This morning, I want to read one verse of Scripture before I begin. I want us to hear the words of Jeremiah 29:11, where it says: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
I did my first wedding way in back in 1982. I was fresh out of seminary but believe it or not Seminaries don’t offer classes in how to do weddings so I called my dad for help and he was more than happy to come to my aid. In fact, he dictated an entire wedding over the phone including homily, vows, and the ring ceremony. He even gave me the basic framework for pre-marital counseling. I typed everything out as he spoke—which took about an hour and this was back when it cost big money to make a long distance call! My dad was a great guy. I really miss him!
Since then I’ve probably done well over a hundred weddings and they were each uniquely special—but if I were to single out the marriage ceremonies that were MOST MEMORABLE I would have to mention two and the reason I remember these above the rest is the fact that they weren’t actual weddings but rather ceremonies in which a husband and wife who had already shared decades of married life—stood before family and friends to RENEW their vows.
Let me take a moment to explain why these vow renewal ceremonies stand out in my mind.
In normal weddings a man and a woman are making a commitment that is based on the UNKNOWN years to come. But in a renewal ceremony the vows are based on actual EXPERIENCE—many years of sharing love and life. I mean, in a renewal the couple knows that “for better or for worse” is actually better! Their decades together have shown them that a relationship of devotion in “in richer and in poorer” times has priceless value. They know that a robust, hearty marriage draws it’s potency from a dedication to each other “in sickness and in health.”
James Wharton once said,“The difference between courtship and marriage is the difference between the pictures in the seed catalog and what comes up.” Well in these renewal services the husband and wife know what “comes up” in a marriage nurtured with the wisdom and guidance of God. They know that following God’s plan for relationships between husband and wife brings the greatest pleasure and fulfillment in marriage.
So those two renewal of vows ceremonies stand out. They were special to me…VERY memorable. In each service we…and when I say “we” I mean friends, parents, children—and in one case grandchildren—WE all gathered around the married couple and celebrated past success….and then watched as they made a public commitment for the future.
I thought of all this as I prepared for today’s message because in a very real sense you and I are here for a renewal of our vows to God. We, the church known as Redland, this local BRIDE of Christ that meets at 6922 Muncaster Mill Road…we are here to day to look back and remember the commitment we made to Jesus to build what we call The ROC—the Recreation and Outreach Center and to RENEW our commitment to make this vision a reality some time in the future—VERY soon I hope! We are doing this because we believe this is God’s plan for us.
And speaking of VISION—it is indeed essential to the health of ANY commitment—especially marriage. As someone once put it, “Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion.”
Think of it. As long as a husband and wife have that passion-producing picture of the future—as long as they understand how wonderful marriage can be if lived according to God’s plan—as long as they have that picture of the future in mind…they are driven forward—they are motivated to make that vision a reality—but once it is forgotten their relationship…their commitment…well, it begins to falter.
The same is true of a church and its commitment to the vision God gives it. I mean, preserving that picture of the future for a congregation is so important. As J. B. Philips put it, “The real danger to professing Christians lies not in the more glaring and grosser temptations and sins but rather in a slow deterioration of vision.”
Here at Redland we have to be especially wary of VISION DETERIORATION. You see, since ours is such a transitional congregation—well, it makes it hard to keep the vision in our minds and hearts. I mean, people are constantly being transferred in and out of here. I remember years ago we did a pictorial directory. Shortly after it was distributed two long-time Redland members, Dan and Jan Geissing retired and moved to the Myrtle Beach area. Before they left Dan gave me an extra copy of that directory that he had marked up by crossing out the pictures of people who had either been transferred out of our area…or retired and moved to a place where the cost of living isn’t so high—and over two thirds of the pictures in that directory were crossed out. It was barely three years old. Dan was of course right. We keep real estate agents busy here because people are always coming and going from Montgomery County, Maryland. I mean, I’ve been pastor here at Redland for 13 years—but in that time I’ve pastored four or five different congregations…and as wonderful as it is to work with all these different people…this constant coming and going can be very detrimental to vision.
Just curious, how many of you were NOT here ten years ago when we first started talking about building the ROC? All those hands help us see the importance of this sermon.
With that in mind, I want us to look at this message as a RENEWAL OF VOWS by this congregation…a time in which we remember the past…and commit ourselves to the future…as we seek to fulfill the vision God has given us when it comes to that almost complete building that sits about a 100 yards to my left.
Let’s begin by looking back at this commitment we made to Jesus…and how it all came about.
I became your pastor in September of 1997 and almost as soon as I was installed, people started asking, “Mark, in your opinion as pastor, what is next—BUILDING wise?” I remember thinking, “I’ve only been a pastor a few days—could I get back to you on that?” In any case…as a staff and church council we began to explore answers to that question by studying our church’s HISTORY and uniqueness. Our study yielded several important “Redland facts:”
- First, we saw that unlike many congregations in our area we are blessed with a lot of PROPERTY—nearly 14 acres—and at the time we were almost debt free. In fact, we burned the mortgage shortly after our study.
- Second, we saw that we had a long history of welcoming families to our area who were only here for a few years—mostly military—but governmental contract employees as well.
Our study showed that over the years God had enabled us to learn how to deal with our high turnover rate. And He still does that. He’s helped those of us who form the unchanging core of RBC to learn how to minister under these circumstances. We’ve learned how to welcome people and get them involved. We’ve learned how to quickly “read” people and discern their giftedness.
We’ve also learned how to say good-bye and pray for them as they go on to their next assignment.
To make this more…memorable…here are JUST SOME of the families who’ve been active here for 3 or 4 years—since I’ve been pastor—and then gone on: The Bradleys, the Esteps, the Bahoos, the Holtons, the Shuperts, the Smiths, the Geissings, the Livingstons, the Edwards, the Corbetts, the Aunes, the Uys, the Werts, the Penlands, the Maxwells, the Ebblings, the Pursells, the Lechaks, the Kates, the Runzels, the Coles, the Murrays, the Bucks, the Brewers, the Hales, the Iwamotos. I could continue for quite some time but you get the idea. I mean those 26 families combined would be larger than MOST churches!
Well, seeing this, Bill Wehunt, rightly dubbed us a “way station church” and that’s not a bad thing. This is part of what God has called us to do…and it’s an IMPORTANT part because in a transient area, these people that come and go…need a church like ours.
And let me just stop here and say that it is VITAL that we keep striving to get this part of our calling right. I mean, we can’t take it for granted that new people feel welcome here. We need to be intentional about keeping people from falling through the cracks. We have to do all we can to get people involved and then to nurture and protect our unity because without that UNITY the ROC is worthless. As Paul says in Ephesians 4:2-3 we must, “…be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. We must, make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” We have to fight gossip and negativism and reach out to new people. We need to invite new comers to our homes. We have to KEEP doing the things that have made us a great WAY STATION CHURCH!
But, I digress a bit. Years ago as we realized we were called to be a way station…an “oasis of grace…” the leadership of Redland also realized that God wouldn’t let us be satisfied with that.
We felt Him calling us to do more to reach the unchurched people around us…those more permanent residents of Montgomery County who don’t know Jesus…not to mention the non-Christians who come and go. And this is a large group of people. As I told you a few weeks back of all the counties in Maryland, ours has the lowest percentage of Christ followers. Only seven out of a hundred claim to know Jesus as Savior and Lord. So we have our work cut out for us. I mean, no wonder God wouldn’t let us be satisfied with being a way station!
And that’s where we got the idea for a gymnasium. God helped us to see that, since this is a very high cost of living area, both moms and dads have to work. So the residents of our county are looking for ways to be together as a family in the little time they have. This is why our county rec program is so huge. I mean families are drawn to anything that will give them an opportunity to be together. But our county rec department can’t keep up with this because there is just not enough gym space to go around. A few years back shortly before we broke ground on the ROC Carl Gruel brought me a copy of The Gazzette. The front page article told of the Olney Boys and Girls Club’s plans to build a gym—but of their inability to do so because of permitting problems.
Listen to this quote from OBGC Chairman, Daniel Dionisio:
“The severe lack of gym space is not only a problem in the Olney area, but in most of the county. The lack of gym space is reaching epidemic levels when 8-year-olds are forced to play games until 9 at night during the week and young teams cannot even find gym times to practice before games.”
Information like this reaffirmed our conviction that God was leading us to build a gym. To quote Bill, we realized by building the ROC we would be giving people what they WANT—REC SPACE…FAMILY TIME…we would be giving people what they want…in a way that enabled us to give them what they NEED: Jesus. PLUS…as we looked at our campus…we saw that with the parking lot in back…and not visible from the road…we needed a way to tell people who passed by that something was going on here…that it was worth pulling in our driveway….and a gym with big windows full of people would do that.
With that in mind we did several things. First, we hired a rec ministry expert. We put him on contract for a year or so to teach us how to use recreation as a tool for outreach. That gave birth to sports camps. I believe we’ve been doing them five or six years now. In 2004 we sent a large group to an Upward Basketball Conference down in North Carolina so we could begin to get familiar with that VERY effective tool of evangelism. Bill Wehunt wisely suggested that the next step would be to attend a special conference in Nashville for churches who are thinking of building a gym so Sue and I flew down there. We toured several churches who had buildings like our ROC. We grilled the staff members in charge of those facilities with tons of questions. We came back full of excitement and ideas. But we didn’t rush into anything. We decided to not just figure out how to build a gym but how to build everything we’d need to build on our campus…and after going through three architects, we came up with a master building plan. Phase 1 would be a gym—the ROC; phase two would be more children’s space; phase three youth space; and phase 4 a new sanctuary. When it was all done it would look something like this. Next we decided to go through a capital campaign to raise funds for phase 1. We called it The Crossing and it was completed about four years ago. I’ve included a copy of The Crossing brochure in the bulletin to further stimulate your memory. We broke ground at our 40th anniversary in 2006. Here are some pictures of that day. Construction began in the summer of 2007 and at first things went fairly quickly. Here’s a few slides to show you the progress on the building.
But—about a year and a half into construction, Hugh Faulconer and Jack Murray began to notice some inconsistencies in the work of our contractor when it came to the way he used our funds. I am so VERY THANKFUL to these two because their watchfulness prevented our church from losing far more than we did. Other congregations who didn’t have watchdogs like these two lost significantly more money to this same man. But to make a long story short, our contractor went bankrupt and in the process stole about $130,000.00 from God’s coffers at Redland. He also took other shortcuts that have cost us both time and money. With Jack moving south, for the past year and a half Hugh has bravely plodded on but we’re still waiting for our occupancy permit….and have a punch list of several other things that need to be completed before we can use the building.
Don’t get me wrong. The building looks great—as you’ll see in the tours we’re doing this morning. I mean, thanks to the hard work of Bill Wehunt and Jack Murray and Hugh Faulconer, we are almost done. I praise God for each of these men. They shielded me from most of the stress that construction programs cause pastors. And now—with Hugh’s “retirement” we have a newly appointed building committee who will take up the baton and meet to figure out how to expedite the final parts. By the way, Hugh tells me he wouldn’t be surprised if we have the occupancy permit before the new committee meets November 7th. I’ve assured him we won’t mind that at all!
Okay, with that look back, hopefully you are now better ABLE to remember the vision God gave us and what we’ve done to this point to make this vision into reality.
(2) That brings me to the second part of this message…the PICTURE of the future.
We can’t leave that out because in a RENEWAL of vows you don’t just look back. You look forward to that “picture of the future that produces passion.” Let me remind you of our future by mentioning some of the ways this building will change things.
First, some basics. We’ll stop having suppers in this room. As soon as those doors open we’ll start having meals in the large foyer of the ROC. That room was designed for that purpose and has more space than we currently use for Wednesday night meals. Plus, the ROC has a LARGE kitchen—twice the size of our current one…and it has something Nancy and her crew have never had before—a pantry to store food. So…for the first time in 34 years, this room will cease being a multi-purpose room. It will be known only as THE SANCTUARY. I for one look forward to that! Here’s some other things that will happen. AWANA will no longer use our chapel as a gym—because we’ll have a real one! Upward practices and games will be played HERE instead of at other churches or schools. Our youth basketball league teams won’t have to practice at odd hours anymore in gymnasiums spread all over the county. They’ll play games here as well. Sports camps won’t have to worry about being rained out anymore. They’ll have a gym to use! Our children’s ministry and youth ministry will use the gym regularly. Hear me on this. I’m saying that even before we use the ROC as a tool of outreach, this space will be used a GREAT deal! That new building will be a busy place from day one!
But other things will change. The more we learn to use it as a tool of outreach…and I stress the word LEARN…because, as our first paid rec ministry director, Joed Carbonell, put it…we have to LEARN to walk before we can run. I mean, we won’t immediately start all the programs we dream of starting. We’ll gradually do this…as we have volunteers and staff to support it. But the more we do that—the more this building will become the FOCUS of our church and this community. Redland will become known as “the place to be” when it comes to family recreation…and the more unchurched people who come through those doors…the more opportunities Redlanders like you will have to build friendships through which you can share your faith.
A picture of the future that produces passion in my heart is RBC becoming a church where the majority of the members are passionately committed to sharing their faith…through the events the ROC makes possible. My dream is that we will one day have a large core of people who are very motivated to lead people to faith in Jesus. In fact, the more this vision…this dream…comes true…the more Redland will be known for two “R’s:” Recreation…and Relational evangelism.
Now—if you’re worried about RBC becoming a Mega-church—don’t. I don’t feel God calling us in that direction…and we don’t have enough property anyway. Even after we finish all four phases of the master plan we won’t be a “mega-church.” But we will be able to reach MANY more people with the gospel. Let me give you a short list of the kinds of events and ministries the ROC will make possible in future years:
- Walking clubs. We could do one for seniors either INSIDE or around the perimeter. 8.2 times around the exterior is a mile and if you include the water retention ponds its only 4.2 times!
- Open gym nights for pick-up basketball or volleyball. With that net/screen we could do both at the same time.
- The ROC could be open for morning work-outs for people in the neighborhood heading to work.
We have the equipment necessary already: a treadmill, an elliptical, a weight system. It’s just waiting to be installed. Think of the conversations you could have with commuters in the mornings!
- A coffee house for internationals could be held in the foyer.
- Women’s exercise groups.
- Sports leagues like Upward basketball, cheerleading
- Concerts
All these kinds of things and more can and will happen in the ROC in years to come. I mean generations of people will use that building long after you and I are gone. I believe hundreds of people will come to Jesus in that place because of the kinds of things it will make possible. Children and adults will hear the gospel there….people who wouldn’t hear it otherwise.
Okay—do you feel the PASSION for this vision?! I do! And with that in mind I want to challenge us all to keep on keeping on…to give of our time and our money to push forward and get this building done and paid for. In fact I’m going to be blunt. I encourage you to use your offering envelopes each week to add gifts to the ROC to your regular tithes. That’s what that little blank to the right is for. I also encourage you to find ways to personally be involved in the ministry of the ROC once it’s completed. I challenge you to do all this—because I sincerely believe these are ways for us each to OUTLIVE our life. I mean, we should give and work for and in the ROC knowing that because we do, God will reap a harvest of souls long after He calls us home.
That brings to mind a story taken from Max Lucado’s newest book. It goes like this:
Unfavorable winds once blew a ship off course, and when they did, the sailors spotted uncharted islands. They saw half a dozen mounds rising out of the blue South Seas waters. The captain orders the men to drop anchor and goes ashore. He is a robust man with a barrel chest, full beard, and curious soul. On the first island he sees nothing but sadness. Underfed children. Tribes in conflict. No farming or food development, no treatment for the sick, and no schools. Just simple, needy people. The second and following islands reveal more of the same. The captain sighs at what he sees. “This is no life for these people.” But what can he do? Then he steps onto the last and largest island. The people are healthy and well fed. Irrigation systems nourish their fields, and roads connect the villages. The children have bright eyes and strong bodies. The captain ask the chief for an explanation. How has this island moved so far ahead of the others? The chief, who is smaller than the captain but every bit his equal in confidence, gives a quick response: “Father Benjamin. He educated us in everything from agriculture to health. He built schools and clinics and dug wells.” The captain asks, “Can you take me to see him?” The chief nods and signals for two tribesmen to join him. They guide the captain over a jungle ridge to a simple, expansive medical clinic. It is equipped with clean beds and staffed with trained caretakers. They show the captain the shelves of medicine and introduce him to the staff. The captain, though impressed, sees nothing of Father Benjamin. He repeats his request. “I would like to see Father Benjamin. Can you take me to where he LIVES?” The three natives look puzzled. They confer among themselves. After several minutes the chief invites, ‘Follow us to the other side of the island.”
They walk along the shoreline until they reach a series of fish ponds. Canals connect the ponds to the ocean. As the tide rises, fish pass from the ocean into the ponds. The islanders then lower canal gates and trap the fish for harvest. Again the captain is amazed. He meets fishermen and workers, gatekeepers and net casters. But he sees nothing of Father Benjamin,. He wonders if he is making himself clear. “I don’t see Father Benjamin. Please take me to where he LIVES.” The trio talks alone again. After some discussion the chief offers, “Let’s go up the mountain.” They lead the captain up a steep, narrow path. After many twists and turns the path deposits them in front of a grass-roofed chapel. The voice of the chief is soft and earnest. “He has taught us about God.” He escorts the captain inside and shows him the altar, a large wooden cross, several rows of benches, and a Bible. “Is this where Father Benjamin lives?” the captain asks.
The men nod and smile. May I talk to him?” Their faces grow suddenly serious. “Oh, that would be impossible.” “Why?” “He died many years ago.” The bewildered captain stares at the men. “I asked to see him, and you showed me a clinic, some fish farms, and this chapel. You said nothing of his death.” “You didn’t ask about his DEATH,” the chief explains. “You asked to see where he LIVES. We showed you.”
Okay—with this story in mind let me ask, “If you were to stop living today where would people say you LIVED? I mean, what do you do that has eternal significance? What will live on after you die?” I have a passion for this building—because as I said, I believe the things we will do in it—will have eternal repercussions. I believe all who give to make that building—that VISION—a reality…all the people who serve in those walls…I believe all those people will OUT LIVE THEIR LIVES. This morning as we sing our hymn of invitation I want to challenge you to do all you can to make this dream…this vision…come true. There’s a card in your bulletin. Write your name on it and put a check next to the blank or blanks that indicate what you are willing to do…GIVE…PRAY…SERVE…or all three. Then bring it forward and lay it on the altar as your public commitment to outlive your life in and through the ROC. If you are visiting with us this morning, you’ve heard what God has called us to do…and if He calls you to join us in it, then come forward and ask to join our church. We’d love to have you….even if we only get to have you with us for 3 or 4 years. Others may need to come and profess their faith in Jesus. But come as God leads.
BENEDICTION:
Let the PEACE OF CHRIST rule in your hearts
since as members of one body you were called to peace.
Let the WORD OF CHRIST dwell in you richly
and whatever you do…in word or in deed
Do it all in the NAME OF CHRIST giving thanks to God the Father
through Him.