Who Will Guide the Children if We Don’t?
Children’s Sabbath, Oct. 30, 2005
Crestwood UCC
By Pastor Marcia Sietstra
Eccl. 4:9-12
Luke 6:39-40, 45-49
Note: This sermon begins with the Children’s Sermon, because it formed the basis for suggesting that we all need good guides in life. To view the sermon, scroll down past the Children’s Sermon.
Children’s Sermon.
This morning I have a true story to tell you, and it’s a little longer story than usual, so get comfortable—find your favorite lap to sit in, or a friend to lean on or just get cozy. This is a story about James; most of you know my son James because he plays with you kids when he’s home from college, and he took care of lots of you in the nursery when he was younger.
Well…James went to India this summer, and he and his friends, Ahksha and Dhaval, who are from India, did some traveling together. One of the places they went to is a village called Malana, high up in the Himalayan Mts, so far away from cities or villages that visiting there is like going back in time. It is very, very hard to get to Malana because there are no roads to this village and it is very hard to find. To get there you have to take bus rides for a whole day and part of the night, and after you reach the last town, there is still another hour ride and long climb up into mountains on foot, following one of the few guides who knows the way. Most people would never even try to get to village, because the local guides will not usually take visitors who are not Indian.
But James got to go because his friends are from India, and because one of Dhaval’sl friends is a guide. So James and Dhaval took the all-day, hot bus ride on a bus with no air conditioning that was so bumpy that a camera lens in James’ pocket broke from bouncing so hard on the seat. The last, rickety bus they took was even worse—it didn’t even have seats. And Dhaval wanted to save some money, so he arranged for him and James to ride on top of the bus with the baggage. It had just one railing around the edge. James had to hang on tight to that railing as the bus careened around the curves on its climb up the mountain, because everything would shift over to the side of the bus that was on the edge of the cliff when they went around the curve. Finally after a long day and evening on busses, they reached the town where they would stay at a hostel, which was a plain, Indian house. They each had a bare mattress (no sheets) in this room, just 20 feet from where the cows slept, and unfortunately there was no door to close in the doorway. James said he counted the number of flies that he killed the first morning when he woke up—29 flies he killed, before he even got out of bed!
The next morning, the boys followed a very skilled guide who knew the way to this remote village of Malana. Dhaval’s friend Nege and his brother who were both guides, had grown up on the mountain and could scramble up very fast. They climbed for hours on a 70-80 degree slope, which is almost straight up! James didn’t dare leave all his possessions in the hostel, without even a door, so he carried his big backpack all that way. Because the mountain is so steep, they climbed in a zig-zag pattern, kind of back and forth across the mountainside. When they finally reached the village, everyone said to James, who was the only white person, "No touch, no touch!" because they don’t want a strange, white person to touch them.
It was quite an experience. They spent two days in this hidden village high up in the Himalayas, and then climbed back down the mountain. And when they got back down the mountain, that’s when my story gets exciting. You see, there was a television crew there, waiting to interview the guide who took James and his friends up the mountain. They wanted to do a television story about the need for guides, because they were also doing a story about an Israeli young man who had been lost for 21 days on the mountain, after trying to find the village of Malana by himself.
The Indian television crew interviewed the guide, and then suggested that James and his friends reenact, or repeat, a little bit of their climb for the cameras, so they could show it when they did their news story. So they rode an hour back to where they started the climb, and proceded to climb again. But this time, as they started the third zig-zag, a piece of the trail just crumbled under James’ foot. His whole leg slid down; more dirt crumbled under his weight, and suddenly, he was falling down the side of the mountain. He fell 15 feet or so, a distance of about from that light to here, and would have kept falling 50-or 60 more feet down the cliff side, except that the big backpack on his back caught in some branches of scrubby trees. James was dangling there. He heard the guide Nege yelling at him in Hindi language. But James couldn’t see him, and James doesn’t speak Hindi, so James started to carefully move to the right to see if he could see up to where they were. But Nege shouted "Nay, nay, nay!" which means "No, no, no!" in Hindi. So James stayed still and waited until his friend Dhaval caught up to the guide and could translate into English.
Now the two guides were only about 5’4" tall, very small young men, but they were very strong like Sherpa guides, and they knew the mountain trails after having climbed them since they were children. They knew exactly what to do! Dhaval’s friend stayed up on the trail, and hung on to one arm of his brother Nege, while Nege edged himself carefully down the dirt and rock of the cliff, and with his other arm reached toward James with an ice pick. He told James to grab hold of the other end of the pick with one hand, and James had to trust Nege and do exactly that. Dhaval’s friend pulled on his brother Nege, and Nege pulled on James, and hauled him back up the side of that mountain to the trail. Imagine how strong those guides had to be!
All of this was caught by the cameras of Indian national television! The tv reporter, once James was back up on the trail, said to James, "How important is it to have a guide along?" And James exclaimed, "It’s SO important! Did you see what happened! It is SO important to have a really good guide!"
Now James is probably on a bloopers show in India somewhere. But I tell you that story because James could have fallen much farther, probably about 65 feet, if those two guides had not thought quickly and rescued him as he hung there, caught in those branches. The guides had to be in great physical condition to save him from another fall. They had to have the experience that came from climbing that mountain all their lives.
Today one of our Bible texts says "Two are better than one…for if one falls the other is there to pick them up." It says, "a three-stranded rope is not quickly broken", and when I read that verse in the Bible I think of a rope that ties mountain climbers together, so that if one falls, the other one will be holding on to them by a rope. Now James didn’t have that rope, but he had experienced, strong guides to pull him up like a good rope.
We need guides in life. There may be times when you are a teenager or older, when you may not know the way you should choose and you’ll need a guide to show you the way. You might have a big problem, maybe not falling down a mountain, but other things might happen that will frighten you. Maybe you’ll have a hard decision to make, and need help. When that happens, I want you to remember that there are people here who will be your guides. We’ve been practicing a whole lifetime, so we may be ale to show you the best way to go. We adults in church have lots of experience with problems, and usually one of us can help you with yours—so you should always feel free to come to Pastor Jean or to me, and we will do our best to be a good guide, or you might want to go to a special Sunday School teacher or another adult that you know you can trust. We’ve been practicing what our guide, Jesus, taught people about how to make good choices, and we would be happy to help guide you in finding ways to make life better..
So if you have a big problem when you are growing up, think about who is strong in faith, who has lots of experience with trying to be a good person—and ask that adult to show you the way, and to be your guide until you feel safe again. There are lots of guides here who will be happy to help you whenever you need one!
Sermon.
Today is Children’s Sabbath, a day we traditionally highlight needs of children, and as usual I have put into the bulletin some troubling statistics about the daunting and almost unbelievable needs of children in this country today—needs for safer, better quality child-care, needs for better schools with decent resources and adequate funding, needs for basic health care for the millions of children who don’t deserve to be abandoned by society in the richest nation on earth. It is particularly troubling to discover that the majority of poor children have parents who work full time, but their jobs do not pay a "living wage." A family cannot live above the poverty line when both parents are paid $5.15 an hour. Two weeks from today, we’ll be showing a video in Adult Forum that highlights the problems of the working poor, many of whom are victims of large companies that make huge profits by paying employees less than a living wage, and not providing healthcare that they can afford. I hope you can come to Adult Forum on Nov. 13.
But today I’m going to highlight a need that is more subtle, and harder to document than poverty. It is a serious need, nonetheless. At the risk of oversimplifying, I would say that the children of this country desperately need good guides.
80% of 20-year-old’s in America have never been to church. Hard to believe, isn’t it—80% of 20-year-old’s in America today have never been to church. Nearly every mainline church has seen tremendous, consistent decline in membership for the past three decades, and every day in America, once vibrant churches close their doors.
Now not all denominations are declining in numbers; some churches are seeing a surge in growth. The scary thing is that the religious groups that are growing fastest today are fundamentalist groups—in Christianity, in Islam and in Judaism. Fundamentalist movements tend to share some characteristics in common whether they are Christian, Muslim or Jewish fundamentalist: they tend to teach blind obedience; they tend to claim they are the only ones who know the truth about God; they tend to see themselves in a holy war against everyone who disagrees; they tend to want to impose their religious views on everyone else through government; and they tend to see violence as an acceptable means to achieve this ideal religious state. Are these the guides we want for the children of the world?
We have a responsibility to be the guides for the next generation, to offer an alternative religious viewpoint to growing fundamentalist movements around the world. I think the world desperately needs churches like ours, and that the perspective we share can make a difference ! Here are some of the ways this congregation and others like it can be guides toward a more peaceful, healthier future…
Recently someone asked me, "Why ARE we building a new church?" I’m so glad she asked that question because I realized many of you newer members don’t know. Like most of us, this person loves our church the way it is—it’s small and friendly, and has an intimacy that huge churches often lack. Let me take just a few minutes to review once again why we are building. The big reason is this: We can be more effective and reach more people if we build. Here’s why…
Had we stayed small, we would always be at risk…churches with 150 active worshippers can’t afford more than 1 pastor and there will never be enough money to afford much in support staff either. It takes a much larger congregation to support one pastor than it used to, primarily due to the high costs of health insurance and heating.
Couple that problem with the fact that we have fewer people able to volunteer a lot of hours to the church, like they used to when women didn’t work outside the home. I certainly had a lot more time to volunteer when I was home raising my children than I did when I went to work full time. Yet at the same time that we saw the rise in two-career families, and the decrease in volunteer hours, churches realized a need to offer more programming than in the past.
Why? Partly because churches realized they needed to compete for members; when 80% of 20 year-olds have never been to church, you’ve got to realize that church is no longer something people feel is a necessary part of American life. So churches have to actively work to attract people, unlike the 1950’s and 60’s. The other reason we have far more programming in the church these days is because the baby boomer generation is a consumer-oriented generation, accustomed to shopping for the best value they can find. They want the best product available and will shop to find it—going from church to church, not just staying loyal to the church they were raised in, but looking for a church that meets their needs and makes the best use of their limited time. I’m one of them; we church shopped in every city we moved into.
And so, growing churches tend to offer value-added programs, such as day care, a licensed counselor on staff, exercise groups, meditation groups, bible studies and guest lecturers, fellowship groups, financial management classes, and service opportunities. Churches began offering different types of worship experiences so today’s consumerist adults could find music they identified with. And of course, the larger the church, the more staff it could afford, and so the more programs and variety of worship experiences it could offer.
So, to recap, small churches can barely afford one pastor, they have fewer volunteers available, but they need to offer excellent programming that will attract people who no longer automatically go to church, and they need to compete with larger churches who are offering all kinds of valuable programs, planned by staffs that might include a senior minister, an associate minister, a minister of music, a minister of family life, a Christian education director, an administrator and several other support staff! The small church cannot afford to hire the staff to do all of this work, unless it grows its membership, thus growing its financial base so that it can hire enough staff to meet the expectations of today’s church-goers
Somehow Crestwood had managed to beat the odds—we had been innovative enough to start growing again 7 years ago after a steady decline in the 90’s. I remember one consultant came in and looked around and complimented us on the high energy here. But then he said, this building is "a millstone around your neck." When I asked him why, he said, "Marcia would you shop at Marshall Fields if they had not updated the store since 1960? Would you buy a 1950’s ranch style house that still had its original carpet?" As long as you are in this building, it will be incredibly more difficult to grow because young adults will look at this place and assume it is as outdated in its thinking as its appearance. You will always have a parking problem, and this lot, even if you build onto the building, will limit you and limit what you can accomplish in ministry.
We formed a Visioning Task Force, chaired by Cindy Hoy, and we did a lot of research, and all of it supported what the consultants said. So we began implementing a plan to increase our staff, to increase our programming, and to work toward building a new church. Renovating and adding onto this one would have cost us more than a new building, because there is no financial assistance from our denomination when you add on to your existing building. And the consultant was right—when we drew plans for adding on, we realized we could asphalt every inch of lawn that was left, and still have a parking problem!
So we chose to combine efforts with our conference, which had been trying to start a new church on the south edge of Sioux Falls They too faced a struggle to grow as a small church in an era in which we can no longer do things the way we used to if we hope to survive and thrive. The conference and we saw the wisdom in combining our efforts, putting our money together and building one larger church than either we or the conference could afford alone. And so Spirit of Peace UCC was born, with the help of UCC’ers from all across the state when the conference purchased the land and pledged to raise $500,000 for the new church that we will jumpstart next year!
We all became convinced that we would be a much more visible presence in SF in a new building in a new area of the city, and that we would most certainly grow faster and accommodate that growth better in a new building. Sure, it would have been so much easier to stay here and just take care of each other. But it would not have been the right thing to do for our children or the children out there who haven’t been to church yet. We’ll never be a big church with a big staff, nor do we want to be because we love being small enough for people to know and care about each other. But we will be large enough to at least offer the kind of opportunities people need and want in a church today, large enough to insure that we will survive and thrive, yet small enough to always maintain this feeling of community that we enjoy today.
Sometimes it feels like a mountain of work we have taken on, but how could we have chosen to do otherwise? We have a perspective to offer that many other churches do not. We are a place of extravagant welcome, where diversity is respected, where one’s journey toward God can take place without an environment of fear. The world’s children need churches like this one, to lead in ways that make for peace and dialogue among people.
May we be guides to our children, and to all the children who will find their way through the doors of the church we are becoming. May that be our legacy as we move ahead toward becoming Spirit of Peace UCC. Amen.