Reaching Church Goals

The last time you searched for a rector, you prayed for someone who would provide leadership in three areas: stewardship, evangelism and youth ministry. You called me to be your rector because you believed I was an answer to your prayer.

You offered that prayer to God over ten years ago, and that prayer has guided the stewardship of my time and talent since I accepted your call. After ten years, your vestry and I thought it was time to find out what we're praying for now. What kind of leadership do we need now? What are our greatest needs as a parish? If God granted us six favors, what would we ask for?

That's why we conducted a professionally-designed survey earlier this year. We were able to conduct this survey free of charge, because the company needed to test the survey on several congregations before using it more broadly.

Ernie Bennett, the Bishop's assistant, was the person who first told us about the survey. One of Ernie's jobs is to assist congregations in their search for ordained leaders, and this survey can and will be used for that purpose. But it's also a great tool for parishes like ours where the rector has served for a number of years and the rector and vestry need and want to know what it on the hearts and minds of the congregation. Ernie will be here this Wednesday evening to briefly share, from his perspective, some of the highlights of our survey. You are welcome and encouraged to attend by signing up letting Lisa know when you pick up your pledge card outside the church after the service.

Members of the Vestry will also lead some small group discussions on the six most important prayers that you have identified for us as a congregation.

If you'll take out the salmon-colored sheet from your bulletin, let's see what those six prayers are:

Under each prayer, you will note the members of the Vestry who will be leading that particular discussion group. You will also note that God has already answered our prayers in many ways. We may not even realize just how faithful God has been to us in responding to our deepest needs. We may simply have failed to take advantage of what God has already offered us. Some of the things God has provided us may not be as helpful to us as we thought they would be when we first asked for them. We may decide to let them go and to ask for something else instead. Or we may decide to give one of God's answers to our prayers another chance, recognizing that it is our lack of discipline in appropriating what God is offering us that is the challenge rather than there being anything wrong or ineffective with what he has given us.

Wednesday night will give us a chance to suggest programs and activities that may have outlived their blessing and to suggest other ways in which God might answer our prayers in our current circumstances. Your idea, your suggestion, your contribution may be God's answer to one of our prayers. The Vestry and I pray that you will come and help us prepare a budget that reflects your prayers for our common life, even as we invite you to pledge your financial support to the people and programs that will be an answer to our prayers.

I pray that as you look over your salmon sheet, you will recognize just how richly God has blessed us, just how willing he has been to answer our prayers, and in that gratitude, you will pledge yourself again to him and to the work he is doing in our midst, no less than Ruth pledged herself to her mother-in-law and to all that went with that pledge: her property, her relatives, her nation, her beliefs and her God, demonstrating her faith in God's ability to answer her prayers and longings infinitely better than her own family, nation and religion, a faith that would issue in a grandson, David, who would embody that same faith and loyalty, receiving the gift from God of a royal grant forever.

When you are reminded of how faithful God has been to us, I pray that you will be like the Samaritan in today's gospel who alone, of the ten lepers who prayed for healing, returned to Jesus to return thanks. I pray that we will return each and every week to give thanks for the many prayers, the many individual prayers that we offer day in and day out to God, for courage or strength or patience or forgiveness or healing, that he readily answers as we go about our business, as well as the corporate prayers from our survey, that we will take the time each week to come here and to return thanks to the one from whom all blessings flow, from the one who is the source of every good and perfect gift.

Our pledge is one of the best ways we have of getting closer to God and staying close to God, so that we don't have to waste any time or effort looking for him when we need him, or hoping for a chance encounter with Jesus when he passes by and gets within shouting distance, like the ten lepers. When we decide to intentionally get closer to God, God promises to get closer to us, even if we're a foreigner to God, like Ruth or the Samaritan. In fact, God seems to take delight in welcoming those who have no other claim on him but the pledge of their loyalty and their faith in his desire to have mercy on them.

May our pledges be just that, signs of our trust in the God who will answer the deepest prayers of our hearts, even past number six. AMEN.