Parting Words
Keep me safe, O God,
for I have come to you for refuge.
I said to the Lord, “You are my
Master!
Every good thing I have comes from you.”
The godly people in the land
are my true heroes!
I take pleasure in them!
Troubles multiply for those who
chase after other gods.
I will not take part in their sacrifices of
blood
or even speak the names of their gods.
Lord, you alone are my
inheritance, my cup of blessing.
You guard all that is mine.
The land you have given me is a
pleasant land.
What a wonderful inheritance!
I will bless the Lord who guides
me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
I know the Lord is always with
me.
I will not be shaken, for he is right
beside me.
No wonder my heart is glad, and
I rejoice.
My body rests in safety.
For you will not leave my soul
among the dead
or allow your holy one to rot in the grave.
You will show me the way of
life,
granting me the joy of your presence
and the pleasures of living with you forever.
Psalm 16
I wanted Psalm 16 read today because it reflects the posture and confidence of my heart this morning. You, as the psalm noted, are my true heroes in whom I delight and I am confident that wherever God leads Diane and me, he will go before us and be with us. I know, too, that Psalm 16 will be one of the primary passages that I will share with people in my future ministry with hospice care.
But this is it – my last Sunday and sermon with you. I will miss my weekly preparation in the Word and delivering what I believe the Holy Spirit would have me say to you each week. As for this message, I have been praying and thinking about what I would share with you since the day I accepted my new position as a hospice chaplain.
Parting words are bittersweet. After today, the nature of my relationship with you radically changes. That’s a loss – something to grieve for both you and us. But this message also gives me the opportunity to share reflections of thanksgiving of what God has done among us and the challenge that lies before you. I have been eagerly anticipating this moment for quite some time.
I have chosen the opening verses of Paul’s epistle to the Philippians for my text today. Of the thirteen letters that the Apostle Paul wrote, Philippians is the most positive and encouraging. They weren’t a perfect church – no such congregation exists – but they had always supported Paul and since he was writing from prison in Rome, he was especially grateful to God for them. While I’m not in chains, I share the same sort of affection for you.
Text: Philippians 1:1-11 (p. 1814)
This letter is from Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus.
I am writing to all of God’s holy people in Philippi who belong to Christ Jesus, including the church leaders and deacons.
May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.
Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God. Whenever I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy, for you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.
So it is right that I should feel as I do about all of you, for you have a special place in my heart. You share with me the special favor of God, both in my imprisonment and in defending and confirming the truth of the Good News. God knows how much I love you and long for you with the tender compassion of Christ Jesus.
I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God.
Thanksgiving
Philippians is said to be “the Epistle of Joy.” It is simply saturated with a jubilant spirit. Read it just about anywhere and joy will come oozing forth. The Apostle and Silas had come to the Roman colony of Philippi about ten years earlier. While there, they broke some social rules by preaching to women and delivering one demon-possessed girl from her captivity. As you might recall from the story in Acts 16, it was in Philippi that Paul and Silas were thrown into the dungeon where they proceeded to loudly sing songs and hymns of praise to God. The inmates and jailer didn’t have much time to ponder their perceived madness when a massive earthquake shook the walls of the jail so that all the prisoners’ chains were released. The stunned jailor and his family became some of the first members of the new church in Philippi. The new Christians at Philippi had always loved and supported Paul. Even when he left to do ministry in another city, they sent along financial support for him just as they had done now that he was sitting in chains in Rome. And Paul returned their affection, writing that they had “a special place in my heart.” In these opening words of his letter to them, he seeks to encourage them in whatever circumstances they might ever find themselves in. With the love and affection that I feel for you and my desire for you to continue in your journey with Jesus, I can think of no better context with which to deliver my final message to you.
Probably most of you are not aware that when I first came to you, I was still battling situational depression. I won’t rehearse what happened to us prior to our arrival – I have spoken of that before – but I was pretty beat-up when I arrived in Galesburg. Your unending love and affection for Diane and me went a long way in bringing about my healing. For that, I am very grateful to God for bringing us to you and to you for being such a loving congregation. Thank you!
One of the most significant things we did together was to welcome the Knox Prairie Community Kitchen into our building. It was a natural fit for us as you had welcomed another food-for-disadvantaged-children enterprise into the building just a few months before I came. But it wasn’t easy. You graciously approved over $20,000 in kitchen improvements and had to wrestle through whether or not you were going to allow them here since they were prohibited from offering a prayer before serving their meal. But after a time of processing through that question, we opened our doors. During the time that they have been here, it has been my joy to serve on their board and to work with them for nearly every meal they have served. In the beginning, many of you enthusiastically came and ate the meal with the other community folks. It will be quite some time until KPCK will be able to serve a meal in the building, but it is my strong contention that they remain a rather untapped potential of effective witness into the community for you. When they open back up, I hope that you will intentionally avail yourselves of the outreach opportunity that KPCK presents.
I’m grateful, too, that you walked with me through the first eighteen months of challenge that I had with my associate. You allowed me to try and shape an “out-of-the-box” job description for him that would better suit his gifts and our needs. But when that effort eventually failed, the leadership participated in a very difficult but grace-filled separation from him. It was at that moment, I believe, that you readily embraced me as your pastor and things began to change in a very positive direction.
One of the greatest joys of my whole ministry career has been the opportunity to mentor other people in preparation for ministry. And the time I have been able to spend with both Pastors Dorothy and Eric have been the most rewarding of all. I can’t say enough good about them and the potential ministry that lies before them. It is true that the interim months that lie ahead of you are filled with challenge. But they are also filled with great opportunities as well. You are in very good hands with Dorothy and Eric. A lot will be put on their plates. Be sensitive to the time demands and stress that this interim period will bring to them. Support them with your prayers and volunteering for service. I have often seen the interim period between pastors to be a season of great growth as people step forward to serve in a dynamic season of change and opportunity. While I will necessarily be hands off, I look forward to hearing very good things coming out of First Baptist Galesburg in the coming months.
When I told a friend that I was retiring from local church pastoring and pivoting to become a hospice chaplain, he replied, “Well, at least now you won’t have to worry about the weekly preparation and delivery of a sermon!” Actually, I have loved that “burden!” You have granted me – indeed, expected me – to prepare and deliver a sermon most every Sunday and I have loved devoting myself to study and prayer in bringing God’s word to you each week. It is definitely one of the things that I will miss. And, for the most part, you have readily embraced the messages that I have been privileged to bring to you.
[This wasn't delivered in the live sermon but I provide it in the written version. We began with a journey through the Book of Ephesians and explored the incredible and divine nature of the church as God’s enterprise. From there, we explored the attributes of God which are vitally important to understand because, as A.W. Tozer wrote, what first comes to our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Most of us have been torn by the political division in our culture and it remains difficult to know how to navigate the challenges of our cultural divide from a Christian perspective. Our series in I Peter reminded us that our allegiance is first to Christ and his Kingdom while everything else is secondary. We did a very important series on Abiding in Christ which birthed our vision statement, “Connected to Jesus to connect others to him.” There is a whole page on our website dedicated to unpacking what it means to abide in Christ using the awkward but memorable acrostic of ASLO. I encourage you to visit that page from time to time. From there, we took eighteen months to explore the life and ministry of Jesus through the Gospel of Mark. It never got old and stale. Each week brought a refreshing insight into the man and ministry of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Finally, realizing that we need to mobilize into active and empowered witness in the world around us, we began a new series in Acts this past fall. My understanding is that you will be continuing in that series, which I believe is very good for you.]
Finally, next to the priority of bringing the Word of God to you each week, it has been my passion to nurture and coach spiritual leadership for this congregation. The quality of your leaders will determine the direction and future of your church. That’s why I have invested so much focus and passion in developing spiritual leaders for you. And we have made significant progress. When I first arrived, over four years ago, we didn’t pray together a lot in our board meetings. We discussed the issues at hand but we never really shared what we were sensing and feeling on the inside – a key factor in discerning God’s direction among Christian leaders. We even had board members who rarely attended church and yet were wielding influence in our meetings.
Slowly and deliberately, I led the boards through the following understanding of the nature of the church and Christian leadership through our study in Ephesians:
What is the mission of God? (Ephesians 1:9-10)
To bring all things in heaven and earth together under Christ’s rule and reign. (The Kingdom of God)
What is our part in the mission of God? (Ephesians 2:10)
To “do the good works that he planned for us long ago.” We are “agents of his Kingdom.”
What does that look like specifically at FBC Galesburg?
Certainly, to make disciples of the people we pursue and that God puts into our lives. Increasingly, it appears that we are reaching more and more people who are on the “margins of society.”
What kind of leaders do we need to be in order to “do the
works that God planned for us long ago?”
Leaders who understand that we have been invited into God’s mission in order to fulfill the work he has planned for us to do. Of first importance, FBC’s leaders need to be attuned to God’s direction for the church. They must be spiritually alive and growing and committed to fulfilling God’s mission through our church.
In harmony with the realities described above and from a list of qualities determined by Trustee and Ministry Board Members in the Fall of 2018, we believe the following qualities should be descriptive of every board member serving First Baptist Church:
1. A
vital and growing relationship with Christ,
2. Regular
attendance at worship,
3. Gives
regularly and proportionately, and
4. Full engagement in honest dialogue and prayer in our meetings.
I have belabored this point about leadership because I believe it is absolutely essential for the health and mission of First Baptist moving forward. I recommended to the boards in November that these essential qualities of leadership be formalized by adopting them into your by-laws. I am restating that recommendation to you as a congregation because I believe it is vitally important. We have been moving in that direction and I believe it is very important that you do not give up spiritual ground that you have already gained.
Two Ways Forward
In these days, in American churches our size, there is often a lot of anxiety as to whether or not the church will be able to sustain itself. First Baptist is blessed with substantial financial resources so that you will be able to sustain the organization for a number of years to come. But that’s not what is important to God. What is essential isn’t whether or not you keep your doors open but whether or not you will continue to fulfill God’s mission in Galesburg. I cannot guarantee that your doors will remain open in perpetuity. I wish I could. No one can. But I can point you to a path of faithfulness, fruitfulness, and joy – no matter what circumstances you may encounter. As always, it is a matter of faith and obedience.
I do not need to tell you, but the world is not your friend. For most of America’s 400-year history, Christianity has held pride of place. It was the values of our Judeo-Christian heritage that formed the moral virtue that has kept America strong through her founding, her wars, and all her challenges. Sadly, that is no longer the case. We are becoming a godless nation and I fear for our national future. But that is not to say the church is in jeopardy. Not at all. It is often the case that when the church is pressed, as we are beginning to experience, that she is at her best. We have a mission to fulfill in this rapidly changing culture and your future can be very thrilling. Indeed, your best days, in God’s eyes, may very well be ahead of you. But in order to fulfill God’s purpose in you, you must choose what path you will take.
You can pursue a “socio-religious enterprise.” There are many good things about a socio-religious enterprise (social group organized around religious teaching and practices). You have a moral, religious, and traditional framework with which to live your life. You can do some good for others. You have a social community to serve you. This is the default mode for most churches like ours. And it will last quite a while because of the generosity of legacy gifts. But, in the end, the church will likely close its doors because it is not fulfilling God’s mission. There will be ongoing discouragement because the congregation will continue to decline. A socio-religious enterprise is good, but it falls short of God’s intention for his people. The Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day were mostly concerned about maintaining and sustaining their “enterprise.”
The other pathway that you might
choose is to pursue the Kingdom of God as we have made several steps in that
direction.
·
We have taught and continually reinforced the
practice of abiding in Christ. (Remember
the awkward acrostic: ASLO? You can refresh
your memory with the explanation found on our website.) Abiding in Christ is the foundational impetus
behind our vision statement: “Connected to Jesus to connect others to him.”
·
Prayer has become much more important to us in
our Sunday worship and prayer meetings.
Moving forward, friends, I don’t know if there would be anything more
important than your prayer life together.
I know it’s tough during winter, but our prayer meetings before the service
and on Sunday nights should receive more support from you. Imagine what would happen to this church if
the LOFT was filled with people every time we gathered for prayer. That would be a manifestation of the Kingdom
of God coming among you.
· Insist upon and cultivate spiritual leadership on your boards, as we have already discussed.
But pursuing the Kingdom of God – Jesus’ rule in everything – cannot be contained in this building. If Jesus is truly your King, then you will be obedient in bringing the gospel to the people in your life and in this community. It’s not just you, however. When you have surrendered to God as King, you will be filled and empowered by the Spirit as his witnesses. You will be fulfilling his purpose for you. Your continued journey through the Book of Acts will help you.
I cannot guarantee that FBC will not eventually close her doors as she pursues the Kingdom of God. But I do know that you will surely bear real and lasting fruit if you will pursue this path. Jesus promised it! And, along the way, you will have joy as you grow in faith and fruitfulness. But pursuing the Kingdom of God comes with a cost – everything. That’s what it means. God is King and in control and you are not. But what an exciting way to live your life together! This will take real intention, courage, faith, and determination to go against the cultural current and the church’s natural default.
FBC has made baby-steps in this direction. Pastor Dan planted the seeds; they have germinated under my watch. They must be watered and cultivated or the Kingdom of God among you will whither and die, putting you back on the “Socio-Religious Enterprise” pathway. As Joshua charged God’s people, I would echo, “Choose you, this day, what path you will follow!” I earnestly pray and dare to expect that you will choose the Kingdom of God.
God’s Continued Work (vs. 6)
If you will pursue the Kingdom, I am confident that what Paul told the Philippians will be true of you as well: “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”
Prayer
I will knock, over and over
again
Until the doors unlock and
the light streams in
I will seek the Kingdom and
your righteousness
Where mercy falls and the
poor are blessed
Let your Kingdom come; let
your will be done
And the dead are raised; I
will sing your praise
The oppressed go free and the
blind will see
As your heaven invades the earth
As your heaven invades the earth
John Piippo
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