tent making ministry and the future church, 8.11.13

Acts 18:1-11

After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. ²There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, ³and, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers. ⁴Every sabbath he would argue in the synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.

5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. ⁶When they opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’

⁷Then he left the synagogue  and went to the house of a man named Titius  Justus, a worshipper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue. ⁸Crispus, the official of the synagogue, became a believer in the Lord, together with all his household; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul became believers and were baptized. ⁹One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent; ¹⁰for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.’ ¹¹He stayed there for a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.

1 Corinthians 9:3-7, 11-18

3 This is my defense to those who would examine me. ⁴Do we not have the right to our food and drink? ⁵Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? ⁶Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? ⁷Who at any time pays the expenses for doing military service? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not get any of its milk? …¹¹If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? ¹²If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we still more?

Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. ¹³Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? ¹⁴In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

15 But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in my case. Indeed, I would rather die than that—no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting! ¹⁶If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe betide me if I do not proclaim the gospel! ¹⁷For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. ¹⁸What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.

____________________________________________

           

            The first church I served was Beacon Presbyterian Church. Beacon had about 30 members in inner city Philadelphia. I I was an intern there during my second year of seminary, and became their pastor the next year. Throughout the fifteen months I spent as Beacon’s pastor I learned a lot. I preached almost every week and I led a weekly Bible study, but with 10 hours a week around the edges of a full time job, I could never do as much as I wanted to.

When we moved to Rochester, I felt certain that I wanted a full time position so I could do more. When I heard about Laurelton, it sounded like a great fit, except that it was half time instead of full time. So I prayed about it, met with session, and ultimately started here on February 1, 2009.

            What I learned from that whole process, and this is really going to surprise you, is that God knows better than I do. I was sure I wanted a full time position but as it has turned out, not only is this church the right fit for me, being half time has been a blessing in ways I couldn’t predict. God is teaching me a lot about ministry for the twenty-first century, and God is using our work together to remind the church of Paul’s model of tent-making.

            When Paul moved to Corinth he met Aquila and Pricilla and stayed with them because they were all tent-makers. In letter after letter Paul talks about how he works with his hands so he won’t be a burden to the church. He wants to make sure that financially supporting him isn’t a barrier to people hearing the gospel. At the same time, he reminds the church that the people who dedicate their life to serving the gospel should be able to survive by preaching, even though he doesn’t want financial support himself.

            It’s a challenging balance. The church benefits from having people who can spend most of their time working for the church. People who can travel to spread the gospel, people who can dedicate years to studying and teaching, people who can dedicate their full time to building up the church. At the same time, professional church workers are expensive, and we don’t want money to keep people from hearing the gospel or growing in faith. That was a challenge Paul saw then, and it’s still a challenge now.

            Most churches in our denomination are shrinking. Churches that employed two pastors ten years ago now have one, and many churches that have had a full time pastor are finding that harder and harder to maintain. Along the way, many churches cut basically every other kind of spending before even considering letting go of their full time pastor. For those of you who have been here more than 5 years, this is a very familiar story. Many of our neighboring churches are facing the same process now.

            That sounds like a lot of bad news, but ultimately, I don’t think it is. It is going to mean some really hard transitions for a lot of people and churches, but it is an opportunity to reexamine how we do ministry in the church.

            As early as Paul’s time, there was a place for paid people in the church; it was a good investment to allow some people to dedicate themselves fully to ministry in a way they couldn’t do if they were working. There are churches now that need full time pastors and other leaders. The question to answer is what we want to pay for and why. I think there are two main ways we can look at paid ministry in the church: doing ministry for us or doing ministry with us. When a pastor does ministry for the church, that means the church is paying the pastor to do things they know the church should be doing.

            Doing ministry with the church is different, and I think that’s most of the real calling of a pastor. Paul’s line is, “equipping the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” What that means is things like teaching, leading Bible study, having individual conversations, and moderating session meetings. It means working with members of the community to help people find and strengthen their spiritual gifts so they can grow in faith through ministry.

            So, if we think about visiting homebound members of the congregation, doing ministry for you means I go and visit those folks on behalf of the church. Doing ministry with you, equipping you for ministry, means that I work with people who feel called to a ministry of visitation to help you feel comfortable making visits. It means helping you (through the care team) organize a system so people are being visited regularly and talking with you about how visits go and what questions they raise for you.

            In terms of welcoming visitors, doing ministry for you means it is my job to be a friendly, welcoming face and to follow up with visitors to help them connect with the church. Doing ministry with you means helping you develop skills and confidence to welcome people and helping you develop ways to follow up with those visitors.

            There’s a role for both ministry with and for you, but the ministry with you is more important. In a church this size, I should know everyone at least a little and it’s important for me to stay connected with our homebound members, so I need to visit. I also need to welcome visitors. Whether right or wrong, there is something special for many people about meeting the pastor that makes them feel more comfortable and connected.

At the same time, the more important work is equipping you to visit and to welcome. After all, the real point is connecting people to the community of faith, not to me. If I am the only person a homebound member knows, they won’t feel very connected to the church. And if I’m the only person a visitor knows they might like me or not, but they won’t be connected with the congregation as a whole. Pastors come and go, but the community lasts. And feeling connected to a faith community is a blessing that far outweighs anything I can do through personal welcome and charm.

The last century the church absorbed a lot from the culture, some good, some not so good. Like in other professions we have absorbed the idea of paying a specialist to do something for us. We pay a mechanic to work on our car, a doctor to treat physical problems and a school to education our children. Sometimes we see church the same way: we pay a pastor to take care of our spiritual needs.

This creates a cycle where church members feel that many things that are a basic part of being Christian are the responsibility of the pastor because the pastor is an expert. That attitude affects things like prayer and scripture reading as well as visiting, welcoming, teaching and sharing faith. Even though the pastor’s real job is equipping the church for ministry, a lot of the way we have done ministry ended up having the opposite effect, making people feel less empowered to do ministry themselves and more dependant on paid clergy.

All Christians have a calling to live our faith in every part of our lives. My job is not to do that for you, but to help you do it better. In a church our size I think the first limit we reach is the time and energy the members have for ministry. It wouldn’t even make sense to have a full time pastor, because that would mostly increase my ability to doing more ministry for you, and the congregation would actually do less ministry. I think for Laurelton now, half time is about perfect.

            There are other benefits to our part time arrangement too. Of course, the financial piece is an important one. A part time pastor is challenging financially; full time wouldn’t be sustainable.

One of the hardest things for churches and pastors is to get out of the building and connect to people who aren’t in church. I spend half of my working time as well as my social time outside the church, so I automatically make those connections. That not only gives me more opportunities to share my faith, it also keeps me from getting tunnel vision and it keeps me connected to the wider community. Paul doesn’t talk about how the tent-making part of his time provided ministry opportunities, but I’m sure it did. My ambulance work is the same way, as is your teaching or cleaning or childcare.

            It also reminds you and me that we are the same. I am not some ivory tower professor or a spiritual champion. I am a person with faith and questions and other work obligations like you. I think knowing that I have another job makes it easier to remember that.

It also means that we can be more open about money. When we talk about the budget, my salary and benefits are a big piece of the puzzle, which means we need to be able to talk about it. When a pastor is the biggest financial obligation and you know they depend on the church, it is hard to discuss the budget honestly because the pastor’s livelihood is tied up in that. Since half of my income comes from somewhere else, I am less dependant on the church financially, which means we can talk about the whole budget more openly, at least, I hope we can.

The church of the future needs to be more flexible and more nimble than the church of last century. That’s because changing membership patterns make the big budgets and funding structure of the past unsustainable, and also undesirable. For some congregations, that will mean sharing or getting rid of their building to be more flexible. For many having a tent-making pastor or sharing pastoral leadership with another church will be part of the equation. In UPT we’re thinking a lot now about how our churches can share resources so we can all be more efficient and effective in this new century.

Whenever I think or talk about what it’s like to be a tent-making pastor I have to give you credit as a congregation for making this work well. A big part of changing from full time to part time is changing expectations. When Laurelton had a full time pastor, the pastor did more things: both more ministry with and more ministry for the congregation. You have done a great job realizing that I will not be able to do the same things. You will have to do more or let some things go, and you’ve done both. I very rarely hear complaints about what I’m not doing. Your flexibility and openness make Laurelton a really great place to work.

The flip side of that is that I count on you to let me know what I am missing, what you need more of. I make the best decisions I can about how to use my time, but if there are areas you feel need more attention, I’d like to hear that so I can reevaluate. One of the strengths of the Presbyterian tradition is that we lead together. I need you to help me be a good pastor.

The church thrives when we are all living our faith and sharing our gifts at church and in the wider world. We all have a role to play, and my role is helping your grow in faith and ministry. For Laurelton, tent making ministry is a part of our flexibility and life together. As we work together to make our church stronger, more engaged in the community and more faithful to God, we can all use our gifts as we grow in faith.

Thanks be to God.

tent making ministry and the future church, 8.11.13

Acts 18:1-11

After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. ²There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, ³and, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers. ⁴Every sabbath he would argue in the synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.

5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. ⁶When they opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’

⁷Then he left the synagogue  and went to the house of a man named Titius  Justus, a worshipper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue. ⁸Crispus, the official of the synagogue, became a believer in the Lord, together with all his household; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul became believers and were baptized. ⁹One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent; ¹⁰for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.’ ¹¹He stayed there for a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.

1 Corinthians 9:3-7, 11-18

3 This is my defense to those who would examine me. ⁴Do we not have the right to our food and drink? ⁵Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? ⁶Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? ⁷Who at any time pays the expenses for doing military service? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not get any of its milk? …¹¹If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? ¹²If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we still more?

Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. ¹³Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? ¹⁴In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

15 But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in my case. Indeed, I would rather die than that—no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting! ¹⁶If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe betide me if I do not proclaim the gospel! ¹⁷For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. ¹⁸What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.

____________________________________________

           

            The first church I served was Beacon Presbyterian Church. Beacon had about 30 members in inner city Philadelphia. I I was an intern there during my second year of seminary, and became their pastor the next year. Throughout the fifteen months I spent as Beacon’s pastor I learned a lot. I preached almost every week and I led a weekly Bible study, but with 10 hours a week around the edges of a full time job, I could never do as much as I wanted to.

When we moved to Rochester, I felt certain that I wanted a full time position so I could do more. When I heard about Laurelton, it sounded like a great fit, except that it was half time instead of full time. So I prayed about it, met with session, and ultimately started here on February 1, 2009.

            What I learned from that whole process, and this is really going to surprise you, is that God knows better than I do. I was sure I wanted a full time position but as it has turned out, not only is this church the right fit for me, being half time has been a blessing in ways I couldn’t predict. God is teaching me a lot about ministry for the twenty-first century, and God is using our work together to remind the church of Paul’s model of tent-making.

            When Paul moved to Corinth he met Aquila and Pricilla and stayed with them because they were all tent-makers. In letter after letter Paul talks about how he works with his hands so he won’t be a burden to the church. He wants to make sure that financially supporting him isn’t a barrier to people hearing the gospel. At the same time, he reminds the church that the people who dedicate their life to serving the gospel should be able to survive by preaching, even though he doesn’t want financial support himself.

            It’s a challenging balance. The church benefits from having people who can spend most of their time working for the church. People who can travel to spread the gospel, people who can dedicate years to studying and teaching, people who can dedicate their full time to building up the church. At the same time, professional church workers are expensive, and we don’t want money to keep people from hearing the gospel or growing in faith. That was a challenge Paul saw then, and it’s still a challenge now.

            Most churches in our denomination are shrinking. Churches that employed two pastors ten years ago now have one, and many churches that have had a full time pastor are finding that harder and harder to maintain. Along the way, many churches cut basically every other kind of spending before even considering letting go of their full time pastor. For those of you who have been here more than 5 years, this is a very familiar story. Many of our neighboring churches are facing the same process now.

            That sounds like a lot of bad news, but ultimately, I don’t think it is. It is going to mean some really hard transitions for a lot of people and churches, but it is an opportunity to reexamine how we do ministry in the church.

            As early as Paul’s time, there was a place for paid people in the church; it was a good investment to allow some people to dedicate themselves fully to ministry in a way they couldn’t do if they were working. There are churches now that need full time pastors and other leaders. The question to answer is what we want to pay for and why. I think there are two main ways we can look at paid ministry in the church: doing ministry for us or doing ministry with us. When a pastor does ministry for the church, that means the church is paying the pastor to do things they know the church should be doing.

            Doing ministry with the church is different, and I think that’s most of the real calling of a pastor. Paul’s line is, “equipping the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” What that means is things like teaching, leading Bible study, having individual conversations, and moderating session meetings. It means working with members of the community to help people find and strengthen their spiritual gifts so they can grow in faith through ministry.

            So, if we think about visiting homebound members of the congregation, doing ministry for you means I go and visit those folks on behalf of the church. Doing ministry with you, equipping you for ministry, means that I work with people who feel called to a ministry of visitation to help you feel comfortable making visits. It means helping you (through the care team) organize a system so people are being visited regularly and talking with you about how visits go and what questions they raise for you.

            In terms of welcoming visitors, doing ministry for you means it is my job to be a friendly, welcoming face and to follow up with visitors to help them connect with the church. Doing ministry with you means helping you develop skills and confidence to welcome people and helping you develop ways to follow up with those visitors.

            There’s a role for both ministry with and for you, but the ministry with you is more important. In a church this size, I should know everyone at least a little and it’s important for me to stay connected with our homebound members, so I need to visit. I also need to welcome visitors. Whether right or wrong, there is something special for many people about meeting the pastor that makes them feel more comfortable and connected.

At the same time, the more important work is equipping you to visit and to welcome. After all, the real point is connecting people to the community of faith, not to me. If I am the only person a homebound member knows, they won’t feel very connected to the church. And if I’m the only person a visitor knows they might like me or not, but they won’t be connected with the congregation as a whole. Pastors come and go, but the community lasts. And feeling connected to a faith community is a blessing that far outweighs anything I can do through personal welcome and charm.

The last century the church absorbed a lot from the culture, some good, some not so good. Like in other professions we have absorbed the idea of paying a specialist to do something for us. We pay a mechanic to work on our car, a doctor to treat physical problems and a school to education our children. Sometimes we see church the same way: we pay a pastor to take care of our spiritual needs.

This creates a cycle where church members feel that many things that are a basic part of being Christian are the responsibility of the pastor because the pastor is an expert. That attitude affects things like prayer and scripture reading as well as visiting, welcoming, teaching and sharing faith. Even though the pastor’s real job is equipping the church for ministry, a lot of the way we have done ministry ended up having the opposite effect, making people feel less empowered to do ministry themselves and more dependant on paid clergy.

All Christians have a calling to live our faith in every part of our lives. My job is not to do that for you, but to help you do it better. In a church our size I think the first limit we reach is the time and energy the members have for ministry. It wouldn’t even make sense to have a full time pastor, because that would mostly increase my ability to doing more ministry for you, and the congregation would actually do less ministry. I think for Laurelton now, half time is about perfect.

            There are other benefits to our part time arrangement too. Of course, the financial piece is an important one. A part time pastor is challenging financially; full time wouldn’t be sustainable.

One of the hardest things for churches and pastors is to get out of the building and connect to people who aren’t in church. I spend half of my working time as well as my social time outside the church, so I automatically make those connections. That not only gives me more opportunities to share my faith, it also keeps me from getting tunnel vision and it keeps me connected to the wider community. Paul doesn’t talk about how the tent-making part of his time provided ministry opportunities, but I’m sure it did. My ambulance work is the same way, as is your teaching or cleaning or childcare.

            It also reminds you and me that we are the same. I am not some ivory tower professor or a spiritual champion. I am a person with faith and questions and other work obligations like you. I think knowing that I have another job makes it easier to remember that.

It also means that we can be more open about money. When we talk about the budget, my salary and benefits are a big piece of the puzzle, which means we need to be able to talk about it. When a pastor is the biggest financial obligation and you know they depend on the church, it is hard to discuss the budget honestly because the pastor’s livelihood is tied up in that. Since half of my income comes from somewhere else, I am less dependant on the church financially, which means we can talk about the whole budget more openly, at least, I hope we can.

The church of the future needs to be more flexible and more nimble than the church of last century. That’s because changing membership patterns make the big budgets and funding structure of the past unsustainable, and also undesirable. For some congregations, that will mean sharing or getting rid of their building to be more flexible. For many having a tent-making pastor or sharing pastoral leadership with another church will be part of the equation. In UPT we’re thinking a lot now about how our churches can share resources so we can all be more efficient and effective in this new century.

Whenever I think or talk about what it’s like to be a tent-making pastor I have to give you credit as a congregation for making this work well. A big part of changing from full time to part time is changing expectations. When Laurelton had a full time pastor, the pastor did more things: both more ministry with and more ministry for the congregation. You have done a great job realizing that I will not be able to do the same things. You will have to do more or let some things go, and you’ve done both. I very rarely hear complaints about what I’m not doing. Your flexibility and openness make Laurelton a really great place to work.

The flip side of that is that I count on you to let me know what I am missing, what you need more of. I make the best decisions I can about how to use my time, but if there are areas you feel need more attention, I’d like to hear that so I can reevaluate. One of the strengths of the Presbyterian tradition is that we lead together. I need you to help me be a good pastor.

The church thrives when we are all living our faith and sharing our gifts at church and in the wider world. We all have a role to play, and my role is helping your grow in faith and ministry. For Laurelton, tent making ministry is a part of our flexibility and life together. As we work together to make our church stronger, more engaged in the community and more faithful to God, we can all use our gifts as we grow in faith.

Thanks be to God.

putting others first, 4.28.13

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Acts 4:32-37

³²Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. ³³With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

³⁴There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. ³⁵They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. ³⁶There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”). ³⁷He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

------

Generally, I leave it up to personal preference whether you read along or not in the Bible. For today’s reading I’d recommend that you open the Bible and follow along. We’re reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 8 and you’ll find it on page 171 of the New Testament in the pew Bible. What I want to point out in this passage is that this letter is really a letter. It is part of an active correspondence between Paul and members of the church in Corinth, a community Paul founded and lived in for a year and a half. As you look at the passage you’ll notice that there are several places where there are quotations; the first instance is in the first line: “Now concerning food sacrificed to idols, we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’”

            Scholars believe that these quotes were from a letter Paul received from Christians in Corinth. They either made statements or asked questions that Paul is directly responding to. We do this a lot when we’re writing emails to each other. We’ll often copy and paste quotes from the person we’re replying to, and Paul does the same thing here.

           

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. ²Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; ³but anyone who loves God is known by him.

⁴Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” ⁵Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords— ⁶yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

⁷It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. ⁸“Food will not bring us close to God.” We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.

⁹But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. ¹⁰For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? ¹¹So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. ¹²But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. ¹³Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

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            It’s easy to feel like the stories in the Bible are so old, that things were so different then that the message doesn’t apply now. We feel like they were closer to Jesus because they lived a long time ago. Something about the distance in time makes it seem like they achieved feats of spiritual power we can’t even dream of today.

In reality, though, people of that time were a lot like us. They worked hard to support their families. They worried about their kids and their finances. They thought about how to succeed in their business or how to impress their supervisor. They sometimes argued with their neighbors or disagreed with their spouse. Like now, being a Christian was part of a person’s story; they also had other roles in life that sometimes supported and other times challenged their identity as a Christian.

Paul is getting at that conflict in the passage we just read from his letter to the Corinthians. In the first century, the culture overall was pagan. Judaism was a well recognized, minority faith, but most people, including many who weren’t especially religious, were pagan. Christians made a choice to be different.

The culture as a whole was religious, and religious in a way Christians rejected, so it was a challenge to be a Christian and a member of society at the same time. The particular issue Paul is talking about in this passage is meat sacrificed to idols. This passage is part of a longer section about meat and idolatry that takes up the next three chapters. We only have time for this part t today, but Paul’s argument will make more sense if you read from the beginning of chapter 8 through the first verse in chapter 11 when you get home.

This is a challenging concept for us now since pagan worship isn’t an issue anymore. Then, however, most people were pagan and much of the social life of the city was built around pagan festivals and pagan temples. Even more than now, life was social, and a person’s opportunities had a lot to do with whom he or she knew and how they cultivated those relationships. For members of the church, especially those in business, pagan celebrations would have been tempting networking and social opportunities, even though they didn’t worship those gods anymore.

The folks writing to Paul argue that since they know that the pagan gods aren’t really gods, they can go to their temples without betraying their faith. In chapter 10, Paul goes on to argue that this isn’t really true because God demands our full allegiance, so any kind of worship of other gods is off limits. Here his argument is about how going to the temple might hurt the faith of others in the community, so we’ll keep our attention on that part.

The Corinthian church was a mixed congregation. While most Christians in Corinth and elsewhere were poor, a few were wealthy and some were middle and working class. Some of the divisions about religious questions had a lot to do with economic situation or education level. Those with more education seemed to think of themselves as above pagan superstition and looked down on others who didn’t know as much. For philosophically minded Corinthians, knowledge meant freedom from superstition and from being enslaved to the physical world.

Paul certainly valued education too, but knowledge wasn’t the most important thing for him. As he puts it at the beginning of the passage, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” We aren’t saved by what we know, but by God’s love in Jesus Christ. And we don’t grow in faith by showing off our knowledge to others, but by loving other people.

Faith isn’t about getting the right answer to a theological or academic question. When we’re making a decision about how to act, the most important question is what is most loving and most beneficial to the community.

The question at stake here isn’t just whether or not it will compromise my faith to go to a pagan temple, the more important question is whether it could lead someone else in the community down the wrong path. For us pagan temples aren’t a temptation, but the principle is still important. I see this at work everywhere. In fact, this section of First Corinthians is a huge part of how I think about being a Christian. So let’s think about some modern examples.

Our culture is so much about our rights, but Paul calls us to look instead at how we can help others. We think that we have a right to speak our mind, and that’s true. But we also need to think about how what we want to say might impact others. That’s worth thinking about in terms of avoiding hurting someone else’s feelings as well as hurting someone else’s faith.

It’s important to bring faith outside the walls of the church, including places like the Boulevard. At the same time, people are watching. While I don’t have a problem with alcohol, many people do, so it’s important for me to watch my behavior if I’m leading a church discussion at the Boulevard so I don’t trip someone else up.

It’s the same thing with going to church. Believe it or not, your friends and coworkers are looking at you to see what it means to be a Christian. Maybe you are spiritually strong enough that you don’t need to be in church regularly. But if your friends see you putting other things ahead of church on your priorities list, that’s going to make them think church isn’t important and that they don’t need to make time for it.

It’s important in church too. Maybe a certain style of music or prayer or sermon isn’t your favorite. While I do want to know about that so I can plan worship that works for everyone over the course of the year, we have to make sure everyone is fed spiritually. And we need to put folks struggling the most first in that respect. Decision making in the church isn’t about earning a bigger vote by working hard; it’s about working together to build up the community

That means church is the opposite of a meritocracy where the people with the most skills and strength dominate. We’re supposed to be an upside down economy where we think most about what other people need, especially the newest or weakest members of the faith, and then later on about what we want. Ann Philbrick, who did our leadership training for New Beginnings put it well. She said, “Mature believers are willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of the gospel.” That means if something we’re doing here is reaching new people for Christ, but it’s not your favorite, we need your support anyway.

That doesn’t mean grinding yourself into the ground with church stuff you don’t enjoy. Joy is a huge part of following God’s calling in our life and God has given you your gifts and interests for a reason. But it does mean thinking about what other people need as well as what we want.

A lot of people think about religion as a bunch of rules they have to follow, and that’s not right either. Paul gives us a better way forward. It’s not about following an old set of rules or doing what other people say we should do, but it’s also not just doing what we want either. Being a Christian means following Jesus Christ and being part of a community that is bound together in love. And that means other people are just as important as we are. So when we think about our choices, the question isn’t so much “What do we have to do?” or, “What do I want to do?” Instead, maybe the best question is, “How can I love my neighbor with this choice?”

That’s not the same as, “What does my neighbor want me to do?” If we think about the example of going to the pagan temple, maybe our neighbor wants us to go to the temple so they can feel alright about doing it too. The point isn’t making everyone happy in the short term. It’s not about the lowest common denominator. It’s about contributing to an atmosphere where everyone can be their best, where everyone can grow in faith, where it’s easier to do the right thing.

That means pushing ourselves not to make the easier choice but the choice that reflects our faith most clearly. Most of all, it means putting our community before ourselves. That’s what we see in the brief snapshot from Acts that Sally read a few minutes ago. Luke tells us that the believers were so committed to their community that they sold their possessions so everyone would have enough.

We know that this wasn’t the case for everyone in the church in the first century. Actually, in the very next chapter of Acts Peter tells members of the community that they have a right to their property, but they have to be honest. The point of sharing this vision from Acts isn’t so make us feel guilty about the fact that we don’t share anything now. It’s not about guilt, after all; it’s all about love.

Instead my point is to hold up a vision of a community where people love each other deeply. What would it be like to belong to a community like that? How wonderful would it be to care about each other enough to stop worrying about ourselves? How amazing would it be to think about what would bless other people most? What kind of community would encourage you to be your best? What would a church look like that invited your deepest commitment and encouraged the same from everyone else?

How can we build a church where we think about other’s needs ahead of our desires, not because we feel guilty, but because we love each other? Picture that dream church of commitment and joy and love. Allow that dream to grow in your heart and let’s start building the dream together.

Thanks be to God.