On Mission, A sermon series on the Mission Statement of the Presbyterian Church of Chestertown, week 1 of 7, preached Jan 12, 2025
Children’s
Context
This new year, Caitlan and I have a new series we are calling “On Mission,” a seven week reflection on the Mission Statement of this church. We read this church’s mission statement today in our Call to Worship. Over seven Sundays, we will study our mission statement phrase by phrase, reconnect us as a community why we church, our purposes and priorities as a church, and hopefully come together as one body “on mission.”
Question of the Day
To get us started, let’s group up in twos and threes, and spend two or three minutes with one another, ask these questions of the day…
What is church? Or if that’s too nebulous, Why do you church?
Ready? Go!
(A few moments to get feedback)
Prayer
Scripture Luke 5:1-11
Sermon
When Jill and I were in Seminary, most of the students were younger than us. We were in our 30s, married with children. The majority were in their 20s, straight from college or just a few years out with little experience in the working world. I had 12 years as an engineer, market manager, and technical sales. I had been with a family-owned company and managed around $40 million for them, and with Fortune 500 companies where I managed over $250 million. I had frequent flyer status on multiple airlines and hotel chains. Then I dropped all of that and went to seminary.
My last year of seminary, the president of the seminary, Steve Hayner, taught a required class to graduating seniors called Final Things. In that class, we read leadership books from the corporate world… like “Primal Intelligence” and “Good to Great” and “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.” I had already read most of those books on planes late and night.
My younger seminary colleagues struggled in that class. They didn’t see the relevance of corporate leadership to church. They feared church was already too commercialized, capitalized, too success-oriented, and was losing its purpose even more if we studied corporate “wisdom.” But Steve put it differently. He said the church is the body of Christ, and the word for body is corpus, the same word as corporation. So, in a way, the church is the corporation of Christ. Now Steve agreed, yes, some churches forget why we exist, what to do and not to do, and how to decide, and how to hold ourselves accountable. The corporate wisdom of these books wasn’t to make church more like a for-profit corporation. As an experienced pastor and leader wanted us to study these books to help us as future church leaders call the church to be more faithful and stay on mission.
Now, every healthy organization has a mission statement, and often a vision and values statement. Has anyone here been a part of an organization that had mission, vision, or values statements? Were any of you on the team that crafted or updated mission, vision, or value statements for an organization? Show of hands? Great.
In seminary, I knew these concepts from a corporate setting. I had helped write and rewrite vision or mission statements for a manufacturing plant, a global product line. But until seminary, I had never thought of those words for church. Steve showed us Jesus vision, mission, and values for church.
To get us all on the same page, let’s start with vision… vision is seeing, so the idea is to ask the folks at the table, what do you see this, whatever this is, being 5, 10, 15 years from now? The vision statement becomes the longer-term imagination and goal, and helps us understand where we are going together, how we will change and grow together. The vision statement when crafted well is compelling and inspiring, and people get excited and want to participate and help make that vision come true.
Next is Mission. Mission breaks down the path and steps toward that vision… what we will do, our group’s priorities, tasks, and roles. If we do the mission statement over and over again, faithfully, we will move toward the vision.
Last, values. Values express the character and culture of an organization, represent how we will and will not behave. Values describe the ethics and morals that set the guardrails for us as we do mission toward vision.
Yall still with me? Vision is what we hope we will together become or accomplish. Mission is what we will together do over and over again to move that direction. Values are the ethics and boundaries we will together honor along the way.
Now, the four gospels are expressions of Jesus’ vision, mission, and values. So let’s do something a little different today. There are pew Bibles in front of you. If you wish, grab one. We are going to do a high level overeview of a bunch of scripture today. We are going to flash across the beginning of all four gospels, and listen for vision, mission, and values Jesus lays out for his disciples and his church.
Let’s start with Matthew, page 777 of your pew bibles if you want to follow along that way. Chapter 1 is the family tree and Jesus’ birth. Chapter 2, wise ones visit, Herod gets jealous. Toddler Jesus and family escape to Egypt while Herod kills boys around Jesus’ age. When Herod dies, Jesus returns and grows into a young adult. Chapter 3, John the Baptizer announces “Prepare the way…” The Jesus project is about start. John baptizes Jesus, and in Chapter 4 Jesus is whisked away into wilderness and tempted. “What are your values, Jesus? Don’t worry about those. What’s your mission? Here, do this instead. I’ll help you reach your vision, if you’ll do it for me instead of God.” Jesus resists, then comes out of the wilderness and announces – verse 17 “Repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near”. Jesus preaches the sermon on the mount, chapters 5 to 7, where he explains the mission and how to accomplish the vision, even teaches us to pray for that vision, the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. Then Jesus gathers disciples and starts healing, teaching, calling, confronting anyone to get everyone inside values on mission toward the vision, the of Kingdom of God.
Let’s go to Mark, page 807. Matthew probably had a copy of Mark. They’re similar but Mark’s a little blunter. Chapter 1, John announces “Prepare the way”. Jesus is baptized and tempted, and starts saying the good news, verse 15 “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near or is at hand. Repent, and believe the good news!” Jesus calls disciples, and starts healing, calling, teaching, doing mission inside values that accomplish the vision… the kingdom of God.
Let’s jump to the 4th gospel, John, page 858. John was written much later than Matthew and Mark, maybe 40 years, two generations. The church was so different by then, so John starts with grand poetry of Jesus at the beginning as God, with God, then a memory of John announcing Jesus onto the scene, “prepare the way, make it straight,” and baptizing Jesus. Jesus goes to a wedding. Chapter 2, the wine is empty and Jesus’ mother outs him. “Cmon Jesus, help us.” “I don’t know mom. I’m not ready (or my hour has not yet come).” Then, Jesus turns jugs of water into wine, and people begin to believe. That little private act launches his big public act, cleansing the temple. “Stop selling God, and making God’s house a marketplace where God’s love is bought and sold!” Then, he starts his mission, feeding, healing, and calling disciples, Pharisees, Samaritans, women, Greeks and teaching them all his vision, kingdom life, eternal life is here, now, for all who believe.
Last, lets go back to Luke, page 826. Luke also had Mark, but Luke was from a different community than Matthew, so its different, but similar. The births of John and Jesus are announced by angels. Chapter 2, Jesus is raised a good Jew and knows his Torah. Chapter 3, adult John announces “Prepare the way!” and baptizes Jesus. Chapter 4, Jesus is tempted to stray from his mission and values, but comes out of wilderness and begins to teach. He goes to worship as was his custom, and teaches from Isaiah, verse 18, “The spirit of the Lord anointed me to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed be free, and to proclaim the year of Jubliee, debt forgiveness. Today, this scripture is fulfilled even as you hear it.” They almost kill him for saying that. He does a few healings, then says in verse 43 – “I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God – I was sent for this purpose.” He calls his disciples and off he goes on mission toward vision.
The vision is kingdom of God. The mission is worship, teaching, healing, justice, compassion, freedom, inclusion, debt forgiveness, life forgiveness. And one core value for Jesus in all the Gospels is he will not do it alone. He will gather friends, strangers, outcasts, insiders, disciples alongside him, and will teach them to keep going as the church even when his is gone.
Do you see how the beginning of all four gospels lays out Jesus’ vision, the kingdom of God, here now, at hand, for all people? Do you see some of the practices of Jesus and his disciples, their mission? Do you see some of the values he taught and practiced?
Back in the corporate world, we would spent a LOT of time on the vision statement, debating and refining it until we all agreed what we wanted to become or accomplish. Only then could we start to break that down into the Mission statement, the steps toward it.
In church, its different. In church, we aren’t called to debate and refine the vision with one another. We are given the vision from God. God’s vision is the Kingdom of God, here, now, on earth as it is in heaven, for all God’s children.
Every church I’ve been a pastor to, over the last 20 years, someone has asked me “Why do you spend so much time teaching about the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven?” One person was a little blunter, and told me he’d been going to church for 50 years and never heard any preacher talk about Kingdom of God as much as I did. Well, here’s why. Almost all of Jesus’ lessons and parables are meant to help us better imagine God’s vision for beloved blessed holy community, kingdom of God, and to believe its not just somewhere else, far off in the future, but its possible, and in some way already here, now. Most of Jesus’ actions in the four gospels are him embodying the mission inside the values so Kingdom of God is seen and believed and happens here and now for more and more people.
The way I think of it now, is that every church, every community of faith under Jesus has the same Vision statement, “Thy Kingdom come, they will, be done on earth as it is in the heavens.” For me, the vision statement for all Christians and Christian churches is an vivid imagination, hope, and belief in the Kingdom of God, that it is real and possible, that it is coming toward us, and that we with God’s help can move all things toward it.
Jesus gives us lots of ways to understand what to do to get there, options for our mission, or how to honor Jesus and hold each other accountable, our Values. While every Christian and every Christian church have the same vision, Kingdom of God, every community of Christ has different people, different histories, recources, gifts, skillsets. Every congregation of Christ is in a different context with different needs around them in their community. So every church will need to focus itself on certain actions with certain priorities and boundaries. Every congregation needs to come to agreement on its mission and values.
For us, for this church, God’s Vision for us is to bring more and more Kingdom of God into Chestertown and beyond. Our community, our world is not yet like the Kingdom of God, and we will call on Jesus to teach us over and over again the beauty of God’s Kingdom, and beg each other to see it, and believe its possible, and to work together to make it so not just for ourselves but for all people.
Our mission, what we promise to do together when we come to this table is to remember, to put back together what was broken, his body, his corpus. When we eat this mean, we are confessing the brokenness of church and world, and recommitting ourselves to be:
a community of believers who
worship an ever-creating God,
seek to follow Jesus of Nazareth as our model for living,
and led by The Spirit,
willingly partner with people everywhere who choose to live in peace.
Amen? Amen.
Invitation
Please write on your sticky note:
Some time when you've see this congregation do or be good church…
During the offering, put your sticky note on the walls of the AV booth
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