignored all my concerns.”
“Seems to me that you could have made your point with the reporter without calling the administration all those names.
Joan looked down. “Maybe I did get carried away.”
“Maybe.” Laura put the meat in a pan and put it in the oven. She motioned for Joan to sit down. “Are you right?”
“Do you mean about the school being wrong? Yes. I think what they are doing is discriminatory and prejudicial.”
“Those are strong words.”
“I mean what I’m saying.”
“Okay.” Laura tapped her chin. “You remember the story of David and Goliath?”
“From the Bible? Sure.” Joan tilted her head. “Are you saying that I’ll be okay because it’s just me against the school board. The small person triumphing over the big institution?”
Laura shook her head. “That’s not what the story teaches despite what you hear on the news. In this world the small person often suffers at the hands of the bigger more powerful person.”
“So are you telling me to go in there and apologize?” Joan looked at her aunt. “I figured that you being big into civil rights, that you’d have my back on this.”
“Do you want to hear me out or not?” Laura asked.
“Sorry.” Joan looked down. “I guess I’m more worried than I thought. I don’t want to lose my chance to go onto college or university because of this. But what they are doing is wrong.”
“You have good reason to be worried. A disciplinary hearing is no small thing.” Joan put her hand on her niece’s shoulder. “When you read about the civil rights movement sometimes people forget the pain and suffering and fear that was part of it. None of that changes the fact that what we were doing needed to be done.”
“So even when you are in the right sometimes you pay the consequences?”
“Sometimes you do and sometimes the change that’s needed doesn’t happen until you are older but that’s a conversation for a different day.” Laura considered the younger woman. “Do you believe in what you’re saying?”
“I do.”
“Why?” Laura asked.
“Because it is right.” Joan tilted her head. “So, does that make this a David and Goliath story? When you are right then no matter the odds you’ll win?”
Laura shook her head. “No, life doesn’t work that way either. As I said, being right doesn’t mean you can win against a giant.”
“Then what does?”
Laura smiled. “Now that’s the right question to ask. Did David win because he was smaller than Goliath?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“So why did he win?”
Joan thought for a moment. “He won because he was on God’s side.”
“Exactly. He didn’t win because he got God on his side. He won because he stood up and refused to let the Philistines insult and demean God’s people.” Laura took a deep breath. “Is that what is happening at school? Are you standing with God?”
“I firmly believe that I am.” Joan looked her aunt in the eyes. “What they are doing is what Jesus got so angry at the Pharisees for doing - pretending to help people but actually hurting them.”
“Okay.” Laura smiled. “What time is the hearing on Tuesday?”
“Nine in the morning,” Joan said. “Why?”
“I think I can be there.”
“Are you going to speak on my behalf?”
“No,” Laura said. “I’m going to watch you slay a giant that has terrorized people at that school for far too long.”
* * *
Re-crossing Galilee Lake
by David O. Bales
Mark 4:35-41
“It wasn’t the best time to set out across the lake. Evening’s when squalls come up, and we fishermen knew how long since a storm crashed through. We were due. Call it superstition or the feel in the air but we were attentive to such things. Those ravines on the west of the lake,” Thaddaeus pointed. “Evening air rushes in like a herd of demons banging on your door. But that evening, Jesus was exhausted. Had been a hard week—crowds, healings, then teaching. Not a minute to be alone and think, let alone to nap. We were struggling, rowing for our lives. I wasn’t thinking about what Jesus did the past week—or what he taught—just that he was the one who got us into this. Up and down, sideways and back, waves spilling in and swirling around our feet like we were a cup being dunked in a pool. Half of us fighting at the oars, half of us wildly bailing with pots.”
Thaddaeus breathed deeply and, with his hands behind his back, winced as he straightened, as if telling of the rowing hurt his back again. His two nieces and nephews sat with him on the hillside beside Galilee Lake. They’d been toddlers when last he’d seen them. He was home to Galilee for the first time in six and a half years and was answering the questions about Jesus that they’d saved for him.
“Once you’re on the lake, might as well be the ocean, because the only thing holding you up is the boat, and that dark night it felt like we were endangered on a foreign sea far from land. It might seem simple to you because it’s already happened and now we know that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Son. At that moment it was no story. Wasn’t obvious to us we’d get out alive, just that Jesus had gotten us into it.
“I was in the bow, front rower. That storm, from the bow to the stern, put me a lifetime distance from Jesus sleeping under the stern bench. The storm beat us up and wore us out. Only takes a couple hours to grind you down, like boxing an opponent you can’t see until your arms are limp. All in the dark, which made it twice as dreadful. Freezing cold, sopping wet, hands nearly paralyzed grasping oars so hard for so long. We were about to sink, but as a crew we’d already sunk into a jumble of crossed oars. Just a dozen fellows screaming to one another what to do next, disorganized, hopeless, not knowing which side to pull toward, and no strength to get us there anyway.”
He sighed, looking at the eager faces of his two sisters’ children, then gazed toward Galilee’s eastern shore. “The other boats that could’ve helped us were out of sight. And why go east anyway? Gentile territory over there. Didn’t realize that Jesus was getting us used to aiming our ministry to gentiles and, by the way, to the different kinds of storms we’d face in doing so.
“We were nearly dead in the water. Couldn’t stay headed into the wind. Water sloshing over our knees.”
His nieces and nephews squirmed in excitement as Thaddaeus paused, still peering east across the lake.
“I was beyond panic. I couldn’t row another stroke no matter what I told my arms to do. One of my oars was dragging and the other was hitting the oar in front of me. Not just that the craft was being swamped, I was also. They told me afterwards I was flailing and hollering.
“That’s when Peter abandoned his oars and stuck his head below the stern bench and yelled at Jesus. He and … and … , I don’t remember who else, were shouting to Jesus. They put to him our obvious question: ‘Teacher, don’t you care that we’re perishing?’
“Over the heads of the others I saw Jesus climbing from under the stern bench, I imagine something like when he was raised from the dead. Didn’t seem fazed by our approaching catastrophe. And, even from that far away through all the water blowing between us, I thought he was looking at me. No discussion. No immediate comment on the nasty weather. Just rebuked the wind and the storm fell away. He was staring at me. I thought he was speaking to me, ‘Peace! Be still!’
“From being dashed around toward death, it was as though we were lifted up and placed down in this great calm. We were encircled by silence. Our hearts pounded with exhaustion and fear. Jesus staring at us and scolding our cowardice and lack of faith. We were dumbfounded. Who was this man who’d been asleep in the stern of our imperiled boat, who made the wind give up its struggle, who spoke to creation and to humans and we obeyed?”
“Enough for today,” Thaddaeus said. He slowly stood and so did the children beside him. “I want you to know that’s why I travel telling others about Jesus and inviting them into the realm of his Spirit. If I’m not able to return again to Galilee, I want you to remember what your old uncle tells you: Jesus looking right at you—as he did at me—no matter the difficulties, no matter who else is around, Jesus granting you his gift and his command, ‘Peace! Be still!’”
Preaching point: Jesus’ peace in our storms.
* * *
Seminar: Working Together In Him
by David O. Bales
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
“One could charge the seminar organizers with false advertising because we lost a gob of members. That could be why they scheduled me to speak last. Our congregation had grown for fifteen years at a decent rate. How could we help but grow when our town was filling up seventy-five new single-family dwellings a year? We planned to call an assistant pastor.
“I fumbled to pick up my cell after I’d knocked it off the nightstand. It was the security company at 3 AM. I’d gotten calls from them before—a door ajar, a window smashed by a storm-blown limb. The fire alarm had gone off. Such things happen. However, that spark shorting an electrical box in the church basement occurred twenty minutes after an explosion shook the chemical plant across town—our county’s largest employer. All firefighting units were three miles from the church and quite occupied. The fire department finally did what it could, but our walls—sanctuary and its three wings—stood gutted. Total loss.
“As pastors and church leaders, you can imagine the shock and grief. It was as though the congregation itself had been bombed with an explosion as destructive as the one that leveled two acres of the chemical plant the same morning. Then, as I said, we lost members.
“I, not only in retrospect but at the time, was aware that I didn’t have the gifts, and certainly not the experience, to guide a congregation through a rebuilding project. Many in the congregation, looking at the building’s charred skeleton and assessing my abilities and inabilities, were in deepest despair. Details rattle me. Even the details of getting a temporary worship space in the Seventh Day Adventist building pushed my administrative energies. Some muttered that our setback in ministry was the beginning of Satan’s worldwide conflagration against the Christian faith. This touch of melodrama at least gave us a laugh.
“We couldn’t expect much assistance from the denomination. Those days are past. However, a few congregations took offerings for us. The greatest surprise is that we suddenly gained three couples in the church. As mere numbers on the membership roster, they couldn’t meet a tenth of those who’d abandoned our sinking Christian ship. Yet, their influence far outweighed our losses. These three couples came to serve Christ. This, they stated, was the appropriate thing to do. As fellow workers in Christ, they stepped in to help organize and inspire us.
“For me, being tasked with many physical details, I most benefited from these three men who instantly joined our middled-aged men’s group. To step back a moment. The fellows in the group had met for years before I came as pastor. They included me in their midst, and it was the best Bible study I’d been in. They all were smart and mentally well balanced—a combination, as you know, you don’t always encounter in a Bible study group. They cared for one another. It was the most congenial fellowship one could imagine. Just they didn’t do anything except meet, talk and enjoy one another. No ministry ideas struck them. I could light a spark here or there, but it faded to a cinder.
“The six missionaries, as I call them, came to work together with us, much as Paul and his compatriots did in the first century. The result being that in the same period when we began rebuilding the church structure, we also moved into ministry as never before. When the congregation first geared up to cooperate in a building program, it also stepped up—ignited mostly by the prayer groups with these three new women missionaries—into finding ways to spot needs and meet them in the community, from grade school children who needed someone to walk with them to and from school, to two nursing homes near full of lonely people, to not only feeding the hungry but helping them find housing and employment. Within a year of the county’s approving our rebuilding plans, the congregation, now meeting as small groups in members’ homes, was popping up weekly with new ways—actually, new callings—to serve God and others.
“Our men’s group moved its meeting to Saturday morning so we could have a meal, prayer and then work on the building together. These men gave up their days off to serve. They led me to do the same. Not by what they asked of me. They were careful I wasn’t destroyed by details. But they inspired me. One man stepped back from his raise and promotion, so he worked only a five-day week, allowing him to labor Saturdays at the church. Another man took a two month leave to work on the building. He was an architect who greatly aided our planning.
“I could go on. I’m sliding roughly over agonizing details. We met a myriad of problems, though not exactly Paul’s shipwrecks, beatings and riots. I could drag you through a two-foot stack of paper from the first page detailing the hazmat removal and dismantling the damaged property, through inspections and design changes, to the final roofing contract. Much of the time it felt as though a giant building project running concurrently with the congregation’s burgeoning ministry was twice as difficult as before the fire. It was worth it. We experienced ourselves as cooperating with God, an enterprise far beyond seeking heaven’s rewards … or fleeting its punishment. Our membership began growing again even as we worshiped in a rented building. Older members were there to introduce new people to the ways they could serve God by serving others, not, by the way, of serving the congregation. The orientation has almost completely shifted. I say ‘almost.’ Yet, when people come sniffing around our congregation to see if we can meet their needs, they find that, yes, we want to serve their needs. And we’re most concerned to aim them and train them to identify and develop our supreme human need of serving God and others.
“One thing I repeated through the rebuilding is that the new structure—now sailing the seas of ministry for seven years—isn’t the object or substitute for ministry. It’s our base for doing ministry. We leave there to do God’s joyful, compassionate work for others. A few people at the beginning chatted about ‘Build it and they will come.’ That might work in movies, a professional athletic expansion team or in 1950s America. You know that doesn’t work or you wouldn’t have signed up for this seminar.
“We’ve found that along with us and at times in spite of us, God’s power operates through our giving and serving others. It’s not automatic. It’s Jesus’ resurrection power. It’s Paul’s words: ‘As having nothing, and yet possessing everything.’ I can offer ‘nothing,’ no specific programs you can duplicate from our congregation. But, if you want advice about the ‘everything’ that could activate your older congregation into ministry, the only one I have any experience in is: First, burn down your church.”
Preaching point: Christian life is active cooperation serving God.
*****************************************
StoryShare, June 20, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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