In preparation for my sermon this weekend, I had some extra material that “didn’t make the cut.” So rather than leaving it all on the editor’s floor (my own), I thought I would include them here. Nothing earth shattering, but I hope you’ll ponder the following reflections on the church and our mission.
It was 1904 when William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. Young William was an heir to the Borden Dairy estate, and was already a millionaire. To celebrate his graduation from high school, his parents gave him a trip that took him around the world. As William traveled throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, he became painfully aware of the suffering of others. Borden became so emotionally burdened that he wrote to his parents saying, “I’m going to give my life to prepare for the mission field.” At this defining moment in this young man’s life, he wrote two words in the back of his Bible: “No reserves.” Borden lived up to those two words as he held nothing back. While attending college at Yale, Borden became a leader in the Christian community. During his first semester in college, Borden started a small prayer group that grew into a movement on campus, drawing 150 freshmen together for Bible study and prayer every week. By the time Bill Borden was a senior, 1,000 of Yale’s then 1300 students were meeting in such groups on campus. Borden strategically made certain that students heard the good news of Christ while on campus, and he set an example of servant-leadership by reaching out to impoverished people living in New Haven. By graduation from college, the wealthy Borden committed himself to serving among the Muslim living in China. Graduation from Yale was another defining moment in his life, and once again, he wrote two words in the back of his Bible. Alongside the words “no reserves,” Borden wrote, “No retreats.” Borden lived that sentiment. Refusing a number of lucrative job offers, he went to graduate school, and after graduating from seminary, Borden went to Egypt to learn Arabic, as he intended to work among the Muslim Kansu people of China. While in Egypt, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead. Prior to dying, William Borden had written two more words in his Bible. Alongside the words, “No reserves,” and “No retreats,” Borden wrote: “No regrets.”
A church without mission is like demanding allegiance and weekly attendance and tithing without giving you a cause to work toward. It’s like holding endless Bible study groups or hearing countless sermons for he purpose of learning information that will rarely be utilized. Weekly church services only are not enough. It’s like sitting at the apostles’ feet and drinking in their teaching in Jerusalem in the first century. It serves a useful purpose, but the ultimate purpose of the Jerusalem church was to go and make disciples of all nations. There’s no question that the apostles’ teaching was essential, but not as an end in itself. Their teaching was meant to mobilize ordinary believers to go into the world, baptizing new disciples and teaching them all that Christ commanded them.
When we capture this essence, we are a people in actual pursuit of a common vision of what could be. We become a movement with the experience of togetherness when we actually engage in a grand sense of purpose–the purposes of God.
“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried” (G. K. Chesterton).
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French pilot and writer, wrote, “If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs and organize the work; teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean” (Citadelle: The Wisdom of the Sands, 54).
When we become obsessed with the Jesus of the Gospels, we cannot but yearn for the high seas.
Our job, then, is not to make things happen, but to cooperate with God, who is already making them happen.
Making decisions about when to meet, what songs to sing, what to preach, and how to have small groups and leadership structures are all important. But first, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery says, “To build a ship, you must first create a hunger for the sea.” That hunger comes from our familiarity with Jesus. His Spirit will force us out onto the rising tide, and it’s then, and only then, that we will need to develop the most appropriate structures for worship, small groups and leadership.
