There is a question making the rounds in churches these days, particularly in churches that are focusing on church growth and outreach. The question is: would the neighbourhood miss your church if it was gone? It’s a good question - a church should never exist just for its own sake. It should never engage in endless navel-gazing. Our faith calls us to serve the world, not ourselves, and so this question is meant to get us thinking about whether or not a congregation is connected to the world around it, and existing with a mission to serve. Is the church making an impact in the world?
The tricky thing about the question, though, is how do we know? What are the metrics that tell us whether or not the church is making a difference? Whether or not its people have a strong faith? Is it the number of people who come to church? Or the number of people who come to church from the surrounding neighbourhood? If the numbers are high, presumably that means that the church is doing something right. Or maybe we measure church impact by the number of outreach events, or if not by the number of events, by the numbers of people those events reach. Certainly we look at congregations that have weekly dinners for the homeless or do clothing drives or march in Pride Parades and think, wow, those congregations are really making an impact in their communities. They are living out their faith in ways we can measure - numbers of people involved, numbers of people served. We envy their reports of increasing numbers, and if they shrink, we pity them and worry about what’s going wrong.
Or, maybe we can know if the church is having an impact by the number of children in Sunday School, or in Confirmation, or the number of youth involved in the church. Surely these things point to the impact a church is having on the community around it. And so, in an attempt to answer the question, we study the numbers, we track them, record them, put them on a graph. We try to measure the effectiveness of our collective faith.
Except, of course, that we know that faith is not about what can be measured. The spiritual well-being of a congregation is not measured by the numbers of people in the pews, or the grandeur of the outreach program, or the number of children in Sunday School. We know this because in our Gospel reading, the disciples ask Jesus for more faith. They want bigger numbers to show their impact. And Jesus responds by saying that first of all, faith isn’t measurable - they ask for more, and Jesus says faith the size of a tiny seed is enough. Faith doesn’t need to be more or bigger to be effective. In fact, the strongest faith is easily missed. And then Jesus warns them not to be live out their faith for the reward of it, for being recognized or rewarded or even thanked. He cautions them that living a life of faith is a thankless task, with no recognition, and that it’s better to simply accept that from the outset than to think that we will know our faith is good because we will be recognized for it.
Which is actually one of the pillars of Lutheran theology, of our Lutheran faith. That we do not live striving for glory, as if success and numbers and programs is proof that God is with us. Because God does not seek to be revealed in the glorious, successful things of the world. Rather, God seeks to be revealed in the humble things of the world, things that we might call failures. God reveals God’s self in babies, in the poor, in God’s own death on a cross. Paradoxically, God’s own power is revealed to the world in God’s most powerless moment. God is seen in the mustard seed, not in the mulberry bush tree uprooted and planted in the sea.
And so this is why I am troubled when I hear the question, would the neighbourhood miss the church if it was gone. Because even though the question rightly points us to consider whether we are serving ourselves or the community, it can too easily lead us to worry that the answer is no. It can lead us to become concerned with whether or not we are doing enough, to a kind of church-works righteousness. And, in our fear that the answer is no, it can too easily lead us to pursue programs and events that bring us achievement, and recognition, that show off how much faith we have, sometimes at the cost of the humbler things we are doing elsewhere. To pursue glory, and forget that God has already accomplished all on the cross.
More than that, though, it is a misleading question because it implies that the church needs to be doing big things that make it noticeable in the neighbourhood. But that is not what the church is about, or at least, it’s not the only thing a church is about. A congregation is also about empowering individuals, empowering you to go out into the world and live your faith, not in grandiose ways, but in ordinary, everyday ways. The faith, or impact, of a congregation is not, in fact, primarily seen in the programs or events or numbers of people involved. The impact of a congregation is primarily seen in the small, daily, even mundane tasks that its members carry out in the course of their regular lives.
We’re going to get a little bit of listener participation in here now. Could you please, if you will, take a piece of paper, those scribble pads in front of you will work fine, and write down the name of an organization or group that is not this church, that you have given to in this past year? A group you’ve given money to, even if it’s just a few quarters at the cash register for Tim Horton’s camps or a poppy in November, or that you’ve given your time to through volunteering, or that you’ve given food or second-hand clothes or old furniture to. As many as you can think of, and then any time you’ve helped an individual, write that down, too. If you gave a neighbour a ride somewhere, or shovelled their sidewalk, or called up a friend to check in on them. If you’ve given to someone who’s homeless, or given blood, make a note of that. I’ll give you a minute. And then if you can hand that piece of paper towards the centre aisle, and ushers if you can collect them and bring them forward, please.
So here’s some of what we have. [Some selections include: the Diabetes Association, the Mustard Seed, the Red Cross, Goodwill, PFLAG, the Conservative Party, the Green Party, Canadian Wildlife Society, MS Society, Girl Guides, the Humane Society, Heart and Stroke, the Food Bank, helping shovel snow for neighbours, phoning a widow, visiting families and friends, volunteering at the Hospice, baking for friends, visiting residents at seniors’ homes, donating things for refugees, Meals on Wheels, Boy Scouts, Veterans Food Bank, helping family with financial support, praying for people.] This is the impact of the faith of Advent on the world. Every time you give to an group or a person outside the walls of this church, that’s outreach. That’s living your faith. These small little acts, humble in and of themselves, are how God works in the world to achieve something tremendous. But these aren’t things that a neighbourhood can really see. They can’t be measured. We will miss seeing them if we’re looking for the big stuff, but God works through them all.
Would the neighbourhood notice if this church disappeared? Perhaps the question shouldn’t trouble us, because in God’s eyes, the answer is always yes, of course! If this church disappeared, all of these organizations would notice. The people in your lives that you’ve helped, friends and strangers, the people represented by these pieces of paper, these people would notice. The church is so much more than the events it hosts, or the programs it runs, or the numbers of children or youth. The church is you, living your life from day-to-day, and all the things you do in a day that help those around you. In these small things, the greatness of your faith is lived out, and the glory of God shines into the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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