Words of Welcome

Acts 1:6-11 Every episode of  Star Trek: The Original Series  – begins with Captain Kirk narrating the mission statement of the starship Enterprise: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. When  Star Trek: The Next Generation  appeared twenty years later, the producers made a few changes to the statement. Instead of five years, the new crew was embarking on a  “continuing mission,” and they replaced the words “no man” with “no one.” But, they still had a mission – to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and boldly go to new places. Although we’re not going into space, the church does have a “continuing mission” to “boldly go where no one has gone before.”  The words I want to emphasize here are “continuing” and “boldly.”  Our mission is rooted in a mission that was established by God lo

Revelation 2:1-7 We are inheritors of a tradition that has been passed down to us from generation to generation.  Over time this tradition has been adapted and amended.  Some of these adaptations have helped preserve the core message, while others have obscured it.  That message is rooted in the covenant God made with Abraham and Sarah that through their descendants the nations would be blessed. The message contained n this covenant was renewed in the ministry of Jesus and then passed on to us. Whenever this calling gets obscured, God finds a way to call us back to this founding vision.  In our reading from Revelation, the angel of God invites the Ephesian church to “remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Rev. 2:5).  This call to repentance is a call to reset our lives to the original vision.   To use a computer analogy, whenever the system gets overly corrupted, it’s time to reset the system by restoring the system to its

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 Before leaving on my sabbatical, I preached a sermon from Genesis 12 entitled “Reclaiming a Founding Vision.”   In  Genesis 12  God covenants with Abraham and Sarah, promising to bless the nations through their descendants. That is, I believe, our founding vision.  In Christ we become children of Abraham so that we might be a blessing to the nations.   Sometimes we get so caught up in the business of religion that we forget our calling.  Fortunately, God remains faithful to this covenant, and has a way of rekindling that vision  in our hearts.  The title of that sermon, “Reclaiming a Founding Vision” served as theme of my sabbatical.  Since pastors are tempted to get focused on the mechanics of the institution rather than the vision that guides us a congregation, the sabbatical provided me the opportunity to remember and reclaim that vision for my life, so that I can lead this congregation in fulfilling our calling to be a community of blessing to the nati