"A Gift to Give"

John 17, Hebrews 11, 12

Dr. Al Reese
Interim Pastor

May 24, 2009

Can you imagine downtown Mobile without GSPC? I frankly can’t imagine it! But it almost happened, you know. In the turbulent and sometimes nasty debates which occurred in the 1950’s and 1960’s about city and suburban transitions, GSPC was a vital part of that debate. Shopping centers and strip malls were luring businesses and churches to the suburbs, and people were following them in every major city in the United States.

Spring Hill Presbyterian Church had not yet reached 200 members, and my Hebrew professor in Seminary, Dr. James Gailey, a former pastor of Spring Hill, told me one day on the campus of Columbia Theological Seminary, that it was extremely difficult for Spring Hill Presbyterian to compete with Central and GSPC for new members. And he added, “If GSPC moved out Dauphin Street or near the Mobile Country Club, it would be the end of Spring Hill.” Thus those who wanted to go west insisted with some degree of certainty that a move would make GSPC flourish, and the new church would be squarely where its members were, as well as where new people were moving into Mobile.

I have thought to myself so many times as I have circled this block to head east, what it might be like on this corner if those who wanted to move had won that debate. This church has been called the soul of Mobile by folks more knowledgeable and influential than I. It has also been referred to by other clergy in South Alabama Presbytery as not only the mother church of Presbyterians in Mobile and Baldwin Counties, but it has also been called the paradigm or model of what churches are supposed to be and do. That is high praise, and deserved or not, the folks who won the debate 50 years ago understood that churches are in the business of loving and serving the homeless, the marginalized, and the outcast among us, and those folks are in the city, not in the suburbs. Loving and caring, that’s what we do, and the presbytery knows that and thus the mantra of “model” church fits here as it fits no other place.

I don’t know about any of you, but two years ago I was privy to the hours and hours of research which George did to preach a sermon on our future. I did not help in any way with the research; I only read what he was doing and offered my thoughts. But in that sermon, which took over six months to write, you will remember that he said two things which a common-sense guy like George would extrapolate from over 100 pages of data.

First, he said that GSPC has been in the business of a loving, caring, and serving ministry for over 175 years, and it has been doing it quite well.

Second, he said that to continue to do that, GSPC absolutely must grow, for at the rate we have been losing members for the last 50 years, we will have reached zero sum membership 25 years from now, and it will be awfully hard to continue our ministry with an empty sanctuary and with empty coffers.

As you know, out of that meticulous research a retreat for church officers was held and ultimately job descriptions for an associate minister of church growth and a lay person to tell our story to the city were created. Ryan and Denise now fill those positions which two years ago did not exist, and what a difference they have made in enhancing church growth, morale, and strengthening our vision. They have taught the rest of us to really do what we say each time we gather:

We are called by the Spirit

to glorify God

So that all may become

joyful disciples of Jesus Christ.

During that six months of intensive research, as George and I shared his data, we had many somewhat awkward moments of disagreement about the nuts and bolts of church growth. I lost every one of those mini-arguments, and I am glad that I did. Like John the Apostle, George’s sine qua non for a strategy of church growth had one criterion with three parts which would not be compromised. That criterion with its three parts was:

Does the plan really affirm Jesus Christ as Lord and head of the church?

Will those who join us be asked to commit themselves to that affirmation?

Will the validity and reliability of every program we devise be evaluated by how much it reflects our love for Jesus and our call to honor him in our ministry?

I should have learned in my 54 years of ministry not to argue with someone who has memorized all 12 volumes of Karl Barth’s Dogmatics, but I am as hard-headed as George, and sometimes we argued just for the joy of arguing. Gladly I admit I am not his peer when it comes to Reformed Theology ... I say that with deep gratitude, for George is my pastor, and I want my pastor to be a better theologian than I am.  But I have gotten away from the question which opened the sermon. Can you imagine downtown Mobile without GSPC standing so majestically on the busiest street corner in town?

The writer of the sermon we call Hebrews, from which I read earlier, had a very long view of history. He took at least the first 30 minutes of his sermon to insist that the history of God’s covenant people was all about Jesus. There were a lot of other actors and actresses in the drama we call church history, but all of them, without exception, witnessed to the Jesus’ event, the incarnation, without ever having the privilege of seeing Jesus’ face or of being a part of his brief life. Nevertheless, they were vital to the drama, and like William Hamilton, Henry Hitchcock, James R. Burgett, Tolly Thompson, Chet Frist, and Massey Heltzel, none of them could see far enough into the future to imagine what the church would become under the leadership of those who would close out the 20^th century and begin the 21^st. Like Abraham and Sarah, they trusted the promise, just as the list of those whom you hold in your hand today did, but even they could not have envisioned the influence this church would have in the reshaping and the renewal of downtown Mobile after the exodus of the 1960’s.

So what did the preacher do who wrote Hebrews? He said to his flock that Sunday morning that the work of caring ministry was not over. Some had finished the race, but you have not. Of course you know that you are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who went before you, and what a gift they have given to all of us, but the job is not done … the mission is not yet accomplished … the race is not over. So, to you who are here today on this Heritage Sunday comes this word:

Knowing that we are surrounded by those who went before us, let us lay aside every encumbrance which might hinder us, and let us run with perseverance the race which is set before us, looking to Jesus who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

John Calvin, to the consternation of some of his more radical Protestant colleagues, insisted that this text was the best image of the doctrine of the communion of the saints in the Bible. For Calvin they were not lifeless corpses in the bleachers, but they were Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachael, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. For us they are Roz Heltzel, Elizabeth Fitler, Austill Pharr, Dottie Meyers, and a thousand other saints of this church who have joined the church triumphant. That is kind of spooky Calvin’s more generous friends said to him, but if you believe it, we will join you. Others like Knox and Zwingli said they would have nothing to do with Roman superstition in spite of their mentor’s persuasive powers.

But listen to a very personal word from your preacher today. The last words my Carolyn spoke to our children before she died were these:

What are we going to do with Daddy? He is going to need a lot of help for awhile. Stay close to him until he is okay, and remember, I will be with you.

Did you hear that? What are we going to do with Daddy? She was not leaving that care to her children alone; she too would have a part in the reconstruction of a devastated preacher. I am with Calvin on this one. She was in those bleachers, in every restless moment at three o’clock in the morning, and in the lonely drives to Tallahassee and Thomasville to see sick church members in the hospital. She was with me when I came to Pensacola a year after she died, and I know of no other way to explain the gift she gave to me in Helen. She knew Helen was tough enough and wonderful enough to bring me back to life so that I could continue the race. And what was true of Carolyn is also true of every one of those whose names you hold in your hand today.

And to Calvin the chief among those witnesses was Jesus Christ, who alone had the power to perfect our faith in this church’s future. That faith for the preacher of Hebrews was not some set of dogmas “once and for all delivered to the saints.” It was a functional confidence that what began 178 years ago on this street corner would go on and on until the end of the age. And that faith keeps us writing an agenda for GSPC each new day, for that faith is an aorist verb, which means that in this tense whatever happened in the past would also define the future. What is the main reason the list is in the bulletin today? Because I want you to see and to hold in your hand the companions who are committed to being with you in that future.

For them their faith was a gift to be given away to every person in this city, and it is the same for us. I have been doing that ever since I heard Massey Heltzel speak do the Synod of Alabama forty two years ago … telling everyone I could that there was a church in Mobile, Alabama, where the gospel was preached and practiced, and that church was on the corner of Jackson and Government Streets … downtown! Go there and see if I am not right. That is what we celebrate on Christian Heritage Sunday. I hope, like Ryan and Denise, you believe that strongly enough to do it.  Amen.