“THE American clergy is suffering from burnout, several new studies show. And part of the problem, as researchers have observed, is that pastors work too much… But there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling. The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches…

Jeffery MacDonald is right that the trend toward consumer-driven religion has been gaining momentum for half a century. In 1955 only 15 percent of Americans said they no longer adhered to the faith of their childhood. By 2008, 44 percent had switched their religious affiliation at least once, or dropped it altogether.

In the midst of all this bad news there is, it seems to me, some good news for churches like Kirkwood Baptist Church.  It’s not that we are immune to any of the cultural currents which result from all this bad news, but it is that our history stands as a counter example.  As I’ve said recently in other contexts we have a beautiful, if imperfect, heritage of adopting: love over literalism, moral integrity over empty moralism, science over superstition.  Whether in sending our youth to Kenya or caring for those who are dying or adhering to a non-entertainment participatory worship style, we serve as a counter example.

Included in the good news is the reality that we have work to do.  We live in a culture that often associates “Baptist” with “bigot” and “Christian” with “hypocrite.”  I watched some religious television the other day, and certainly got an understanding (again) as to why.  But there’s nothing to do but continue to live out our faith in imperfect, but real, lives in a way that lets our light shine.  We are not here to be paragons of perfection, or expositors of all truth, or a local theatre where you come for a show every Sunday.  We are a community of those seeking to follow in the ways of Jesus.  We serve God and hence each other in his name.  All else is noise.  In this bad news world this is our good news: work to do.

It is a small world, and made even smaller by our capacity to travel and talk across large distances.  The BWA meeting was a reminder that though we are separated by oceans and languages, what we humans share is much greater than that which separates us.  There were 4,000 at this meeting, but the more significant figure to me is that over 100 countries were represented (and the sad figure of 1,000 that US immigration kept from attending).

What do all these Baptists, with distinct languages, cultures, expectations, share in common?   It isn’t agreement on every dot of doctrinal truth.  It isn’t agreement on musical tastes or how to dress for worship (I always appreciate the Africans and their bright, beautiful, flowing robes – quite a contrast with the Americans who show up in shorts and white tennis shoes).  But it is an experience of love and a belief that God was at work in Christ.

The author Ann Rice has been in the news this last week.  After a high profile conversion to Catholicism a decade plus ago, she has now renounced her faith.  She says she will never go back to her atheistic days, that she still believes in Christ, but that no longer – given Catholicism’s express views on social issues – can she call herself a Christian.  After making this public statement, she said it’s the first time she’s felt sane in a long time.

I’m sympathetic to Rice’s concerns, but am amazed that she is about 500 years behind.  Or at least 400.  The early Baptists understood that God’s truth was larger than any one person or any one group.  They believed that the Spirit was at work in persons individually and in the local church communally, and that understanding required a kind of freedom.  The early Baptists embraced a freedom for individuals to disagree and for churches to differ.  Starting in 1610 early Baptists made it clear that no church, denomination, pope, or potentate could compel the conscious or demand conviction.  Early in our nations history, Baptist fought for the freedom of religion, believing that all should be free to worship as their conscious dictated.

Ann Rice shouldn’t have rejected Christianity, she should have embraced being a Baptist.  There is room for her in this large, diverse, energetic, group of Jesus followers.  We don’t all agree, but we do all see the need to serve in the name of Christ – for God so loved this small world that he deemed it worth saving.  It isn’t saved by our submission to a set of beliefs, but our adoption of a big faith that puts a loving heart and working hands ahead of agreeing brains.

And, of course, not only did this complicate our financial situation, it also complicated our already new family schedule.  Olivia had just started at the WEE Center for two days which means she came to church with me on Tuesday and Wednesdays.  On Tuesdays she stayed in my office from 2 pm to 5 pm (or at least that was the plan) and on Wednesdays I drove her to Ballwin at 12:30 pm for afternoon childcare (taking an hour out of my day).  In addition, with Mekea on bed rest, I needed to come home early to help make help with our evening routine.  So, for a variety of reasons, my days were being squeezed on both sides and the middle.  And all of this in a year when I was preparing 3 youth to attend PASSPORTKenya, helping set up the details for a Passport Camp in St. Louis, developing a youth advocacy group in Kirkwood, working to plan a 4 church, community wide 30 hour famine experience in Kirkwood, working with two other churches to provide cross cultural internships in our churches, finish remodeling our basement before the new baby arrived, and all during a year when our youth group was struggling to find their identity and pace.  And then, just prior to Audrey’s birth, we started working on our web/media presence and making some strategic changes which bled into our 140th celebration.  Whew!

So, as you can tell, for the most part, success (family, career, ministry) in 2010 has been defined simply as keeping our heads above water.  Now, please don’t hear any complaining in these sentiments.  More than anything these thoughts are meant to give me perspective on the year and permission to not have been perfect in keeping all of the balls juggling this year.

However, what has been perfect is God’s love and protection for me, for my family, and for the ministry at KBC.  For while so much of the time I was just thinking about the next thing down the pike, God was holding all things together and proving once again that all things do work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.  Because as I look over the last 8 months, I see God’s fingerprints all around my family and I see his handiwork throughout the ministry of KBC.

So, let me say boldly how thankful I am to God for his work and presence in our lives.  I thank God that Mekea and Olivia were protected in their accident, that God helped us through the season of bed rest (physically, mentally, spiritually, and financially), that the basement is almost done but was ready enough for all the visitors who came this summer, that we have a beautiful new addition to our family for which we are undeserving, that Mekea has been patient with me as I’ve adjusted to Audrey particularly when I wasn’t exhibiting the fruits of the spirit in the first few weeks; for friends who have cooked meals and baby sat and checked on us and encouraged us and had patience with us and generally showed us the love of Christ.  After all, youth ministers and their families need that too.

And let me also boldly thank God and celebrate the way he has worked and is working here at KBC.  From as far back as October, I am thankful for God’s guidance with HOK which has led to the town wanting to make this a community wide endeavor. I am thankful for how God is working in the lives of the four KBCers in Kenya and the healthy support I received from all corners encouraging me to stay at home; for the ways KBC embraces their role in the lives of our youth…it’s truly incredible; for the patience and support all the youth and parents have shown in a very complicated year; for the support, understanding, and unconditional love the parents and youth have shown in embracing GC; for the three recent young people who have made professions of faith; for Passport coming to St. Louis and the ministry that happened; for the ways KBC has embraced our two African American interns Josh and Rashid, for the support Scott Stearman and the whole staff give to our youth ministry and for the time relationship Scott gives to our youth, for a great group of seniors that I will be very sad to see go but in whom I have such belief; for youth who love my family and who make my daughter excited to come to church, for Trish Jackson who sees part of her calling in Christ doing more than she needs for the Johnson’s and more than we deserve, for an incredible 140th anniversary in which KBC not only reached out to the community in powerful ways but which was yet another example of the incredible number of selfless servants we have at KBC; for the four youth from Hope Unlimited who came to camp with us this summer and made me laugh and smile in ways I hadn’t in a long time (What I like about Passport); for the safety and protection God provided on our recent youth float trip; and for what is to come.

Well, if you’ve made it to the end of this, I commend your own patience. You know, this year has not necessarily been a year of tremendous growth for KBC or KBC Youth in terms of the traditional markers of church growth.  But those markers don’t always tell the story not do those markers necessarily reflect the priorities of God.  Because God’s eye is on his whole kingdom.  And when you look at things from a Kingdom Building perspective – not from a human perspective – what a great year it’s been for us and KBC.  And the Kingdom Building perspective is also the best way to see why Mekea and I love KBC and why we are so grateful that God called us to KBC.

To end, let me say that I am looking forward to a few more days of rest and relaxation in Blacksburg.  And even more, I am looking forward to what God has in store for us in 2010-11.  Although, I wouldn’t complain if it was a little more boring this year.

William Wilberforce, b. 1759, was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. Five years into his political career he became a committed Christian… he was converted from a tepid lukewarm ambivalence to hot passionate commitment to the person and principles of Jesus.  Two years after his conversion he met a group of anti-slave-trade activists.  They showed him the chains, the smells, the bloods, the losses, the horrors of the slave trade.  He met a former slave, heard the stories, and became convinced that God led him to the cause of abolition.  He soon became one of the leading voices calling for the end to the slave trade.

For twenty-six years, often with bad health and very stiff opposition, he headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade.  It was a long, arduous and even dangerous struggle until the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807.  His movement was the world’s first grassroots human rights campaign, in which men and women from different social classes and backgrounds volunteered to end the injustices suffered by others.

His campaign eventually led to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which ended slavery in most of the British Empire.  Wilberforce died three days after hearing that the passage of the Act was assured.  Though sadly not a household name today, in 1856, the first black university in America was named Wilberforce University.  Frederick Douglass called him the factor “that finally thawed the British heart…”

That’s the true story we saw portrayed a week ago on Wednesday as we gathered to watch the movie: “Amazing Grace.”  If you didn’t see it, if you haven’t seen it, do it.  It’s one of the better films out there.  But here’s the rest of the story.   William Wilberforce, the great liberator of slaves, the tireless fighter of injustice, was opposed to the liberation of women.  He even didn’t like women’s involvement in the anti-slavery campaign. He believed that women had no place in politics.  I quote: “For ladies to meet, to publish, to go from house to house stirring up petitions – these appear to me proceedings unsuited to the female character…”  We all have our blind spots, but today I pray our ears are wide open.

Question:  How in a world where prejudice reigns so supreme in the hearts and minds of humans, did a small group of Jewish followers of a Jewish rabbi within a few decades grew into a multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-continental movement which has touched every part of our planet.  How could this have happened?!  How could these Hebrew people, who were as exclusionist as any other race or group, have been transformed to those who embraced a world-wide gospel where even the former Pharisee Paul would come to say:  “there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, but we are all one in Christ”?

Well this is Luke’s task – to answer this question as he writes the book of Acts.  He is seeking to tell the story of the early followers of Jesus and like any historian he can’t write about every moment, but he picks out the great ones… the formative ones… the moments where ideas are shaped, minds are changed, crowds are converted…

Or where an Ethiopian eunuch becomes a follower of the Jewish Messiah.

What a story of barriers broken, of bridges built, of old prejudices being destroyed.  What a beautiful story of one person who came to know God’s love and of another person who came to know of the extent of God’s love… for this is not only a story of a saved African, but it is a story of a renovated, motivated, elevated Philip.

There are three marquee actors and one major prop in this story:

1)     The man who doesn’t fit in a standard definition of a man (what some today call a sexual minority).  The man who is also a pious searcher who doesn’t fit in anyone’s orthodoxy…  he was the wrong race to be reading Isaiah and the wrong gender to be in the assembly of God.

2)     Philip, who following the Jesus of the well, goes where the standard, where the rules, don’t permit him to go.  He’s been taught, by his religion to avoid people like this eunuch.

3)     The Spirit, who is unseen and unheard, but who is seen, felt and heard by both the seeker and the evangelist… who brings both towards the truth.  Part of Luke’s story is the Spirit.  Why the Spirit?  Because the letter of the law was clear:  Deuteronomy 23:1 “No one who is a eunuch… shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord”

4)     The chariot is the prop… they were both on a journey!

A show of hands.  How many of you have seen the show: Wicked?

Well for you unacquainted, let you tell you briefly how it goes.  The poor wicked witch of the west isn’t really wicked after all.  She’s just a misunderstood girl with a bad home life whose skin happens to be green.  And who happens to be able to conjure up wings on moneys and turn her true love into straw, but otherwise she’s a perfectly normal gal.

But of course underneath the fantastical elements in the story, the human element is why it’s so very popular.  Every one of us knows a bit about what it’s like to be green… or strange, or unpopular, or misunderstood, or out of whack with those around us.  This is the human condition… to feel at times as if no one quite gets you, or that most are very different from you… it takes a lot of maturity – or a deep abiding faith in God -  to finally get that the differences are part of God’s glory.  Your weirdness is God’s gift.

Some of these differences are genetic (the non-wicked witch was born with green skin) and some are chosen and some are chosen for us by others.   On your cover I put a picture from this last century of eunuch of the Sultan.   As recently as 75 years ago, boys were taken from particular regions of Africa and then brought to Upper Egypt, where they underwent the operation.  The mortality rate was high, which meant that those who survived were very valued and very expensive.  As you see until recently some were brought to the Sultana in Istanbul.”

Adding insult to literal injury, some religions forbade these men full access.  It was against the Hebrew law for the Eunuch to enter into the Assembly of God.  This is why the Spirit needs to tell Philip to do what he does.   Under the guidance of the Spirit Philip obediently overcomes the tradition of the Old Testament and engages the man in conversation about his reading – and shares Jesus with one who some believed unworthy.

And maybe the Ethiopian believed it himself.  Maybe he didn’t think himself worthy… possibly that is why he so readily identified with this suffering servant to was the victim of a cruel world which acted so viciously towards him.  This outcast could see in Christ his own outline… And Philip was able to get past whatever prejudice he may have had to share that this vision of Isaiah was incarnated in the person of Jesus.

Luke consistently tells us that correct spiritual understanding is a gift (Acts 8:10; 10:22).  We need to pray, as much as ever for that gift today.  Our hope for right engagement with others is not in literalism, but in the Spirit’s love.

I grew up hearing this story taught and preached.  It seemed as if the emphasis was always on the Ethiopian’s baptism.  But that’s only half of the beautiful story.  The other half is Philip’s transformation.  Luke tells this story to remind us that the early Christians also had a conversion after their conversion … meaning this fits into the same picture that Luke draws in chapter 10 when finally Peter gets it:  “I now see that God doesn’t show favoritism.”   Luke’s dual message:

1)     Even Ethiopian Eunuchs are a part of God’s kingdom.

2)     Even Christians need to grow so they might embrace all of God’s children.

I’m going to leave a lot unsaid today… I do that every Sunday.  There’s much more to say, learn, understand and discuss about sexual minorities, like this eunuch.  There’s more complexity here than can be – or should be – addressed in a sermon with children in the room.    But I’ll leave you with two unequivocal statements.

1)     There is room in the church to discuss “the issue” but there is no room in the church to discuss the ultimate response of love.  We are called to love all.  And this loving is not the paternalistic “we’re such delightfully open people that we’ll even love you!”  No, this is the kind of love that recognizes Philip needed the Eunuch as much as the Eunuch needed Philip.  Our Gentile embrace of the gospel is partly dependant on Philip’s encounter.

2)     I paraphrase a fellow CBF pastor who recently said:  “even if being a sexual minority doesn’t represent God’s plan A… which of us can claim to be living out God’s plan A?”

I for one know that I’m on plan T, or W… I hope I’m not on plan Z… but I know me enough to not be throwing any stones.

We know more about the world than they did 2,000 years ago.  We know it goes around the sun, not visa versa.  And we know that people are born with inalterable genetic traits.   It is this world, spinning around the sun filled with all kinds of diverse human beings that John was talking about when he said that God so loved…

Without question William Wilberforce would have been very proud of the fact that his work not only prompted abolition in the UK, but helped end slavery in the United States of America.  From the perspective of heaven, maybe he finds it ironic that it was a woman who more than any other person besides Abe Lincoln brought it about.  Harriet Beecher Stowe, the famed author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is likely now smiling with him… looking down on a much better world, but one still in need of those who will listen to the Spirit.