Loving God, Loving People, Loving Life
RE-Vision: St. Patrick 101
Genesis 1:27-31; Revelation 21:1-5
Introduction: Perhaps the greatest college basketball coach of all times is the legendary John Wooden.
John Wooden’s teams at UCLA won 10 NCAA basketball championships in 12 years. At one point his
basketball teams won 61 straight games. No one before or since has even come close to doing anything like
that. Now here is what you most likely do not know—John Wooden worked in relative obscurity at UCLA
for 15 seasons before he ever won his first NCAA championship. What changed?
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins says it something like this—significant change comes when
you do the right things repeatedly over time and eventually you will have a breakthrough. For years John
Wooden labored laying a foundation, it wasn’t quick, it wasn’t instant, it was, “…a cumulative process—
step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel—that adds up to sustained
and spectacular results.”
St. Patrick has been around now for fifteen years today. Fifteen years ago today we had the first
worship service of St. Patrick Presbyterian Church in the little white church on Walnut St. A lot has
changed since then. Churches mirror families in change. There is an experience you have when you start a
church that you never get to have again. Sort of like a family. Fifteen years ago, I had a full compliment of
children, minus one. Teri and I were in the hustle and bustle of raising five children, and about a month
after our church was officially constituted, Eliot came along. Now, my family looks totally different—
glorious, but different—three of my children are married, I have three grandchildren, and only two children
left in the house, with one at college. The day-to-day reality of my family looks totally different. Likewise, I
experience it differently. Every night from 5:30-8:30 is no longer supper, baths and stories. Now it is
slower—except when they are all at the house! While I experience it differently, one thing has not changed
about my family—the vision Teri and I had years ago, when we first married, of sort of having the “Big Fat
Greek Family”: lots of children, lots of their friends, lots of food and our home being a place of fun,
laughter and thriving. That vision, that dream, shaped, and is still shaping our lives more than anything else.
St. Patrick is like that too. Our family is 15 years in. We can’t start it over, as fun and exciting as
that is, and like raising children, you get one shot at it, then you are on to the next phase. That is the way
life works. So at this 15-year mark, we are re-casting our vision. It really hasn’t changed, but it has
wavered, it has been assaulted, and it has been challenged. Perhaps, because we do have enough history we
have learned some things that, like John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins, will help us expand and take us to levels
of usefulness in the kingdom none of us even dreamed off. I mean, do we really believe our purpose
statement:
St. Patrick Presbyterian Purpose Statement
“Saint Patrick Presbyterian Church is an unworthy, undeserving and broken people who embody the loving embrace
of Christ…so we celebrate!
The people of Saint Patrick will relentlessly seek to draw others by serving them and meeting their needs without
expectation. When the people of St. Patrick look at others, we will see Christ.
We will share our resources to serve the spiritual, physical, and emotional needs of those in and around our church, in
our neighborhoods, in our town and beyond. We will do this out of an overflowing love for God and His people, show
that others can share in the loving embrace of Christ, and the community of Collierville will be forever changed.”
That is pretty bold; do you want to be part of that? People who know they are messed up and loved—
celebrating. People who feel so blessed by Jesus that service just flows out of you in love for other people
and your surrounding community? Do you want to be part of something that, because this church existed,
there will be echoes in eternity? I hope you do, because for the next 7 weeks we are going to be talking
about our vision and values.
Why RE-Vision
There are three reasons why this is essential for us to recast our vision.
1. Our church is stagnant. Now that is a broad statement and listen carefully to what I say. How do
you know you are stagnant? It can’t be just numbers. For instant, is it possible to be growing at a
rate of 10% a year and be stagnant? Yes! Numbers aren’t everything; I mean, Hitler got a crowd!
Or, you could argue that we could abandon our vision and grow numerically even faster. It all
comes down to purpose! Are we fulfilling our purpose? And as we look at our statement of
purpose, we have to say there is decline in numbers because we have drifted from our purpose. I
think there are two things that show this drift that have happened in the past 4 years.
A. We didn’t build a building. We are not in the best facility in town, in case you haven’t notice.
A building is a crucial element to continue to reach out and into this community. When we
didn’t build our building, people began to trickle away. Some people most likely left because
they those we had lost our vision.
B. We faced the challenge of ministering to a very diverse people group. To say that we were
ready for that is a stretch. It was messy, loud, and crazy and people sort of trickled away.
2. To change expectations. Our leadership has been thinking about this for a long time now. What
are the expectations people have when they come to a church? And if you understand this it is easy
to understand why people also leave a church. Thom Rainer is president and CEO of LifeWay
Christian Resources, and before that, spent he fifteen years consulting churches in transition and
change. Here is what he says about the main reason people leave a church:
But all the research studies of which I am aware, including my own, return to one major
theme to explain the exodus of church members: a sense of some need not being filled. In
other words, these members have ideas of what a local congregation should provide for
them, and they leave because those provisions have not been met.
Certainly we recognize there are many legitimate claims by church members of unfulfilled
expectations. It can undoubtedly be the fault of the local congregation and its leaders.
But many times, probably more than we would like to believe, a church member leaves a
local body because he or she has a sense of entitlement. I would therefore suggest that the
main reason people leave a church is because they have an entitlement mentality rather
than a servant mentality. (Tom Rainer, “The Main Reason People Leave a Church,”
January 21, 2013 from author’s blog)
He goes on to say the best way to close the back door is to move members to a servant mentality.
For instance, I can tell you as a pastor, I rarely hear someone come to my office and say to me,
“Jim, I was just wondering what I can do to help St. Patrick be a better place to minister.”
3. Every member is vital. For us to realize the purposes God has for us as a church, everyone must
own the vision. Every week as we go through this St. Patrick 101, we will have the material for
your Community Group to discuss. See, this can’t just be my vision, or the elders’ and staff’s
vision; it has to be our vision. In community, we must discuss, discuss, discuss. We must embrace
the pain of where we are and repent before we can make the hard and honest effort of moving
forward, unified around a common vision.
What is our Vision?
If I ask any of you what St. Patrick’s vision is, what would you say? At best, you would probably have to
go look at the purpose statement. But as much as I love that, it really is rather lengthy and cumbersome. It is
not something that is short, memorable, or something everyone in our church would really grasp. That’s
why the session adopted this new Vision Statement, “Loving God, Loving People, Loving Life.” It is so
simple, but it really does capture our purpose and all our values in just six words. I don’t know how many
people who have been members here have told me over the years, “The thing I like about St. Patrick is that
being a Christian or being spiritual doesn’t mean you can’t be human, or enjoy human things.” Or, “I
learned at St. Patrick Church that it was just as spiritual to be playing on the floor with my children as it is
to have a quiet time.”
It is my belief that if we really want to reach the lost, de-churched and un-churched in this heavily churched
community, our job is to deconstruct the myth that Christianity is somehow disconnected every other part
of life. Let me illustrate. In Donald Miller’s book Blue like Jazz, he starts off this way,
“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in
Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he
never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love
something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.”
You see what he is saying, watch someone love something; watch the joy they have in it.
We all live our lives on a stage, and people watch. If Christianity will ever even be an option for them to
take seriously as they inventory the emptiness in their lives, it will be because they watched someone who
really “Loved God, Loved People and Loved Life.” And, I might add, loved them enough to invite them
into the circle of joy!
You say, “Well, Jim, is that in the Bible?” Well, go back and look at the creation account. We read it
earlier. After an account of God literally calling creation into existence, we have the account of the creation
of Adam and Eve. We know the rest of the story from chapter 2. Adam and Eve are in a garden that they are
told to love passionately, with each other, who love each other passionately. I mean, Adam quotes poetry
when God brings him his bride, and they are with God, and you know how they were attired—does that
sound dull to you? Does that sound like duty to you? Does that sound like it is going to be a huge burden?
No! Of course, they lost that for all of us and now it takes a new heart, a renewed heart to truly Love God,
Love People and Love Life in the midst of this fallen world.
Okay, have you have read the last chapters of the Bible as well? Does heaven, the place Jesus is preparing
for his blood-bought people, sound like a place that will be dull? Well let’s look and see. Heaven is likened
to a city, on this earth, cleansed of all sin and corruption. A city—not something entirely new or different
but renewed; this world, which is so glorious it is almost painful sometimes—without the alienation, sin and
weeds of the fall. And two chapters earlier, how does God welcome us? With a party! Heaven is likened to
a wedding feast. Will we grumble about this? Will we think this is a hard thing to do? No. What I am saying
is that the arc of the redemption story is always this is what God calls you to in redemption—to love God,
love people and love life.
“Well,” you say, “what about Jesus and the disciples?” Do you really think Christianity swept the world by
producing disciples who somehow were just trying to not mess it up too badly? Mark Driscoll, who planted
one of the fasted growing churches in the America in one of the hardest places in the world—Seattle—says
this about how Jesus must have looked to people when he came to earth. It is in a chapter called, “eat, drink
and be a merry missionary.” Listen:
Apparently God is fun to hang with, because he and his posse get invited to a lot of parties,
including weddings, which is basically a week-long wine and dance party…religious leaders of his
day accused him of being a drunkard, a glutton, and a crooked guy who was always hanging out
with the wrong crowd. To the religious leaders, Jesus is a scandal—his followers are felons—and
every time they see Jesus, it agitates them that he is always surrounded by a crowd, telling knockknock jokes to miscreants who love his sense of humor.” (Mark Driscoll, The Radical
Reformission)
This is our vision! Not to have more programs, not to have more activities—but to have disciples of Jesus
whose lives are so infused with meaning because of Jesus that they can see the glory of God in something
as mundane as cooking on a grill for their neighbors, and were doing it with gut-wrenching joy as the
embodiment of that vision—disciples of Jesus who love God, love people and love life.
Embracing our Vision
What do I do now?
1) Discuss in Community Group; each week will be a discussion on our RE-visioning and core
values. How does this fit in? Do I agree with this? What do I need to change?
2) Imagine—is this my life? Do I love God, love people, love life? What do I need help with: maybe
mentoring or discipleship?
3) Plan for a new building. In our context, we need a building to continue to grow and facilitate our
vision. See, our vision determines our need for a building. A building does not dictate our vision. If
we were in a new building, we would still be having this discussion about vision—so this isn’t just
about getting a building built. At the end of the day, is our vision to have a beautiful facility, or a
mass of people who Love God, Love People, and Love Life. Here is where we are right now on the
building front: we have a building committee in place, our finance guys are crunching numbers, and
we have met with the town. We will keep everyone posted as it goes. Our dream is that we will take
tangible steps to see this dream come true this year. Yes, it will take money, sacrifice and hard
work, but it will be worth it.
4) Pray for our church. Pray for St. Patrick. Pray that we can all be better disciples of Jesus, who are
passionate about making more disciples of Jesus. Amen.