sermons
We Are Reservoir
Where We Come From and Where We Are Going
Steve Watson
Sep 22, 2024
On July 21st this year, the First Baptist Church of Mt. Vernon, Illinois, held its last service. Random, but I know about this because its pastor Ryan Burge is a researcher and writer that I follow, so I read his article called, “My Church is Closing, and I don’t know what comes next – for me or America.”
It ends:
“I walked out those doors into the blinding heat of a summer day in southern Illinois and stepped into a future where I don’t know where I will go to church next Sunday, or even if I want to go. Frankly, I don’t know if my own faith will survive, and I’m not sure if the church in America will be there for the next generation like it was for me. And I’m terrified because for the first time in my spiritual life, I don’t know what’s next.”
Something like 5,000 churches closed last year in America. That’s 5,000 centers of community life, 5,000 groups of people eating together and praying together that aren’t any more. And 5,000 pastors, and tens of thousands more people not knowing if the church in America will be there for the next generation like it was for them, and a little terrified in their spiritual lives, not knowing what’s next.
Friends, there are a lot of reasons that churches are closing, and some of them are right good reasons. I’m a pretty big critic of most of what passes for Christian faith and practice in America. And Reservoir, we’re a reformist church. We’re trying to do some new things in new ways in how we do church too.
So I have mixed feelings about this decline of churchgoing and decline of organized religion in America. Sometimes I’m like: good riddance! Let it die. Let’s make room for something new.
But sometimes it makes me sad. Sometimes even terrified. Because churches at our best are powerful communities. And without churches at our best, there are some really good things that would happen a lot less if at all for the generations that are coming after us.
Friends, don’t get me wrong, our church, Reservoir, is not in distress or on the edge of closing or anything like that. Between our in person and online programming, we’re reaching about the same number of people every Sunday we did before the pandemic. That’s unusual. And over the course of a year, we’re probably touching more people than we did then. And as a pastor, I’m lucky to see and hear a lot of the stories of people who have more friends or more faith or more hope in their lives because we are all here. And that’s so good.
Still, none of this happens on auto-pilot. Which is why every fall we return to this theme: We Are Reservoir. We try to remember why we’re here and that we are the church. We ask again what takes from all of us to make this the church we want it to be, and that our community needs us to be.
And the way I want to help us to do that today is to think about where we come from and where we are going.
I’ve got the tiniest of Bible texts to read, just one verse.
John 13:3 (Common English Bible)
Jesus knew the Father had given everything into his hands and that he had come from God and was returning to God.
Jesus is having a bad day. The biggest of storms is coming in his life. His opponents are closing in. He’s close to arrest, death by crucifixion. It’s a moment where the only natural thing is to be sad, terrified.
But John gives us this window into Jesus’ inner life and says, Jesus thought about where he came from and where he’s going.
It says he came from God. That’s a big place. His hometown, his parents, the embarrassing nose-picking moments of his childhood, Jesus believes his whole life comes from God, and that he has particular gifts to offer and purposes to fulfill still. And for him, white worst, most violent day isn’t the end either. Jesus knows that even death can’t end him. He’s going back to God too.
I think this powerful awareness of where he came from and where he was going made Jesus the most secure person who ever lived, maybe the most present person who ever lived. Always now, here. And security and presence – those are some mighty superpowers.
They help Jesus in this moment not be mostly sad or terrified, but alive, curious, full of potential energy. Here I am, in this moment, God’s given me everything I need. What will I do?
And per unusual, he goes and does something really beautiful, really powerful. Story for another day.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in my own life.
- Where do I come from?
- And where am I going?
- And how can I lean into more beauty and more power each day I’ve got?
I’m 50 years old, somewhere in the middle of my life, I hope. Our kids are all adults now, they’re coming and going. I’ve got a lot of tread on the tires of my body. But I’ve got a lot of experience too and God willing, a lot of years and a lot of adventures ahead. And I find mid-life can be an interesting time – because you can collapse into anxiety – being kind of sad and terrified – or you can embrace the adventure of it all. And wonder what this next great season’s going to be about.
I saw this little reel on Instagram that was encouraging us to ask, what would make the eight year old version and the 80 year old version of you proud of yourself today? What would make an eight-year old proud of you today? Friends, my life is so small and flawed in many ways, but I tell you, eight year old me was entering a sad and lonely season of life, and eight year old me is pretty damn proud of who I am now. And that gives me encouragement. That helps me feel good about my life.
And then I wonder what would make 80-year old me proud of me today? And sometimes that helps me make better choices than I usually do. I mean, sometimes it doesn’t. We’re all human. But sometimes it does.
Where do you come from? And where are you going?
I think these are helpful questions for our church. Your executive pastor Trecia Reavis, has been encouraging me and her to do some strategic analysis of our church, and she’s got me asking where we come from, and where are we going? We’re just starting to invite other people into this conversation. And I’m finding this helpful to ground and focus our church too.
When it comes to thinking about where we come from, the late poet Maya Angelou has this great line. She said:
“I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.”
Maya Angelou
If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.
We spent a lot of time last year celebrating where Reservoir comes from. We recorded 25 great stories from our 25 years as a church about what this community has meant to so many of us.
We talked about how our church is still up to the same best things we cared about when we began in the 1990’s but also how we’re different now too.
Earlier this month, our staff team went back to last year a little again, as we took some time to reflect on these same questions, for us and for the church. Where do we come from, and where are we going?
I had us write some poetry. When I was a writing teacher with teenagers, I often started the school year with this “where I come from” poetry exercise. I’d ask kids to generate a list of places and smells and sounds and objects from their childhood and make a list poem out of that. It was a way of starting the year of English class seeing that we could write something really cool and interesting, kind of fast.
It was also a way of showing the students that what matters in the class isn’t just the literature or the lessons that I would bring to the table. What matters first actually is them – the lives and history, the beautiful, important selves that they bring to the table.
So our team had some fun writing our own awesome “where we come from” poems, and then we generated a list of words and memories of where Reservoir comes from too. We didn’t get time to turn those into a poem so I thought I’d do it quick for you. Here’s what I’ve got.
We come from flower children and intellectuals,
Inter-Varsity and Vineyard.
We come from prophecy and prayer and Holy Spirit miracles.
We made baseball diamonds and soccer fields,
Knit quilts, stacked chairs and more chairs,
Daring to be different, saying “if it works for you.”
We come from “spiritual, practical, fun”
“Pastoring secular America,”
Empowering impossibly great lives,
And trying fast, failing fast, always trying again so fast….
We come from the time
Of absurdly generous, hospitable, later burned-out leaders.
From so much welcome, too much hierarchy.
Big dreams and big mistakes
From seeking and Jesus and endless innovation,
From the hopes of dead founders and
The hands of the long gone dreamers,
From prayers that have filled this reservoir
With hope and faith and love.
For the old-timers among us, maybe some nuggets and some memories.
Friends, you’re in a church that has always swung big.
The founders of this church had big hopes to be the kind of church that could welcome people into this faith for the first time and welcome back thousands of people who’d left the faith as well. And with the help of God and friends, we’ve done that, we keep doing that.
In the first five or six years, this church grew faster, more explosively than almost any church in the history of New England. Five, six years into its life, hundreds of 20 and 30-somethings were raising millions of dollars to buy this city block we’re in today.
We stand on the shoulders of leaders before us with extraordinary love and energy. I was reminiscing with one of you about one of our former members who was learning to make quilts. But she didn’t just make a few quilts for her mom or her kids, she gathered dozens of people to make quilts, and they made quilts that knit the word beloved into them, and those quilts found their way to dozens of people unhoused on the streets and in recovery homes around the world to warm their bodies and speak the truth of their beloved beauty to their souls. One of those quilts hangs on the wall in the sanctuary.
There are dozens and dozens of stories like this.
Now there were some things in the first 25 years of this church we weren’t proud of, that we had to learn from, mistakes made, people hurt, courses that needed to be corrected, and we talk about those sometimes too. But Reservoir, I also want us as a church to know that we come from big hearts and big dreams that have always yearned for as many people as possible to get deep tastes and beautiful pictures of the love of God, the gift of community, and the joy of living.
So what does that mean for where we’re going?
Well, none of us know of course, but will you dream with me for just a minute?
One of my mentors in the Way of Jesus, the indigenous teacher Randy Woodley, reminds us of the wisdom of how his people think about time, looking back and forward across the generations.
He often quotes from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy, a foundation for American democracy, where it was said:
“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”
(The Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy)
What might the world need from us in seven generations, what might God want from this church in seven generations? These questions focus me differently.
It’s not easy to think seven generations forward if you’re not used to it, though, so in starting some strategic analysis, Trecia and I have been wondering what does God want, what does our community need from us in 25 more years, in one generation. In 2050, what will our generation’s children and grandchildren need from Reservoir Church?
I wonder what comes to mind for you.
What will America need from its churches in 2050?
What will the two generations that follow us – our children and our grandchildren – need from churches like Reservoir?
When I ask this question, I think: my God, I’m grateful for the We Are Reservoir sermons that Ivy and Lydia gave the past couple of weeks.
Ivy talked about community, how loneliness and polarization destroy people and communities, but how connection saves us. And I was like yes, yes, yes.
And I think in Ivy’s sermon, she gave vision for the two types of connection that save us, what Robert Putnam, our great local scholar of community in public life, calls bonding social capital and bridging social capital.
Bonding social capital is when we do life together. These are the people who do chores together, the people who call each other when they have great news or bad news to share. They are our ride or die partners in the big road trip of our lives.
Bonding social capital is good. We need more of this. We have epidemics of loneliness and addiction and social alienation in our times that would all be better with deeper, warmer bonding social capital. So hug your friends or spouse or kid or mom or whoever you’ve got. And if you don’t have people like this in your life, you need at least one or two. We all do. And Reservoir is an awesome place to find a little more of this. Start with a beloved table, or a community group.
No bonding social capital and we die of loneliness. But only bonding social capital, and we die of polarization and prejudice and powerlessness. See, Robert Putnam tells us about another form of community called bridging social capital.
Bridging social capital is connections of trust between people who are different from one another, sometimes really different. It’s when people who wouldn’t naturally be family and friends discover some shared interests, some reasons to relate to another and do something together. And friends, as much as America is sick from a lack of bonding social capital, we are even sicker from a lack of bridging social capital.
Where in 25 years will Americans of different races, different sexual orientations, people of different class and convictions, be getting to know and appreciate and respect each other more?
Where will people of very different ages and hobbies and day to day concerns be finding common hope, common loves, common care for one another to make for a healthier society, for the possibility of our big dreams we share with Jesus – words like commonwealth, and family of God, and beloved community?
If this doesn’t happen in diverse churches like Reservoir, there aren’t enough other spaces where it can happen. So friends, I think the next generation needs us to be an even stronger, deeper, more diverse community of connection, love, and respect.
And then Lydia’s sermon too, where she talked about our commitment to everyone accessing the good news of Jesus – everyone, however they receive it.
And again, I think yes, yes, yes! Thousands of churches like that one in Mt. Vernon, Illinois are closing for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons churches are closing is that Christianity’s message hasn’t been good news. It’s been about conformity and control, and no healthy person is looking to be controlled or told how they need to conform to be acceptable to God or the church – however well meaning those efforts at command and control may or may not be.
And churches are closing too because they haven’t been for everyone. They’ve been for the men leaders only, or they’ve only been for the old or the straight people or the republicans or the liberals or the well-behaved and well-spoken.
And so, if churches like ours are going to offer a gift to the next generation, let alone the next seven generations, we’ve got to keep discovering how the good news of Jesus is really good news to us and our generation. How this faith helps us love and be loved, how it helps us be people who find resilience and flourish in hard times, how it produces more joy and justice around us.
Because those are things we could use a lot more of.
We’re going to keep asking what this church needs to be over the next 25 years friends, and how we can get there, but this is my best sense of it today. Powerful bonding and bridging community that heals saves lives and communities, and good news of Jesus that is really good news, for everyone.
This is why we are, Reservoir.
And if we can be here, secure, present, knowing in this moment, God has given us everything that we need, I wonder:
- what will we do?
- What’s possible together?
At minimum, friends, I hope you’ll take a couple steps with me this fall. Your life, your story, your engagement is needed to make our dreams come true? Can you find one or two more simple ways to get involved?
Volunteer once a month if you’re not. Become an official member. Start giving some money. Join a community group. And especially, make a new friend here. Tell yourself, I’d love to make a new friend at church this year, and try to do that.
And then keep exploring with us the way of Jesus, the good news of Jesus, in stressful, chaotic times. We’ll be doing that on Sundays right on through Thanksgiving.
Next Sunday, my friend and a friend of ours, the Rev. Dr. David Gushee will be with us. Here on Sunday, he’ll preach on the good news of the moral teachings of Jesus, and on Saturday night, in the chapel, he’ll be here for a public talk on defending democracy from its Christian enemies. I hope you’ll join us for both of those. David’s books will be on sale at a discount too. I think he’ll give us a lot to talk about.
Friends, if you have any part in this church, you come from big, bold, beautiful dreams of all that we can experience and do together. And with your help, and the help of God and friends, we’ve got some amazing adventures and stories to come. I can’t wait to see just what those will be. Please be part of it.
Join in, if you will, to pray.
God give you the curiosity to wonder what would make the eight-year old version of you proud of you. And God give you the courage to ask what would make the 80-year old or even older version of you proud of you as well.
God gift you with security and presence, to be now, here, for this day that God has made.
And God give you, and me, and all of us under the sound of my voice the gift of being part of beautiful and powerful stories together, transmitting deep community and the good news of Jesus to the generation to come.