90 Years Old, Time to Examine Ourselves
2 Corinthians 13:1-10
October 19, 2003
1This is the third time I am coming to you. “Any charge must be sustained by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” 2I warned those who sinned previously and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again, I will not be lenient—3since you desire proof that Christ is speaking in me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful in you. 4For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him,£ but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.
5Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test! 6I hope you will find out that we have not failed. 7But we pray to God that you may not do anything wrong—not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we may seem to have failed. 8For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. 9For we rejoice when we are weak and you are strong. This is what we pray for, that you may become perfect. 10So I write these things while I am away from you, so that when I come, I may not have to be severe in using the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down.
.
The
Ararat Armenian Congregational Church, our church, celebrates the 90th
Anniversary of its existence today.
But
why? A Ninetieth Anniversary for a
church? We’ve heard of 50th,
75th, and Centennial Anniversary but why Ninetieth?
I’ve heard this question asked once or twice over the last several
months. And I’ve heard some
answers too:
How
about “It’s a great opportunity for a fundraiser!
Charge folks a few dollars per person, and ask them also for memorial
donations. It’s a good
opportunity to gather some funds.”
Or
“Its
just enough to create an excuse to throw a party… You know, get everyone
together for a good meal, dress up nice, look at some old pictures and have a
few laughs…”
Or
Perhaps
we need an excuse like a ten year anniversary to just gather our memories and
put them in order. To update our
history, to fix up all our old photo albums and maybe even get rid of some of
those old boxes of photos up in the attics of our homes.
We can put them up on the walls of the church.
Well
even if it does seem a bit contrived to some folks, maybe a ninetieth
anniversary is a good opportunity for a fundraiser, maybe it will be fun to go
out together all dressed up and ready for a party, and it certainly is important
to compile and update our history from time to time.
But an occasion like a ninetieth anniversary is wasted and ultimately
short-lived in terms of its impact if these are the only reasons for marking it.
In
his heyday, the Apostle Paul was a world traveler, and it wasn’t always that
way for the man. After running
headlong into a vision of Jesus while riding down the road one day, he went from
being a sort of religious enforcer and a leader in the intellectual and cultural
thought police of his society, to an itinerant, wandering, opportunistic and
driven entrepreneur and evangelist spreading what was for him a life changing
and transformative piece of good news. That
Jesus Christ was the Son of God and had a specific purpose for him and all whom
he came into contact with, and that purpose of God’s was forgiving people of
their sins and granting them loving salvation and new life.
In
three trips in a matter of several years, he traversed a huge amount of
territory to carry out this mission. In
a time when most people traveled exclusively on foot, and a fraction of the
population traveled on donkey or by boat, the Apostle Paul traveled somewhere in
the neighborhood of eight to ten thousand miles to plant churches and visit the
people he had met along the way!
He
went from Antioch to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Cyprus, from Cyprus to
Thessalonica, from Thessalonica to Ephesus, from Ephesus all the way to Rome,
where he was ultimately killed for his church building ways by a government
threatened and offended by his successes.
In
the Christian churches that he visited, can you imagine what a celebrity he must
have become? A charismatic guy who
after being in a town for only a few months, created enough of a stir to gather
and create an entire community of people devoted not to him, but to this new and
developing faith in a man who he believed was Son of God.
Can you imagine the stir he must have caused whenever he announced that
he was going to stop by one of these new communities, or whenever a letter was
received from him from many hundreds of miles away.
Along
the way on those journeys he stopped a few times in the city of Corinth.
As we also know, he wrote a pair of letters to the folks in Corinth as
well, one of them being the one from which we read just this morning.
He
says to his friends in Corinth, I’m coming to you for a third time…
Here
he comes, the world traveler, the celebrity, the one about whom so many
Christians in so many cities and towns around the Roman Empire were talking and
who had taught so many people about the newly revealed Son of God.
Can you imagine what a momentous occasion it must have been?
What
do you think they were feeling? Do
you think they were happy? Do think
they were excited, a little nervous or intimidated?
Listen
again to the Apostle’s words…
“2I warned those who sinned previously and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again, I will not be lenient”
But
these don’t sound like the words of an old friend returning for a nice
homecoming visit, do they? They
sound like fighting words don’t they. Listen
some more:
“10So I write these things while I am away from you, so that when I come, I may not have to be severe in using the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down.”
You
see the Apostle Paul is coming to the people of Corinth this third time to
settle a few disputes with them. Several
things have happened to create a rift in the relationship between the Apostle
and the church. First, he’s heard
that some folks have come to the church from other territories and have spoken
out against the authority Paul has to speak and teach about Christ.
Second, he’s heard reports from others who have visited the church that
folks in Corinth have been at odds with each other, caught up in slander,
gossip, arrogance, and bursts of anger toward each other among other things, as
well as caught in what Paul calls “impurity, sexual sin and debauchery.”
Paul intends to come into the community and set them straight.
He’s going to arrive and preach with authority that nobody will doubt
and he will give those who have been in sin the opportunity to repent.
He’s
written these particular words that we read from chapter 13 to warn them and to
encourage them to prepare themselves for the momentous occasion of his visit.
He
tells the people of the Corinthian church to “5Examine
yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves.”
Now
you may ask, what in the world does this have to do with our 90th
anniversary?
I’ve
said this morning that a 90th anniversary is not a time to focus only
on fundraising, exclusively on fellowship and entirely on history.
Each of these are pieces of what we must do today as we gather for our 90th
anniversary.
Our
90th anniversary should be a time of self-examination and
self-testing for us even as it was for the people of Corinth.
Now I’m not in any way accusing anyone of the rumors and accusations
that were floating around that Corinthian church, of immorality or community
splitting, obnoxious, arrogance or of speaking on behalf of Christ without the
proper authority to do so. I’m
only suggesting that our 90th anniversary is an opportunity to step
back for a moment and examine ourselves. To
think, out loud if possible and with each other as well, about how things are
going and how we are doing. The
Apostle Paul, is not the founder of this community, and he is not coming back to
see how we are doing and to set us straight.
However,
can you imagine what it might be like if Rev. Kapriel Bedrosian, the founding
pastor of this church, or Melkon Garabedian, or Hagop Kachadorian or Setrag
Vartanian or any other of the few dozen founders of this congregation were to
return for a visit and check out our progress?
What do you think they would feel about what they found?
What would they think about the impact this congregation has made in the
lives of the people in this community? What
do you think they would say about how we treat each other?
What do you think they would have to say about what we’ve become?
Its
likely that none of us knew these original founders.
It has been 90 years after all… Some
of you might have heard, through family legacies and histories passed down
through the generations of what kind of people they were.
Ultimately however, we probably can’t say much about what they would
think about what we’ve become.
OK,
then how about if you think back to your earliest memories of this church.
Think of the folks whom you respected most and were respected most by the
others of this community. Imagine
that they were coming back today, like the Apostle Paul returning to Corinth.
Would they be coming with warnings on their lips or proud, encouraging,
words of gladness and celebration?
Now
this may work for some of you, but for many of us, once again, our memories don’t
go back that far either. For myself
and perhaps for some of the newest members of this church, we don’t remember
too far back past the people gathered in this room. For us, we can’t really look back at what the evaluation of
any ancestors of ours would or might be. All
we can do is look to the covenant that we feel we have become a partner in and
evaluate that. How are we doing?
What are we doing to stay true to that covenant or relationship that
first drew us to this church?
For
such as us, probably for all of us as well, the Mission Statement that this
congregation got together and hammered out not too long ago would help us in the
evaluation process of how we are doing. It
is after all the nutshell, outline and summary in les than 50 words that
describes our hopes for what we are about.
If
you don’t remember what that mission is, here it is:
We are a congregational church, historically Armenian, gathered to worship our Lord Jesus Christ and to teach our children, ourselves and our community our Christian faith. We enthusiastically try to create caring and closeness with our Lord and with one another.
Ultimately,
beyond fundraising, fellowship and history keeping, and regardless of how we do
it – by conjuring up images of founders and past church leaders or our very
current and relevant mission statement, a 90th anniversary is an
opportunity to compare what we’ve been about or said we want to be about to
what we seem to actually be doing.
Now
that you have images of a possible standard for what we should be about, as you
think about the legacy passed on by the founders of this church or the mission
statement of the church, what’s your sense of how we measure up?
What is your experience of what this church has been about since you’ve
been involved? I can’t speak for
you, but I can give you my impressions of what I have observed.
As
I “examined ourselves”, us as a community, I’m first struck by one word:
willingness. This congregation has
been willing, sometimes eager, often so flexible as we have tried new ideas and
restored some old ones, to taste test or see how the water is, even if things
haven’t always been comfortable. And
hard work doesn’t phase us either.
Just
since I have been here, we’ve made attempts at new music and worship through a
new hymnal, a new organ, bringing a piano into worship, making a commitment
toward inviting talented folks to join us in our worship time to lead us in new
modes of praising God. Sometimes
our attempts haven’t been all that successful.
Sometimes they have been subtle and not all that radical or
revolutionary, but the congregation has been open to try and even to accept new
ways.
In
the last year or two, we’ve also tried new things with our young people.
Hosting the Junior’s Conference of the Armenian Evangelical Youth
Fellowship last Spring, sending young people to conferences held in other
churches, creating and sustaining a viable ministry to our teenagers beyond the
traditional Sunday morning programs, all have been attempted and with varying
degrees of success, carried off. The
conference was spectacular, we hosted and fed over 75 young people, accommodated
them for worship and learning and play as they created a community of Christ
among themselves, with the particular language, style and feel that youth need
to come alive. It was not an easy
task, but we pulled it off with great success.
Attending
other conferences has come slowly, we’re afraid to send our kids out beyond
our line of sight and are committed to so many other programs that its difficult
to find the time for them to participate.
Our
own youth group program seems to have taken a positive step this year with young
people taking new responsibilities on themselves and families making a
commitment to coming out again on Sunday nights for a fun learning environment
and community building time.
There
have been other brand new efforts too. The
church web site and the use of e-mail in our committees and connections even as
the culture around us begins to.
We’ve
instituted the coffee time after church each Sunday and this has helped us in
our fellowship with each other and in meeting and welcoming newcomers to our
church family.
The
church auction and the actions of an ad hoc, as needed fundraising committee
last year was a new idea that met with considerable success.
Even
the rose on the communion table for young families with newborns are brand new
ideas at outreach that are met with acceptance.
And
several old ideas that have been resurrected, like the deacons serving a dinner
at the race track. Or the Sunday
night youth group meetings that I’ve mentioned, are returns to old methods
that are being accepted and carried out.
Hard
work has also characterized the many other fundraisers, dinners, Yard sales and
most recently the Shish Kabob dinner as the congregation has pulled together to
make our efforts a great success.
Willingness:
to work hard and to try new things. These
are amazing gifts for a congregation to have, no doubt.
However, on the occasion of our 90th anniversary, the question
that remains in all of this is still, how are we doing in relation to where we’ve
said we want to be, or in relation to why this congregation was founded, or in
relation to where we’ve believed God is calling us to be?
Let’s
return for a moment to our Mission Statement.
We are a congregational church, historically Armenian, gathered to worship our Lord Jesus Christ and to teach our children, ourselves and our community our Christian faith. We enthusiastically try to create caring and closeness with our Lord and with one another.
What
are the verbs in that statement? What
are the action points? There are
three of them.
|
1.
Worship |
3. Create caring and
closeness |
|
2.
Teach |
|
And
how are these activities to be focussed?
Worshipping
is to be done together and to be focused at God.
Teaching
is to be focused on our children, ourselves and our community.
Creating
caring and closeness is to be done with each other and in our relationships with
God.
If
you think about the intersections of who we are and what we’ve been doing, our
legacy of willingness if you will, and what we’ve said in our mission
statement that we’ve wanted to do, perhaps there are a few points we can make.
1.
We’ve spent a good deal of focus and time on our
worship recently, this is right in line with our Mission Statement and needs to
be continued.
2.
We’re spending some considerable effort teaching
our young people and giving them opportunities to created the caring and
closeness we speak about in our mission statement.
However
there are certainly directions in which we can make more headway, particularly
in fulfilling those statements that say, “teach ourselves and our community
our Christian faith,” and “create caring and
closeness with each other and our Lord”
For instance,
1.
We haven’t focused much recently on increasing
the caring and closeness between the adult and older generations in our
congregation. The coffee time after
church is a first step in that direction but perhaps we need to do more for one
another.
2.
We have only begun small steps at real outreach to
the community around us, teaching folks about the Love of Christ and our faith.
Perhaps we’ve got to find other ways of reaching out, beyond the
donations the Deacons make annually and the work we do through the AMAA.
Things more along the lines of the deacons’ meal at the race track.
3.
Beyond our Lenten and Advent bible study series, we
have not done much for creating teaching and learning opportunities for each
other for the growth of our faith and spirituality.
Although not recently I’ve had conversations with various folks about
the possibility of hosting a family conference at our church, creating
opportunities not only for our youth but for folks of all ages to hear good
speakers and to discuss and growth together in our understanding of our own
faith. Such endeavors could also
help us draw new people to our congregation and increase the size and strength
of our membership.
These
are only a few possibilities and some limited starting points for how we must be
thinking at our 90th anniversary.
Today
after church, we move on to our banquet, a fundraiser, an opportunity to gather
together for a fun event and for remembering our history.
Next week we have our annual congregational meeting, and as a result, we
have our annual reports in our hands and so we have an opportunity to review a
full year of ministry. I hope that
between the two events, you too may be reviewing in your mind who we are and
where we are as a church.
“Examine
yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves.” says
the Apostle Paul. Encourage each
other in what we are doing well and decide for yourselves where we can move in
different directions, do new things and do away with others.
It
is a glorious legacy that we have inherited at this end of the 90 years of the
Ararat Armenian Congregational Church. I
feel honored and excited with what we can continue to do for God under its
banner.
Amen.