Church on Morgan
Better Together
[MUSIC PLAYING] From Church on Morgan, a United Methodist congregation whose desire is to be a reminder of the beauty of God and each other. This podcast is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the revised Common Lectionary and recorded weekly in Raleigh, North Carolina. And now a moment of silence before this episode begins. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, hello. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Church. So good to see everyone. For those of you, I don't know. My name is Alan Mask. I have the honor and the privilege of serving on our board here at Church on Morgan. And but for that only somewhat meaningful credential, I must warn you that I have no qualifications to justify my being on this stage today. I did not graduate from a seminary. I have no formal instruction in Christian leadership. And to keep it super real with you, I hadn't even spent much time in the Methodist Church until 2021 when my family and I moved back to North Carolina from California. And we started attending Church on Morgan, which, spoiler alert, is a Methodist Church. We find ourselves without clergy today, as Pastor Justin is preaching at a cousin Church of ours in New York City. As Pastor Sam is enjoying her final sips of maternity leave. And as Pastor Tim is officiating a wedding. Normally, what we do in this situation is we invite another pastor from our network to come and be the adult in the room, as it were. But it seems as though Justin is running out of favors. Because for some reason, he asked me to stand in today. So here we are. I wish I could say I accepted this honor with great enthusiasm. I think I reacted like Justin was serving me papers. I don't know about you. Maybe y'all would have been chill with it. But I'm the kind of person that sometimes has a hard time sending raw chicken back to the kitchen at a restaurant. I'm definitely going to have a hard time saying no to our pastor, especially when it seems like he needs help. And so here we are. Consider this my you're welcome for taking one for the team this weekend. And I'll go ahead and give you a head start by warning you that he's coming for some of y'all next. I'm just first up. I'm in all seriousness, preparing for this message was equal parts fun and difficult. I have more respect than I've ever had for our pastors for the way they get up here every single week and just flawly deliver a word to us. But one of the things that I did learn when I was preparing for this message was that if we leave all of our teaching to the teachers, then we'll leave behind a number of valuable lessons. If we're going to build this church and it's going to be a church that God wants to come to, it's got to be a church that we build together. And that's exactly what the scriptures point to for today. Walk with me to the election area that starts this week of September 29th. September 29th is a special day in my household. It's my son, Major's birthday. Major's my oldest guy. He turns four today. I think he's going to come to the 11. But if any of you see him at all today or this week or for the rest of the month, which I guess is just a few more days, please wish him a happy birthday. I know he would just love, love, love that. We have two scriptures for today, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament. Our first reading is from the Book of Numbers, chapter 11, verses 24 through 29. So Moses went out and told the people, the words of the Lord, and he gathered 70 of the elders of the people and placed them all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to them and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the 70 elders. And when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, but they did not do so again. Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them. They were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, so they prophesied in the camp. And the young man ran and told Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp, in Joshua, son of none, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, my Lord Moses, stop them. But Moses said to him, are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them? Our second scripture is from the Gospel of Mark, chapter nine, verses 38 through 41. John said to him, teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us. But Jesus said, do not stop him. For no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. This is the word of God for us, the people of God. - Amen. - Let us pray. Father, we thank you for welcoming us into your house. We thank you for allowing us at the feet of Jesus where the ground is level. We're your servants. I pray that I would decrease, that you would increase, and that this short message would do a long work in the hearts and minds of your people. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. So there are 283 words in this translation. Knowing the old Bible, there are probably just as many, if not more, takeaways. But there's a common thread between these passages that I think is clear. And that's that from the pulpit to the pews, from the clergy to the congregation, God's work is activated by the empowerment of laity. Laity in reference to lay people or ordinary people, like me, like you, in contrast to a professional class of sorts. In this context, we'll consider those our pastors. The late Tim Keller preached extensively on the empowerment of laity in the early aughts. And I wanna read one piece of one of my favorite essays from him on this. It starts with the growth of a big passive middle happens to all churches as they grow larger. This growth impassivity weakens what I will call the lay ministry dynamic. That dynamic happens when a significant percentage of Christians engage in lay ministry behaviors because they are trained and coached informally and personally by the pastors and staff of the church. These lay ministry behaviors result in many new people, including many people without faith, being brought by Christian friends into the services and life of the church community. I wanna read that first sentence one more time. The growth of a big passive middle happens to all churches as they grow larger. How many of you have heard of this thing called the bystander effect? Anyone heard of this? I learned about this recently. Apparently it's a social psychological theory that people are less likely to help people when other people are present. And I thought that was a powerful visual for what Dr. Keller is talking about. And if we're being honest, I think it's also something that applies to our church right now. I haven't been coming to church on Morgan for that long, but even in the little bit of time I have been here, I've noticed that some, not all, but some of us are leaning back a bit. Folks that were once volunteering, folks that were once giving, perhaps understandably so, are noticing with the growth and development of our church. Maybe some people are filling the void. Maybe some people are closing the gap. Maybe some people are chipping in so that I can lean out a little bit. Dr. Keller warns us that if we don't pay attention to this and we don't do everything we can to get all people involved in all of our ministries, no matter where you stand, no matter where you sit, we run the risk of those that were once connected, those that were once compelled becoming complacent. In our section from Numbers, we see Moses' anointing redistributed across the 70 elders. In our passage from Mark, we see randos performing miracles in the name of Jesus. It's obvious here that God is doing his work through others, others inclusive of laypeople and leaders alike. I suppose you could say we are, wait for it, better, together. How neat. It would be easy for me just to leave it there and just, and a nice, soft and pretty, better together and Pollyanna you into a nice, warm fuzzy to start your week. But I'd be remiss to ignore that in both of these passages, the yes and of better together is obscured by the no but of who do they think they are. Pastor Tim preached on this last weekend and I find it fascinating that we're rubbing up against it here. At the end of our passage from Numbers, we see Moses' men balk at the elders prophesying in the camp. Perhaps they do this out of jealousy. Not that any of us have ever experienced something like that before. Maybe they do it out of loyalty to Moses, which at the end of the passage we see he doesn't care too much about. In Mark, we see John upset that non-disciples are doing the work which he perceives to be reserved for disciples. Maybe he's doing this out of pride. He is, after all, technically, I guess one of the few and proud disciples. Or maybe he's doing this because he's motivated by exclusivity. Maybe he thinks that what he has access to in Jesus isn't as widely available as it actually is. Either way, if better together is how it started, who do they think they are is how it's going? And I really felt that. Could be because of my professional context. I've spent most of my career in and around Silicon Valley as an investor, as an operator, as an entrepreneur. I'm humbled to have worked with and for some of the most relevant technology companies in a generation where better together is almost always the plan, but some of us are better than others, is often the lived reality. I know what's possible with partnership and collaboration. And I know what isn't when you put limitations on both. Like that time we didn't hire the 10x engineer because they were, well, self-taught. Or the time we didn't back that world class founder because they had the right skills, but the wrong pedigree. Or that time we let our competitors get ahead because our product team refused to listen to input that was coming from what we thought was the wrong part of the organization. Better together, they say. And it's true, as long as if you're Moses's man, Jesus disciples, or people like me, the definition of together doesn't challenge your preferences. Now maybe this only happens in the workplace. Maybe it also happens in the church where I'd argue that the work is more important and the stakes are much, much higher. Let's assume for a minute that we can all agree that God has a plan for our lives. Let's also assume that we can agree that at least per these verses, God does his work through people irrespective of their roles and their responsibilities. And we have to remember that God working through people doesn't mean that God needs help. After all, the author writes the story, not the characters. I think God uses people because he wants us to be a part of the process. He doesn't want us to miss an opportunity to have our faith strengthened. It makes me think about the wedding in Cana where Jesus performed one of his first miracles. I can't help but think that it's Mary that notices that the wine is running dry, that it's Mary that asks the servants to do whatever Jesus says, perhaps to his chagrin. It's the servants that Jesus asks to fill the cisterns. It's the guests that drink the wine and it's the host that gets the credit. So Jesus saves the day again in theory without ever having to leave his seat and those whom he empowered, those whom he worked through experienced the miracle firsthand, even though so many people didn't even see it. If I could leave you with one thing, one takeaway from this brief sermon, it would be to disabuse yourself of the notion that anyone is ineligible to be used by God. We are better together and together includes all of us. The sooner we learn this, the sooner we'll open our mind to it, the sooner it will bless us. Like have you ever made a decision about whether or not to come to church and pay attention based on who's preaching? I'm sad to say I have. I can't blame the people not here for doing the same thing to be today, if that were the case. Has your worship experience ever been overly informed by who's leading? Or what we're singing? Would you receive prayer from someone on your row with the same posture that you would from one of our pastors? What does Jesus say to John at the end of our passage from Mark when John's upset about the men casting out demons at our disciples? He says, don't stop them. So when you see God using the unexpected to do the impossible, don't stop them. When your instincts are telling you to act out in faith, don't stop them. When your pastors ask you to prepare a message because they're out of town so the church can go on, don't stop them. None of us can do this alone. And if we're truly made in God's image, which we are, we're just as much hands and feet as we are eyes and ears. So when you see that person to your left or to your right, or in front of you or behind you, depending on where you're sitting, and you see them receiving and responding to the Holy Spirit, don't stop them. And may the God of zero waste, the God of better together use all of us to build His church, to build this church on Morgan Street. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. - Thank you for joining today. If this episode has been meaningful to you, would you take a moment to share it with a friend? To support this ministry or learn more about our community, visit us at churchonmorgan.org. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) You