This past month at council, we watched a TED talk called, “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek. He talked about how all great organizations and leaders talk not about what they do but why they do what they do.
The council then set to work digging deeply into why we do what we do. So often we get hung up on the what. What do we do? We worship, we have a choir, we’ve host VBS, we have Sunday school, we serve breakfast at TACO once a month, we share our space with AA and Alanon and NA.
But why? Why do you come to worship? Why do you give of yourself to be a part of this community that we call the body of Christ? Why do you wake up and come to church on Sunday when you could just as easily keep sleeping or go for a walk by the beautiful ocean? I encourage you to spend some time on this question and if you’re so inclined, send me or our council president, Pat Hendrickson, your answers.
Because at the time that I am writing this, we are days away from Vacation Bible School and I’ve been in communication with the Sunday School teachers about Summer Sunday School, I wanted to talk about why children’s ministry?
Why? Why put together a vacation bible school? Why ask adults to leave worship to teach Sunday school? Why pay a Sunday School assistant to be in Sunday school every week?
Because the Word of God has the power to heal, redeem, create and transform. We put together VBS and Sunday School and our quarterly Godly Play events because these are places where children encounter the Word of God and we believe that this Word, these stories told by loving adults in a caring community, have the power to make a huge difference in their lives now and into the future.
Think for a moment about the way that the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt inspired enslaved Americans to work for freedom. Many of these people had never known anything except slavery and they had no lived experience to make them believe that freedom would actually come, except that they had heard a story about a God who made a way out of slavery and into the promised land. The story of God was like a seed of hope that grew tenaciously in these people until finally one day, freedom came.
Think for a moment about the way the story of God inspired Martin Luther King Jr (who was a pastor by the way). At a young age he heard the stories of scripture, about a God who came in the flesh and turned the other cheek. And this and other stories grew in him like a seed and inspired a movement of nonviolent resistance that changed the course of history.
I want our kids to have this tenacious hope. I want our kids to know, deep in their bones, the stories of a God who can move mountains, who can feed thousands with our meager offerings, who can calm storms and transform lives so that when our kids find themselves with their backs against the wall, they know what to grab onto for hope. I want our kids grow up envisioning the future that God has for the world, working as God’s co-creators to bring it forth.
At every baptism we invite the newly baptized to “Join us in bearing God’s creative and redeeming Word to all the world.” We believe that this Word has the power to create and redeem. So, let’s plant it in our kids so that they have it forever.
Thank you to our Christian Education Team - Sandie, Darlene, Solveig, Colleen, Grace, Ellen, John, Hannah and all who tend lovingly to our children. You make a tremendous difference!
Peace,
Pastor Bekki