by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
Friends I want to tell you about two things you may not have heard about that took place during Advent.
One, a man posted a threat on Craigslist that he intended to commit suicide in one of the larger churches in Boone during a Sunday sermon. We don’t know that he had our church in mind, but he could have, or he could have meant Mt. Vernon, First Presbyterian, Alliance. There was here a sort of ecumenism of the threatened–we pray for our sister churches’ safety as they pray for ours. This poor man was convinced the church has mistreated him and his overwhelming troubles in life are the fault of hypocrites in robes and pews. If he were in his right mind, we could have told him that hypocrites are the only kind of people God has to work with. We are on our way to being saints, but aren’t there yet.
Yet this man was clearly not in his right mind. Most people I know have someone in their family with mental illness. We pray for them and hope they will one day be “clothed, and in their right mind,” in the presence of Jesus. Thankfully Boone PD seem to have apprehended him. We will have security at church for the near future just the same. We give thanks for those who protect us, including our own Bobby Creed and Brandon Greer. We also know our security in the deepest sense is in God alone. Thank you to Jennifer Whittington and our trustees who worked hard on this, as they always do, to take care of our facilities and of us.
A second thing is a brief retreat I took with some church folks recently to Mepkin Abbey in Monck’s Corner, SC. I have retreated there before years ago, and wrote of the abbey in my book An Introduction to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Trappist monks go to church 8 times a day–they pray for a living. And a handful of college kids, our lay leader, our chair of worship and of our prayer team and some others joined them, to chant psalms at 3 AM. Jaylynn and I saw a monk we knew years ago named Father Christian, age 99, whose bright mind reminded me of Tom Cottingham. As a group we prayed for our church (including after we heard of the threat above). These Catholic monks were impressed by how diligent we Methodists were in attending worship! I trust they came back refreshed and ready to serve and lead in our church, their jobs, our community, and their lives.
I hope to take more of you to Mepkin in the future after this first, experimental visit. Let me know if you are interested. Being with them reminded me of why we’re called Methodist. We are methodical about prayer, practicing it as often as we can, like a convert to a new sport, like someone who has fallen in love, we want to sneak away and pray at every opportunity.
Advent is about the hope of God breaking into the world, first in Christ, then in our hearts, soon in the entire universe in a way that will draw all flesh to worship him. Let us pray for those most lost, those who protect, those who pray, and all of us to be drawn anew into Christ’s tiny and world-commanding arms.
by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
A friend of mine first visited our church when his family moved here. He was terribly put off. No one spoke to him, he didn’t know where to take his kids, the building was confusing, parking was a headache, and he left vowing not to come back. Only years later, re-invited by friends, did he come back, get involved, and join. Now he helps lead us. He remembers that initial impression.
Our church is, by nature, generous about welcoming new people. This is not a place where you have to have been here forever to have a voice. We are curious who God is bringing our way. As many of you read in Desiring God years ago, “God speaks to the church by whom God sends to the church.” New people aren’t just marks for membership. They are a summons from God about what he wants from us, to be met with delight.
But my friend didn’t feel that way that day. We whiffed. It happens.
Our welcoming committee is committed to it happen as little as possible. Sandra Ammons leads this group, with staff wisdom from Andy Ellis, and muscle and creativity from Summer Hays, Katie Lineback, Bob Kroll, Phyllis Butler and others. Our ushers, headed by Johnny Carson, are also committed to welcoming all.
And so is our whole church. Our new mission language, is this: “Loving our community, and inviting all, to discover life in Christ.” Welcoming is the foundation of who we are. Our new values language includes several that touch on welcoming: “Everybody everywhere matters.” We are all created in the image of God, we are all souls for whom Christ died, we are all folks whom the Holy Spirit longs to clasp to God’s heart. “Get ready to do something” is another value that touches on our essential responsiveness as a church. When we see a need, we mobilize to meet it. What better place to see needs than through peering into someone’s eyes, grasping their hands, and telling them we’re delighted to see them? Our measures include this question: “When have I walked with someone not like me?” I worry for folks who don’t have the church. How do they get into relationships with folks different than them? As we grow closer to Jesus we grow closer to one another. Our measures also ask when we’ve invested in someone toward a life in Christ. How might we launch a new endeavor or two in evangelism around here?
Andy and Sandra and I recently met to imagine her committee’s work for 2014. We realized together how deeply our mission, values, and measures language can help in their work. They suggested we might connect recently joined people to those who visit. If there’s a retired couple visiting at 8:45 we can connect them with someone similar who has recently joined. So too if a widow visits Crossroads, or when college kids turn up to 11. We connect most easily with those like us, why not put those most recently enthusiastic about our church–our recent joiners–in relationship with folks visiting? I love it! Creative people pouring over our vision frame and taking action to fulfill our mission.
And that’s exactly how the new mission, values, measures, and strategy are supposed to work. We can place any issue our church faces within the four-sided frame. And in this case–how we welcome–two values, several marks, and our mission proper all applied. Folks doing that together saw stuff no one could see alone. And hopefully our entire life together with Christ will be enhanced.
The goal here as ever is not to get new members. It’s not to meet budget. It’s to introduce new people to Jesus. To meet Jesus ourselves all over again in who he sends to us. And to take part in his inching his kingdom slightly closer here in the high country.
by Jason Byassee
What are some things you count?
Jason Byassee
We count what matters to us–or to avoid something we don’t care for. My grandfather apparently knew how many panels there were in the ceiling of his Baptist church. Not a good sign for the quality of the preaching . . . Lots of us count our retirement accounts carefully. Will there be enough? We all know how many children we have (even if I find it difficult to remember their ages–they change every year).
At church we naturally count attendance and money. In the ministerial resume-comparing world they count butts, budgets, and bricks–adding buildings to our big two. But some of our most creative folks have been asking what else we can count. Surely there are other signs of faithfulness besides just those two. Our visioning committee came up with some questions to measure our faithfulness. This is a very Methodist thing to do–from the beginning we have counted signs of faithfulness obsessively. Kelly Broman-Fulks’ group wants us to ask these questions as we consider whether we are successfully growing as disciples:
What did I do in response to God’s leading this week?
Did I apply scripture to a decision this week?
Where did worship send me this week?
Have I walked with someone not like me this week?
Am I praying for my friends and enemies this week?
Am I connected to church beyond Sunday worship this week?
When did I invite/invest in someone into a life with Christ?
Hard questions, if we answer them honestly. And more granular, particular, than simply money or attendance. These questions ask about the depth of our discipleship. Positive answers show we’re being successful as a church. Or even better: faithful.
God loves to count. But he sure counts differently than us. He knows the number of hairs on our heads–so he counts more better than we do. He counts one sheep as more precious than 99. God counts the years of eternity–thousands times thousands. And in the book of Numbers (1) God counts the number of everything about the Israelites. We Methodists, when we count carefully, are only doing what the bible already does.
Our staff has brainstormed what we can count as signs of faithfulness. I love their answers. Colette suggests we count teachers stepping in on the Sunday School wing in a pinch. Jennifer suggests we count utility use (much up this year). Andy suggests we count midweek attendance at church functions, not just Sundays. Brandon and Lindsey suggest we count conflict and lament–in real community not all is rosy. Jeff suggests we count the kinds of prayer requests offered. Are we going beyond health ailments and asking for prayer for spiritual needs as well?
Some of my favorite lines in hymns include God’s way of counting. Matt Redman’s “Bless the Lord,” a contemporary worship song, includes this line, “For all your goodness I will keep on singing, 10,000 reasons for my heart to find.” And Amazing Grace’s concluding stanza includes these immortal words, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we first begun.”
Friends let’s join these leaders of ours as we stretch what we count as marks of faithfulness. Money and attendance matter. So too do 10,000 other things.
Jason Byassee
One of the treasures of Boone is King Street. I love walking downtown, eating well, people-watching, seeing our folks who do business down there, hearing the music–even if hula hoops and drum circles are a bridge too far. Our downtown has a unique vibe and helps make our town a special place.
King Street used to be the hub of Boone’s churches. Now First Baptist remains, while we and First Pres have left, for good reasons. Memories of when our church worshiped downtown are still strong at Boone Methodist. The psychological space from the university is now light years away from the days when students and faculty could walk to church. It was right to move (a unanimous vote confirmed this in 1997), but we lost some things that were precious to us.
What if we worshiped downtown again?
For the past few months, Luke Edwards, our fantastic director of community engagement, has been meeting with interested folks to ask what worship downtown might look like. He is meeting with folks I think of as “Black Cat” folks (Espresso News, Bald Guy, Our Daily Bread–any number of other businesses would work too). Anytime I’m in Vern’s favorite burrito haunt I remember a restaurant slogan from my hometown of Chapel Hill: “A sunny place for shady people.” This is a demographic that is often aggressively anti-institutional, unsure what to do with their lives deeply in school debt, often socio-economically vulnerable, but full of ideals.
You know them. Some of them are your kids, siblings, friends, or baristas.
Wouldn’t you love to see them in church? Wouldn’t you love for our church to benefit from their worldview?
For all their suspicions of church, these folks are not uninterested in matters spiritual. Just look at the stores hawking spiritual wares on King Street. They are also not uninterested in Jesus. Truly, in their deepest selves, they want to be in relationship to him through his church. They just don’t always know that yet.
What would it look like if we offered worship they might like? Or even better, if we asked them to help us build a worship service that would appeal to them and their friends?
Luke, a new leader named Elizabeth Reese, and a handful of others have been meeting with their friends over food, poetry-readings, and worship at the chapel at the Wesley Foundation. They will invite others of us to join them at some point. They feel like God is doing something in their midst–they’re just trying to figure out what, and join in. Our Methodist district and conference have taken notice. The Appalachian District, with the strong support of our DS Lory Beth Huffman, has offered them a $10,000 seed grant. The conference will consider a pitch soon for a much larger grant.
We are tentatively calling the thing King Street Church. Similar efforts in our conference are in Winston-Salem (newstorychurch.org) and Asheville (haywoodstreet.org). Our conference recently reorganized to move money out of administration and into mission–we are the sort of congregation that has a capacity to lead that effort.
Our congregation has a deep history of responsiveness. We founded the Wesley Foundation and our preschool in the 50s. We started our contemporary service and relationship with Patzibal in the 90s. Crossroads and Blackburn Chapel emerged in the 2000s.
This may be our next step in responding to God’s grace. “Get ready to do something,” our value says. For now, pray. Soon, visit and offer input and advice and encouragement. Always, be on the watch for Jesus. He’s on the move.
Are we ready to follow?
by Jason Byassee
Jason Byassee
One day last week I arrived at church to find it jammed to the gills with children. Hundreds of K-8 students from Hardin Park School had taken refuge in our church. There was a bomb threat in our county, and Boone Methodist is the emergency sanctuary for that school a stone’s throw from our door. Several teachers and administrators thanked us for being a safe place on a scary day. One child told our own Wendy Lawrence, a fourth grade teacher, “This is the safest place we could be.” I love that every child at HPS, whether religious or not, had a place that day to take refuge.
I hope you are as proud of that as I am.
This is just another example of what our visioning team is teaching the rest of us to call our responsiveness. We have a history as a church of seeing a need and then mobilizing to meet it. This is a recent gift–our Crossroads service recently celebrated its 5th birthday. We saw a need for a less intimidating church service for those put out with traditional church and responded. It is an older gift too: we saw a need for a preschool in the 1950s and are still meeting that need. The Wesley Foundation at Appalachian State began in our basement in that same decade. This gift of responsiveness is visible on multiple continents: our sister church La Esmirna Metodista in Pazibal, Guatemala can attest to it, as can recipients of our mission dollars around the world. So can other churches in our neighborhood: we helped launch FaithBridge in Blowing Rock and have taken Blackburn’s Chapel in Todd under our wing. Our own 8:45 contemporary service was a similar risk when we launched it. When it comes to planting new worshiping communities, we have been all action and no talk.
Well we need to talk about our responsiveness again. We have a value that names this responsiveness now, about which you’ll hear Vern and I preach on September 8: Be ready to do something. Faith requires a lively response from us. Are we ready?
Sometime in the past, before our present group of trustees, we agreed to be an emergency evacuation location for Hardin Park. My guess is it was an obvious decision, we probably didn’t even argue over whether it was a good idea. We all just knew it was. Years later, on Tuesday, the fruit of that willingness to be responsive was born. We were a good neighbor in our community. Others will remember.
What kind of responsiveness are we called to in the future? In one way we can’t answer that question. Who knows what our community’s needs will be in the future? In another, we can. We know our community will need the gospel preached, the hungry fed, entrepreneurial initiative taken, the lonely befriended. And we know we’re good at that. Some proposals on the table at present are for a worshiping presence back downtown on King Street under Luke Edwards’ guidance. We are certainly going to roll out a series of small groups in the fall under Pastor Vern’s leadership. Perhaps the trail we are digging up Howard’s Knob could, in the future, have a worshiping presence on it. We have invested in the Circles campaign to help our more economically vulnerable neighbors help themselves.
God is always doing a new thing. And it sure looks as faithful, as interesting, as good, as the acts of faithfulness God has always done in our midst
