2008 Annual Meeting Address

December 14, 2008

In the summer of 2007, Amy Sparks, Jackie McWhorter and I accompanied 20 teenagers to Gulfport, MS on a youth mission trip.  We were housed in mobile bunk houses behind a Church of God congregation.  The day we arrived, we were ushered into the church, and there, we discovered a different way of worshipping.  We found no prayer books, no hymnals, no organ.  There was a praise band and faithful people with full and thankful hearts.  The organizer of the entire project was a young woman about 25 years old, dressed in work shorts, work boots and a bandana.  She led us in a prayer that went like this: “Lord, we juz wanna thank you for bringing us these people and for gettin’ them here safe.  We don’t know how you’re going to use us, but we’re just fine with whatever God.  We juz wanna serve you.  We juz wanna work together, learn what you want us to learn, help one another and help the homeowners get back in their houses.  We juz wanna thank you for sending us these people to do this work.  Lord, they’re all juz pretty stinkin’ amazing!”

Now, I’ve been in a lot of churches and I’ve heard a lot of prayers, but I’ve never, ever been referred to in those very descriptive terms.  Still, I must say, in that week, on a roof, under the Mississippi, July sun, laying and hammering tiles on melting tar paper – we all were exactly “stinkin’ amazing!”  Her words were sincere and accurate.  And what was true of our experience that summer is also true of this year in our church.  2008 was the year that beautiful, quaint, historic St. Mark’s became stinkin’ amazing.  This was a year of substantive transformation.  This was the year St. Mark’s became something new.

If we take a long, broad view of our parish’s history, we discover a 124 year old cyclical dynamic.  St. Mark’s has been a church characterized by alternating periods of health and trouble, health and trouble.  In the healthy times, the congregation enjoyed solid worship, acceptable Christian Education and exceptional pastoral care.  In the fair days, members took care of their own really, really well.  In the troubled years, that pastoral care turned too far inward and the parish grew closed and chilly towards outsiders.  In some of the troubled eras, the church was saddled with problematic leadership, clergy who had difficulty ordering their personal finances and relationships.  On occasion, their leadership style was greatly at odds with the needs of the current body.  Not too long ago, in a period of transition, a group with a theological understanding at variance with the traditions of this parish tried to redirect the congregation and a rift ensued.  This has been our heritage.  Good eras, troubled days.  But in 2008, a new dimension was added to the dynamic – troubled, healthy, expansive.  Perhaps for the first time in her long determined history, this body gathered, by the grace of God, became the best she’s ever been.  This year may be the time St. Mark’s came closest to the ideal Jesus envisioned when he commissioned Peter – build my church, feed my sheep, tend my lambs.

What happened this year is that on several fronts we took what it means to be a church to a deeper, more expansive level.  There is a movement afoot in Christian churches in America called “Radical Hospitality” and it refers to intention and initiatives centered on making folk feel welcomed, wanted and valued in the church.  We were about that kind of hospitality this year.  Drawing on a natural strength, our graciousness and commitment to making people feel a part of the body, we created the best additional space we could with seats, and sight and sound and greeters and ushers and a coffee hour where we effectively avoid the worse church experience ever, walking into a room where everyone is grouped up and nobody speaks to you, leaving you thinking if Christians won’t talk to me, I must be pitiful.  For the initial welcome we added invitation to active participation.  In 2008 we commissioned all our worship leaders, ushers, acolytes, choir members, altar guild, lectors and chalice bearers.  We said at St. Mark’s faith is not a spectator sport, faith grows by action and in community.  What you do here is a serious, important ministry.  Ushers aren’t handing out flyers, they’re leading worship.  Newcomers were also encouraged to make this church their own.  We enacted the 2-year rule.  Chair a committee for two years and make room for someone else to lead and envision.  Serve, then rest.  Serve again later or in a different place.

Another place we experienced expansive transformation was in the area of outreach.  This has been a place of tension and disappointment for St. Mark’s because while we want to serve, our members find many pulls on their time and when they commit to giving their hours and energy, they want to do so in the company of their church friends.  They do not want to work in isolation.  Finally, this year we found two projects that answered our needs.  In April and September, we had over 150 people gathered in this room, packaging meals for Stop Hunger Now.  In July, St. Mark’s launched what I believe to be its first foreign mission team ever and its first adult mission trip.  23 people raised funds, procured grants, gave up precious vacation time and offered themselves to the service of others in need for 9 long, hardworking days.  Again, another opportunity to be stinkin’ amazing.  The location of the work-at-home or abroad is less important than the commitment to go and serve.  To see the real effects of this enterprise, I encourage you to look through the presentation Suzanne Ferguson created for the grant committee.

A third area of transformation occurred late in the year and centered on Christian Formation.  Our mission statement makes the promise that we will build community and live the way of Christ.  Building community comes pretty easily to this body, living as Christ lives is more difficult and one of the reasons is because to live like Christ, one must understand who he was and how he lived.  Coming to worship services helps, but 30 minutes a week devoted to lessons, prayers and, hopefully, please God, a sermon that raises those questions up is insufficient instruction.

So, after a slow start, we set about revamping our Sunday school program and got focused on how to meet adult formation needs.  In addition to John and Denise Reis’ consistent, well-planned, ongoing Bible study class, we planned intermittent classes on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings to encourage thoughtful engagement with the second part of our mission.  In 2008, we began the expansion process, to be a Christian is to be informed, instructed and equipped for the journey to God.  This is how we live the way of Christ.  The final and most significant place of transformation occurred in the area of evangelism, that place where Anglicans lower their eyes and shudder.

We may resist the notion, but Christ is clear in his directive.  Evangelism is the charge to invite others to join you in the journey to God.  Evangelism is looking beyond ourselves and inviting others who we don’t yet know.  This has been especially hard for St. Mark’s because it is not the same thing as being warm and friendly to people who come up the hill.  Evangelism pushes us down the hill and says go and ask, go and invite others to come with.  This exercise, this commitment is scary and risky and challenging to us because what has made us comfortable is a place that is intimate and where we are sure to be known.  Everything, everything we present from the road says small, close, knowable, easy to navigate.  This year we said as comfortable as our present state is, we must move beyond and we must trust that God will take us to another comfortable place. 

In 2008, we commissioned a master plan, we raised funds and in the enterprise, we became a new parish with a new future.  Look around this room at the plans.  Look in your annual report at the monies raised.  This is a mighty vision.  But the true indication of St. Mark’s transformation, the move from a healthy church to an expansive church is the quality of our new prayer life.  Truly I say to you, 106 comfortable, not wealthy, but comfortable families do not raise 1.2 million dollars without prayer, without looking to God for direction and encouragement.  Above the dollars raised there was massive leadership and widespread participation in this venture.  You prayed and sacrificed.  And all this energy and effort was not a testament to grandeur, to a stained glass palace, but the beginning of an invitation. 

What St. Mark’s responded to was the call to find a seat, to make a place at the table for someone else looking for what you have found here and what you hope to deepen for years to come.

So, dear ones, 2008 was an amazing year and, in 2009, we will be about continuing our transformation.  We will center on 4 initiatives.  We will continue our understanding and response to invite.  We will expand our instruction so we know better how to live the way of Christ. We will become incarnate.  We will be the hands and feet and heart of Christ more often in the world in our acts of service.  And we will celebrate.  On our vestry retreat in January, we will make plans for a year long celebration of our 125^th anniversary.  This celebration will be characterized by our mission – we’ll build connections and community with one another and we’ll celebrate the way of Christ – which in these times means we’ll simplify our approach. 

We will be about doing invitation, instruction, incarnation well, but with less.  We won’t be about a lot of stuff, but about a lot of intention.  So, in all programs, all initiatives, all worship, all finances, all decisions we’ll ask, does this truly serve our mission?  Does this action put us on the way of Christ?    Can we uphold God’s call to us with less effort, stress, financial strain?   With this intent plus the power of our deepening prayer life supported by the grace of God, in 2009 we can add to our sign on Mt. Holly Huntersville Road this claim,

“ St. Mark’s: a church where the people are stinkin’ amazing!”

A final thought regarding amazing folk – I want to hold up before you the St. Mark’s staff.  These are people who chose to earn their living in the service of you.  This is a powerful gift and we are the beneficiaries of their efforts.  So, please join me in thanking Joe our sexton, John our organist/choirmaster, Cindy our parish secretary and Jane our deacon.  They truly help us be the best we can be in this community.

And really and truly finally….Amen.