“Paul on the Church that Bears Fruit” I Cor. 1  11/2/08 33^rd anniversary

            Today Lake Murray Presbyterian celebrates 1/3 of a century of life.  We have come a long way from the small group that began here 33 years ago.  We have grown from 75 members to over 1,030.  If you were a charter member  would you please stand?  I can still remember the presbytery meeting at the old Congaree Presbytery where they talked about forming a church out here.   I was still in high school in Columbia.  They said that Chapin had so many Lutheran churches out here that there was no room for a Presbyterian Church.   Some Christians did not see the need to tell others about Christ, or invite others to a new church home.  Some churches did not want to start our church because they felt like it would diminish their own congregation.  In the end, many just didn’t want to spend the energy, time, and money it takes to start a new congregation.   But there were a few people, and I believe the Lord raised these few up and gave them a heart to see a new congregation in an area that had no mainline Presbyterian churches in it.  Because of their faithfulness and small beginnings in the mid 1970s, we have over our 33 years had 1,976 members join our congregation, and have had 360 baptisms.  It is impossible to count how many have come to Sunday School, or Vacation Bible School, or Bible study over the years but it has been many.  More than even all that- how many found the Lord through our church.   How many prayers were answered because the church was there to teach people to look to God?  How many were strengthened in their darkest moments because they had heard about God from this church? 
            The story has not stopped.  Today I want to take a minute to celebrate what the Lord has done.  I want to make sure that we give Him credit and glory.  We are not a perfect church- we’re not in heaven yet.  But we are God’s church here on highway 76 at the border of Richland and Lexington counties.   We are the largest rural Presbyterian Church in South Carolina. 
            In our passage in I Corinthians, Paul talks about the church.  The word church is “ecclesia” from which we get our word “ecclesiastical” from.  It literally means  “called out ones.”   He reminds the people in that church that they are to be different.  The word “holy” means different.  When I was a teenager I hated being thought of as different.  I wanted to be the same as everyone else.  I think most teens do.  But Paul was saying Christians are called out- holy other.  We are not to be like the darkness around us- rather we are to be distinguishable lights!  They are to look at us and see that there is a difference.  We are the ones who are called to resist temptation.  To resist worldly fears and worldly illusions. 
            The second thing Paul writes to this young, fledgling church is that they are to remember who God is.  He describes God to them as the God who gives them every gift they need to be the church.  In other words if people say, “we just don’t have enough…(fill in the blank- people, money, talent, fun, help, strength)  then they are wrong!  God has given Lake Murray Presbyterian enough too.  Sometimes we have to do some detective work to find it.  Sometimes we have to go down deep into the mines to find what we need, but there is enough for us.  So remember who God is.  A church that tries to function without God is a powerless civic club.  Without God we are just another means to help the needy and another opinion on ethics.  But with God the church is the most important group in the world, and the only real hope.
            The third thing he said to them was that they agree with each other.  Now why would he say a thing like that?  Because not everyone agreed with each other!  There were quarrels and divisions even then.  We live in divisive times.   It is a natural thing to pick up sides.  Paul is asking them to agree with each other.  Now agree about what?  He wasn’t saying that the church all had to be the same about everything.  It is not that the church had to all agree who to vote on for  president.  It was not that the church had to agree about the local political issues.  Paul recognized there were differences in the church.  He said the church had a variety of gifts, and implied the church had a variety of viewpoints.  But the church could agree on one thing.  We can agree on the unity of the church through baptism- that we are a family.  We have been baptized and adopted into one big family.  There is diversity here, but there is also a oneness brought about by the Holy Spirit.  Christ is not divided.  We don’t follow people or teachers as much as we follow Christ himself.  God took people who were poor and people who were rich.  God took people who were brilliant, and people who were not so smart and brought them together.  It is not that we boast of what God has given us, we boast in the God that has called us to leave our warm beds on a cold Sunday morning and sing to Him, pray to Him, gather before Him, and worship Him!  The Corinthian church was a church that had arguments and disagreements, even divisions.  But God used this church still for His glory.  And God will use us for his glory too. 
            For the stewardship dinner last Wednesday night I made a little power point presentation of the past year’s events.   I don’t think it is a bad thing, every now and then, to think together about what we do as a church today, by looking at the events since last homecoming. .  There are the things that everyone knows about- worship (every week), Sunday School (every week).  We hosted a toy drive for Justin Pepper and had I believe over 500 toys donated to Thornwell- and our youth met with their youth and delivered them with a meal and a smile.  We had a great music program- the adult choir, handbell choir, and children’s choir all have grown a bit this year.  This year we called a new associate pastor, Christopher Grove.  Some of the youth events we have taken part in this year- presbytery lock-in at Dutch Square Mall, Shrove Tuesday pancakes, the youth went skiing during our all-church retreat in Montreat this year, and they helped us square dance.  There was a skate night, a CROP Walk for the hungry, a Nami Walk for Mental Illness, a cardboard village for the homeless, a helping the folk at Open Arms Nursing Home, a joint kickball game, we honored our graduating seniors and had  youth Sunday, an all church game day, Montreat Youth Conference, Awanita, Migrant Missions Dinner, Good Works Blitz where we helped move furniture to the thrift store for an elderly person, and we fixed up a trailer for a 90 year old widow.  The Boy Scouts sent groups all over the country and beyond- to places like Philmont and the Caribbean, to Washington DC.  There was a Learning on Lent program for all ages.  The children had a Parents’ Night Out, Advent Workshop, an egg hunt, Rainforest Adventure Vacation Bible School.  One of the lasting things we did this year was start a columbarium with a Celebration Garden.   It is the nicest I’ve ever seen.  We always have a good group take part in Relay for Life to stop cancer.  We had a great Spiritual Enrichment; we sent a great group to Mississippi for Katrina relief.   This is the year the tree fell in front of the church office, and the gym flooded.  It was the year that two huge air condition units failed too.  Since November we have had 33 people join our church since last November, and about 15 baptisms.  We had a wonderful mission fund raiser.  We have supported in missions many different causes- including Migrant missions, hurricane relief, young people in full time Christian service from our church including Trey Nichols- Beth and Steve Moody, Thornwell Home for children, Presbyterian College, Presbyterian Home/communities, Montreat Conference Center, SC Home in Montreat, TADD Home for the developmentally disabled, Goodworks, The HUB, Christgate Women’s shelter, We Care Food Pantry.
            What would have happened if the presbytery and some of the larger churches decided to not start a church in Chapin?  Nothing.  Absolutely none of what I said above.
            I want to use this occasion to say, that we don’t need to keep this good news to ourselves.  We don’t need to horde the good news, or to say we are the only ones who have it.  Rather, we need to be busting out at the seams with the good news!  We need to be telling the people in these new subdivisions about Jesus, and how Jesus made us who were no people into a family.  We need to tell people in communities near here where there is no PCUSA church that there is a God who loves them.  We need to point the way to grace and forgiveness.  We need to point out the way to help, and we need to have the eyes of Christ to see that there are thousands of people around us who need Him. 
            In my newsletter article I started to point this out.  I don’t think most of us want to be a mega-church with 10,000 members.  I think we could.  I also don’t think God wants us to put a sign on the door that says, “we already have enough people here- go somewhere else.”  The church has to be always inviting, because we are called to care for people, and make room for the ones the Holy Spirit is calling to worship. 
            There is a sense in which we may think our resources, energy and time are not enough for starting a new church.  But when do we have enough?  Our partner church in Monclova Mexico started two new churches when they had less than 150 members.  Now one is bigger than they are today.  I remember when I was pastor of a 50 member church.  I said, “If I ever get to two hundred members, I’ll take some of our members and start a new church.”  Then when I pastored a 200 member church I said, “If I ever have a church of 500 members I’ll take some of those members and start a new church.” Then when I pastured a church of 500 members I said, “If I ever pastor a church of 1,000 members I’ll start a new church.”  We could say here- “Let’s wait until we’re 2,000 members.”  But God has given us enough now to multiply ourselves.  All the things we like about our church could be multiplied in another one.  There may be a tendency among some to think that if we start a new church it will diminish our own church.  But usually it enhances the mother church with energy and an outward purpose and focus, and often the mother church grows.  Frank Harrington was pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian in Atlanta.  When he went to that church they had 3,000 members and he said he wanted to start a new church at least every three years.  They did- and there are many PCUSA churches in Atlanta now and many have been reached for Christ because of this visition.  You would think this may have shrunk his church- but his church grew from 3,000 to over 11,000 members.  I do not want to see us grow that much. But I would like to see us reach people for Jesus Christ.  Starting a new church (as people did with us 33 years ago) is the best way to reach people for Christ.  I hope you will share in my vision to continue to bear fruit and pass the torch.  Amen.