The Church of the Living: A Sermon for 22 Pentecost, Proper 27

In our gospel lesson today, some Sadducees are doing to Jesus exactly what some of the Pharisees would do – they tried to trap him by proposing a sort of “lose-lose” scenario for him to answer in front of a crowd. But Jesus always seemed able to respond to these antagonistic encounters with wisdom and grace, and today’s story is no exception.

Jesus’ response to the Sadducees is profound, and one that we would do well to heed to. Jesus reminded them that God “is God not of the dead, but of the living.” In other words, our mutual relationship with God isn’t some sort of life insurance policy for when we die. God is the God of the living; God is for the here and now; God’s love, mercy, grace, and justice are for today. That being the case, how does that inform the decisions that we make? How does that change how we go about our lives in the present moment?

Many of you know that this past week, our Children & Youth Ministry Renovation Team co-hosted a Christian Formation Summit with our consultants from Ministry Architects. We had 22 participants on Wednesday evening, and it was a very productive, enlightening, and hopeful workshop that will help chart the course for our Christian Formation calendar, cycle, and milestones for children and youth.

One belief, perspective, or world view that comes up quite often throughout the Christian Church when discussing the importance of children and youth ministry is that we should invest in these ministries because the church is dying, and these children and youth are our only hope for the future survival of the Church. It is often said – with very good intentions – that “our children and youth are the Church of the future.” But I think that what Jesus said to the Sadducees in our lesson today is important for us to consider in this context. God “is God not of the dead, but of the living.” God is for the here and now. With that in mind, I think that it is critical for us to recognize that our children and youth are the Church in the here and now, not just in the future. Investing in children’s and youth ministry shouldn’t be seen a sort of life insurance policy or trust fund for the future survival of a dying Church. How short-sighted is that? Don’t we want our children and youth to thrive now so that we as a church can thrive now? I want to enjoy the fruits of the investing in children and youth in this life right now.

I am reading a book called “Growing Young: 6 Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church.” It was published by the Fuller Youth Institute from Fuller Theological Seminary in California. The three authors spent a great deal of time doing research and gathering data from a wide variety of churches all over the country. They looked at Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and non-Denominational churches that were large and small, rural, urban, and suburban, old, new, and everything in between. One thing that they discovered is that the Churches that were thriving and healthy were those that looked at children’s and youth ministry as a priority for the here and now as well as for the future. And another thing that they noticed is that investment in children’s and youth ministry not only helped those ministries to thrive, but it actually empowered the adult ministries to thrive as well. In other words, in healthy, thriving churches, these different age-groups of ministry aren’t siloed – they are shared. The health of one area of ministry helps the health of another area, and vice-versa.

When I speak of investing in children’s and youth ministry, I am speaking of financial investment as well as volunteering. The research team for Growing Young pointed out that thriving churches require an investment of both money and people. Those that had a large financial investment only – and did not supplement it with a broad, committed adult volunteer base – did not succeed. And the same goes for those churches that tried to build a healthy children’s and youth program on volunteers alone.

The well-known proverb that says that you can see what one values the most by looking at their checkbook and their calendar rings true for churches as well as individuals. In the history of our church, financially speaking, Christ the King’s annual operating budget has not and currently does not reflect a priority for children and youth ministry. We have done well in the area of volunteers for the most part, but we have a lot of catching up to do financially.

In 2017, we received a $100,000 gift from a young couple in our church because they wanted to see this trend change. This gift enabled us to hire the consultants from Ministry Architects to do an assessment of our programs, and then to coach and consult us for 18 months. They came last Spring to do a Children’s and Youth Visioning Summit and then last week to do a Christian Formation Summit. Our Renovation Team has had monthly video conference calls with one of the consultants, and I have a monthly call with the lead consultant. Beth – our children’s minister – also has had regular coaching calls with one of our consultants. It has been a very productive, educational 18 months for all of us on the team.

We are now approaching the end of our contract with Ministry Architects, and we are awaiting a recommendation from them as to how we should proceed with children’s and youth ministry at Christ the King. We still have money left from the initial $100,000 gift that can be applied to future staffing and programmatic needs for our children and youth ministries. But that gift obviously will run its course, and it will be then be up to the rest of us to prayerfully discern how we might keep the momentum going in this critically important area of ministry.

I feel like we are approaching an exciting crossroads here at Christ the King. And I truly mean that when I say that I think it is exciting. We are approaching a moment and place in time when we can take the next step in the life of our parish. We have always done a faithful job of taking faithful risks in order to grow and thrive – whether it was starting a bible study in South Walton which would grow to become Christ the King in the Double Wide; or the leap of faith we took when we built the building we are in now; or the leap of faith we took when we started our parish day school. All of these milestones involved prayerful discernment combined with generous financial seed money. As we approach this next milestone, I am keenly aware of the potential of a repeated pattern in our wonderful history as a parish. We have received generous seed money to facilitate and empower our prayerful discernment. For the past 18 months, our Children’s and Youth Ministry Renovation Team has been hard at work making sure that any investment that our parish makes will be a wise one, and that whatever we choose to build will be done on a solid, prayerful, informed foundation.

Jesus calls us to be the Church of the here and now, as well as the church of the future. We currently have 71 children and youth in our parish. They are the church here and now. We are the church here and now. Let us respond to Jesus’ call to follow the God of the living, so that we – young and old - might faithfully and boldly Be the Church of the living.