THE ART OF SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

SCRIPTURE READING: Acts 16:6-15

Vacations are wonderful, but not when you can recall where you were on vacation by the car trouble you had. That’s how I remember our vacations with our family. It is about those plans you made that were somehow changed by cars that wouldn’t cooperate or weather that changed your plans. I remember one summer planning to camp with our four boys. That was how we got to see this great land. I can’t tell you every day of camping was Mother’s Day, but on the whole we, and our now grown sons, have wonderful memories of those adventures.

On that occasion we planned to camp at Black Lake on the Flambeau Flowage. When we arrived at the campground, it was raining and the campsite was under six inches of water. As a family we decided that we would head west until we found sunshine. We finally found it in Yellowstone National Park. You heard right, we planned to camp in northern Wisconsin, but instead, found ourselves in Wyoming. We had a wonderful time discovering the beauty of that amazing place. On the way back home after a stop at Mount Rushmore we had car trouble in Rapid City, South Dakota. This misadventure occurred on my birthday, and in the concern with finding repair for the car everyone forgot that it was my birthday. I experienced for the first time what Paul Tillich talked about as the threat of nonbeing, existential anxiety, if you will. It was as if I didn’t exist. I didn’t want a party; I just wanted people to remember that I was born.

That was just one of the times when we were on vacation when our plans were sidetracked by car trouble. I could tell you about Corvallis, Oregon or Norfolk, Nebraska or the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but I won’t.

There is a point here and a connection with our text. You will remember from the text this morning that Paul and Silas kept getting thwarted on their journey by being “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” Then they attempted to go into Bithynia and again the “Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.” I’m sorry for repeating this obscure geography for you, but the impression you should have is that it seemed that the Holy Spirit was guiding Paul and Silas away from places they wanted to go, just like a soggy campground led our family westward.

Well, if the Spirit didn’t want them to go to all the places they intended, where were they supposed to go? The writer of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles never leaves us waiting for too long. “During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’”

Paul and Silas would no longer wander willy-nilly, but rather they had a purpose through the vision Paul had in the night. The mark of a spiritual leader, lay or clergy, is vision, a vision for what might be. Paul and Silas knew that they had good news to bring to the world and their grand vision of Jesus Christ as Messiah and redeemer of the whole world was what they felt compelled to communicate.

The whole congregation is engaged in visioning what the future will hold in our tradition. The Spirit does not speak to just one of us but to all who will hear what the Spirit says. Whenever a key leader in the congregation leaves, as in John McFadden’s or Kevin’s departure, we listen to one another and to the Spirit to hear what is being said. Circumstances change and we will need to think carefully about where our spirits are being led to discern the needs of the congregation for spiritual leadership.

Paul and Silas followed their vision boldly not knowing into what they were being led, but trusting in God to lead them. That is what this church needs to do as you await new pastoral leadership. People with vision move boldly forward in faith.

Another mark of spiritual leadership is found in worship. I am concerned with the culture capturing our attention away from the practice of the worship of God. I have on my desk an eleven year profile of First Congregational Church United Church of Christ. Those statistics tell me that while the church membership has not changed appreciably, that worship attendance has gone from an average of 520 in 1995 to an average of 435 in 2005. There was not a pastoral change in those years to account for the drop of 85 attendees at worship in that time period. The only conclusion I can draw is that we have lost our focus on the one who commands our attention as our creator, redeemer and sustainer. That is what worship is. It is our focus on the God who made us. Our prayers, our music, our preaching are all about God.

Paul and Silas had not lost their focus, for even in the lack of a synagogue in Philippi they sought out a worshipping community. That worshipping community happened to be beside a river where, in the absence of a formal place of prayer like a synagogue, devout Jews might gather for the rites of purification. Apparently Philippi didn’t have ten adult male Jews to constitute a congregation, so the riverside provided an alternate site. Paul and Silas modeled attentiveness to God through their faithful worship. That is real spiritual leadership.

The final mark of spiritual leadership we find in this text is the situation in which Paul spoke to the women who were gathered there beside the river for prayer. Speaking to the women was a breach of the customs of the Jews. There were no men in evidence according to the text. Paul was willing to step outside custom to speak to women, but also to be inclusive of women. The gospel of Jesus Christ was too important not to be shared wherever there were those who would listen.

God was still speaking through Paul and Silas. That was evident in the way he broke with tradition and spoke to women, but also accepted the hospitality of a gentile woman, Lydia, to come into her home and stay.

Leaders step out away from the conventional norms and break new ground. This congregation needs to be poised for such new leadership as you contemplate your future with a new Senior Pastor. It is not the Senior Pastor who will make a difference. It is you in the pew that catch the vision of Jesus Christ given to Paul and as you worship together with God as your focus and reach out to the new and unknown opportunities that await you as you live out the good news Jesus has to give a weary and broken world.

Make way for the Holy Spirit to blow into our lives as we get out of the way for the Spirit to do its work.

Sermon preached by Reverend Jake Close at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on Mother’s Day, May 13, 2007.