I want to speak today about John Shelby Spong, and his role as matchmaker in bringing our family together with your community.  I also want to speak about the vision and mission of this church, and how the next steps in that mission are an expansion of inclusiveness. 

What is Globalization?

Question: What is the definition of Globalization?
Answer: The death of Princess Diana

Why?
An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian, who was drunk on Scottish whiskey, followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines!

Nine years later, conspiracy theorists still report sightings of the Princess all over the globe.

At first globalization simply referred to the new global economy. Now it encompasses the great phenomenon of our time- the process by which all scientific, cultural, religious and economic human activity is integrated into one worldwide network.

One of the first to predict this movement was the 19th century Priest and scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  He predicted a process in the world of both divergence and convergence.  Divergence was the Babel process of scattered peoples and languages and cultures- spreading to the ends of the earth.  Once there is no more space to spread to, then the transition to convergence would take place- all ethnic groups and cultures would merge back together and form one global culture. This in turn would produce a higher form of human consciousness.

The greatest gift of Teilhard de Chardin was his belief that humankind would stop looking outside of nature for the cause and expression of ultimate consciousness, and instead begin to find awe and mystery in nature itself.  Teilhard saw the vision- inclusiveness as not just about reaching out to help or welcome a wider group of people. Inclusiveness is about seeing the face of God in an ever-widening group of people, situations, and nature and that encounter shapes our own consciousness.

So why would a church like ours see itself as having some sort of global role? Not primarily because we think we have something the rest of the world lacks. That would be no better than the evangelistic mission attitude of saving others. Rather, because in our encounter with the globe we will be part of the expansion of a global consciousness. This will more than benefit us. It will be an essential part of our growth as people and as a community.

Christ Community Church and Globalization

The foresight that this community showed in engaging someone from the southern hemisphere to lead this community, was courageous and inspirational. It was no marriage of convenience. On the contrary, it was never going to be easy for many of us.  It was, in the face of challenge, the next step for a community exploring inclusiveness.

Did you know that in the Northern Hemisphere, water runs down the drain clockwise, while in the Southern Hemisphere water runs down the drain counter-clockwise? Well at least that’s what some people say. Some argue that it happens for the same reason that hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere curve to the right and in the Southern Hemisphere curve to the left. Consequently, there are no hurricanes at the equator. Others argue that while this may be true for hurricanes, in the case of water draining it would be unlikely to show any difference between hemispheres unless the conditions were very carefully controlled.

In any case, what we have created here, strikes me a little like these analogies:

1.  We have created our own convergence to use Teilhard's language.

2.  In this convergence, we have found our own form of equator where life moves both clockwise and counter-clockwise, where ideas go clockwise and  counter-clockwise, where relationships develop both clockwise and counter- clockwise and we seek to make sense of it all.

So how did this global partnership emerge?

An American Bishop, John Shelby Spong was responsible for it. In 2001, when Jack and Christine were touring Australia and New Zealand, I invited them to be guests at my downtown church in Auckland.  Jack gave a series of presentations, as he will here next weekend.  It was an exciting time.  I had the opportunity to share a meal with them, and get to know them better. A few days after they left, I received a handwritten note from Jack. He had written it at the airport in Auckland. In this note, he introduced me to the name “Dick Rhem” and a West Michigan church called Christ Community Church. He said to me that in his travels, there were no more than a handful of churches in the world that were intent on moving fearlessly into a new future. He said that he had found one in the most unlikely place, a conservative religious climate, and that it had broken away from one of the most conservative denominations in America, the RCA. In the meantime, he had met with leaders from Christ Community Church and said that he had encountered only a handful of ministers in the world who could fulfill their hopes for the next steps in the life of this community.

Matching an Independent Minister and an Independent Church

So Bishop Spong acted as matchmaker.  He introduced me as a minister who was only interested in an alternative to church as usual with a community who wanted to be an alternative to church as well.  I have to say that I was skeptical at first. A progressive community in West Michigan? So I did some research. Sure enough, when I logged onto the Christ Community website and searched some of Dick's sermons- I found him saying some very progressive things. For example, these two comments in particular stand out.

"If Christianity is a living tradition, then it can never be frozen.  It can never be set.  It can never be absolutized.  It is always in motion and those who have been shaped by a living tradition have found the grace and the freedom to continue to move, to continue to follow the whim and the wind of the spirit, mapping out uncharted ground and sailing into uncharted seas without fear, confident that the God of our past will be the God who will accompany us in the future.  So, there is continuity and there is change."
-Richard A Rhem, December 28, 2003

"Of course it won't be the same, can't be the same, and shouldn’t be the same.  If it was the same, we'd be doomed to death."
-Richard A Rhem, September 21, 2003

Eventually I got to meet members of the community and have some conversations with Dick. I asked him how it had happened- how had an RCA community become so progressive?  He told me that it had happened often with people kicking and screaming- we tend to kick and scream when were afraid of unknown territory- he said that he could see me coming and taking the next steps to a place he couldn’t go to himself. He said that he had been the bridge that had brought the community to this point, but now it would require someone with my universal interests who was also grounded in a particular Christian framework to take the community further.

We’ve had some kicking and screaming lately, which is not surprising when fear rears its head.  That is what happens when we are moving in unknown territory.  There is no model for what we are creating, and that is overwhelming, frightening, and exhilarating at the same time. I want you to know that I am very much aware of the fear factor and feel it deeply. If I had time to meet one on one with every single one of you, I would do it.  This is not about fear.  In fact, to the contrary, it is about life and sharing our humanity. I don’t have time to do that with each one of you, although I welcome invitations to do so. 

The Vision and Mission of Christ Community Church

So why is it that there are there only a handful of ministers and churches in the world with an interest in engaging with a post modern world?   This is where the selection committee and board of this church showed great courage and foresight and birthed the idea of an expansion of this church’s mission:  The vision was an ever-expanding awareness of God through all and in all along with a mission to build a strong local progressive Christian community.  We then offer that as a resource to the wider community, beginning within reach in places like Frankfort, Michigan, and then nationally and globally. 

This is Teilhard’s vision of the noosphere- the integration of all minds and forces in the cosmos.  People crave this connection and integration, and often don’t find it in the church. In fact these are often the people who attach Bishop Spong’s phrase “church alumni” to their name. Let me tell you about some of these people.

One of my close friends through seminary had his marriage break up soon after graduating. He lost his license to be a minister in the church, and had to re-create himself outside of the ministry. He found nothing meaningful in any church he attended, so he gave up. When I began an online ministry in Auckland, he subscribed to it, and began to interact with the ideas presented. Here was a guy with so much to offer the world, and yet there was no place in the church for him. At one point he wrote to me and said, “The online community is my church”. In some ways it wasn’t as good as a physical gathering of people, and yet in other ways it was freer. For him it became an alternative to church as usual.

Now, through our online ministries, we have people writing to us from all over the country, and all over the world, sharing ideas and lives. There is another example in your bulletin this morning-

Dear Christ Community Church:

In the midst of a humid semi-tropical summer here in Australia, I came across the website for Christ Community Church just before Christmas. To be honest, I had a surge of spiritual energy and a feeling of connectedness I have not felt for about 30 years. It felt like coming home. Like so many others of my age -- late 50s -- I parted company long ago with a church I could no longer feel part of. I had been a candidate for the Methodist ministry in Australia in the 70s and my wife and I were both youth leaders. But the church in Australia is tragically conservative. The nearest I have come to any sanity in all of this has been through the books of John Shelby Spong. He is a living treasure. In the meantime, my spirituality has been parked in limbo longing to get out, but with nowhere to go. Your website to me is a lifeline. I hear myself shouting 'Yes" to so many of the things your team is presenting in worship and social comment. It has potency and a relevance that brings me to life spiritually and intellectually. Just to know that you are there, on the other side of the great Pacific Ocean, doing what you are doing, saying what you are saying, being who are -- ignites and sustains the fires of hope deep inside my cynical soul. Let me thank you again for making my world a better place.

With gratitude and admiration

C3 North is modeling yet another alternative to church as usual. For those who don’t know, they gather each Sunday morning in a café in Frankfort on Crystal Lake. There are 30 to 40 of them and they have a beautiful and relaxed morning together that includes watching the DVD of our previous Sunday’s service and running their own sermon talk back. Many of them have their own stories of disillusionment with the institutional church, as many of us do. They gather in an open space of ideas, grounded in progressive Christianity. In the case of C3 North, the unique arrangement means that many of the members there pledge and give generously to the ministry of Christ Community Church. They have also just informed me that they take an offering each week and that they will be sending money each month from their offering to support our audio, visual and online ministries.

C3 North is made up of people just like us- people on journeys, adventurers, thoughtful and questioning people. The numbers of people who use our website each day are people, just like us- on journeys, adventurers, thoughtful and questioning people.  So while there has been some talk around recently about the balance of people and technology, this is a false distinction. This is all about people. Technology is just a tool to put our resources into the global community and to open us to the wisdom of the global community.  It’s also unfair to draw a distinction between local and global.  Everything that happens is done with the local in mind- with efficient technology we are able to take our local life and offer a slice of it to others around the country and the world.

Let me say that this is not about creating a global empire, nor about evangelizing masses to think in any particular way. This is about placing ourselves in the wide world of ideas. This is about being an alternative to church as usual- where our resources form part of a marketplace of ideas and questions. This is about not telling people what to believe, just opening up possibilities for people, and having our minds opened to their possibilities.  In fact, as much as some of us would like to have a clearly mapped-out future, this is not possible. The future goes wherever our consciousness takes us. The vision is clear- the mission is being lived in action. The end point is beyond imagination.

Dick Rhem took this church so far. You have gone so far. The mind boggles. What courage and what a spirit of adventure. For those who have been here since the split from the RCA, I bow in honor of your boldness. For those who have joined more recently, we join a rich history of trailblazing. I bow in honor of your adventurous spirits.  Bishop Spong has taken progressive Christianity so far. The mind boggles. What courage and spirit of adventure. Now he leaves it with us to take the next steps.

I offer you his words as we anticipate his visit in just 5 days time-

"To be ready to move into this not fully clear vision is to face honestly the recognition that that place where the church, with its binding creeds and closed scriptures has traditionally dwelt, is no longer a livable place.  If we vote to stay we are voting to die."

We aren’t going to stand still, are we?  We certainly aren’t going backwards.  Join me for the ride of our lives. We will be there together, agreeing and disagreeing, living both clockwise and counterclockwise, not always knowing the destination, not always knowing all the steps before we take them. All we know is that we will be together and in being together we will be nothing less than in the presence of God.