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Anniversary Sunday

Joel 2
26 You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed.
27 Then you will know that I am in Israel,
that I am the Lord your God,
and that there is no other;
never again will my people be shamed.
28 “And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.


I want to begin by saying it’s not my fault.

I’m just gonna put that out there, and then tell you about the scary slides. But before we get to the scary slides, I have to step back further and tell you about my not-so-secret life as a consultant. For you see, every once and a while I spend a Saturday trying to help some other congregation think about mission.

It is the context of these occasional opportunities to help that I show the scary slides. It happens like this: first we look at the nature of change in our society, and the extent to which everything that held in the past no longer seems to hold. For example: when a rather amateurish-looking video with a catchy song about a baby shark gets three-and-a-half-BILLION views online, you know the world has changed.

Next, we talk about the late Professor Phyllis Tickle, and her concept of the Great Rummage Sale, how the Holy Spirit seems intent on shaking things up about every 500 years. The last time it was the Reformation, and the time before that the Great Schism. According to the professor, then, we’re in the midst of one of these great spiritual rummage sales, and there is no way to know where it will lead (spoiler alert, Dr. Tickle was a big fan of the Holy Spirit).

And after such a lofty and abstract discussion, we retreat to more practical topics like duty versus choice, the current tension that plagues congregations with a population between the ages of 60 and 90. The older group still loves the D-word, and will drop everything to do their duty, while the younger cohort thinks duty is four-letter-word. There are usually smiles of recognition, and hopefully a little more understanding between members.

And then we look at the scary slides. For you see, all the mainline Protestant denominations—United, Presbyterian, Anglican—began to decline in 1965. And there are scary slides to prove it. Church membership began to decline, but the truly scary numbers were downstairs, where 600,000 kids in Sunday School across the church in 1965 became 250,000 just eight years later. Let me state that in the reverse. There were 600,000 kids in our Sunday Schools in 1965, and 350,000 less kids just eight years later. Other stats are equally scary. In 1963 there were 718 people preparing for the ministry, and five years later there were just 94. In another decade the number would rebound—in part because women were entering the ministry—but it still fits the overall pattern of decline.

Just now you’re thinking that this the weirdest Anniversary Sunday sermon ever, and you might be right. Still, born in 1965, it’s not my fault. I’m sure I screwed up somewhere along the way—but with the decline beginning in 1965, I think you get the point. And further, there is virtually no one left who was a church leader in 1965, which lets everyone else off the hook too. You see, we are constantly trying to understand what happened, or where we went wrong: was it the New Curriculum in the 60s or our look at human sexuality in the 80s, or some other outrage or misstep along the way? No, not when the scary slides show the opposite. Something was happening in society in the late 60s, something that we’re still trying to understand, in this church, and every other church, across most denominations, and throughout the land.

This would be the moment that I move to the reading, but before I do, I should finish the story. After all the theory, and dropping the D-word, and showing the scary slides, I try to inspire people with stories of congregations that have reinvented themselves and found a way to reconnect with their communities—which is the real secret of congregational renewal. So I talk about Central, our outreach, our commitment to study, and the habit of testimony that we developed almost by accident; I talk about Hillhurst in Calgary and ‘radical hospitality’ (some ideas we have already stolen) and I talk about what’s happening in the UK, where they got a 20-year head start in terms of decline, yet continue to innovate.

And in each example, we see the Spirit at work, the same Spirit described by the prophet Joel:

28 “And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

Poor Joel, always a minor prophet, always a victim of the smash-and-grab approach to biblical literature—where one quote seems to sum up all we know about him. But what a quote! And if you’re thinking ‘dream dreams’ and ‘see visions,’ where have I heard that lately, you need only remember Pentecost, some twenty Sundays past, and still the season we inhabit. The church in its wisdom gave half the year to the spirit of Pentecost, the season that begins with Peter’s sermon at Pentecost.

It is the moment that the first church comes out of hiding and finds her voice. With wind and flame the Spirit greets them, and a thousand tongues are loosed to sing God’s praise. But there is more happening in this moment that the birth of the church: it is the moment that dreams and visions are unleashed, when the Spirit takes hold of some very ordinary people and compels them to do some extraordinary things. Extraordinary things like creating a church: a church to love and serve others, a church to extend mercy, a church to embody all we know about the compassionate way of Jesus Christ. It almost feels like the moment to land the plane (sermon-speak for end the sermon) but I see you’re still chewing on something, so let’s go back.

Why 1965? You used to love 1965: a new flag for Canada and the year Heather and Dave made their debut (among others). What on earth was happening to cause such a shift in 1965? Well, a couple of my colleagues were losing sleep over this question too, so Larry Doyle and David Ewart did some digging. The root of the problem came with a rule: in order to have your little bundle of joy baptized, you needed to join the church. So, throughout the 1950’s parents of those first-born boomers were joining the church, swelling our numbers, and making the whole picture look good. Every week there was a new church or Sunday School building being dedicated, all because people wanted their children baptized.

But around 1957 or ‘58, we were into the subsequent born. Sure there were more kids, but the parents were already members, so that source was getting cut off. At the same time those first boomer babies were nearing the end of Sunday School, and only some of them were being confirmed. In other words, we hit a peak. It also explains why I spent so much time in the 90s asking about names on the roll—who are all these people, does anyone know them? Not really, because they came for a reason or a season, then they moved on.

Now I can land the plane. But just before I do, I want to tell you about Dr. Rob Fennell and some of his work related to thriving congregations. I heard him speak at a recent event, and he teased us with some of his research (he has a book in the works, so he didn’t want to give it all away). After interviews and surveys across Canada, he has identified six attributes of thriving congregations, and then he shared four.

The first one he called ‘starting with yes.’ He described congregations that answer ‘yes’ when challenged, and then try to work out how to make it happen. Our tour after worship might be a good example (new food bank). The next attribute is having a strong identity, which means knowing who you are and to whom you belong. The next is risk-taking, getting involved with activities that others might find surprising or off-putting (a needle exchange comes to mind). And the last—that he was willing to share—was leadership: elders and members who embody the first three, starting with yes, knowing who they are, and taking risks for the sake of the gospel.

Now, we ought not get sore patting ourselves on the back. These attributes are always aspirational, and we could certainly think of ways we failed to live up to one through four. But I would argue we are on the right side of the ledger, that work and worship happen in this place, that faithful people remain open to the Good News and all it demands, and that we make 198 look good.

So as we begin the next 198 years, may God continue to bless us, may the Risen one walk beside us, and may the Spirit move within us, new and always, Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 4:59 AM