"By the Power of the Holy Spirit: Leaders are Raised Up" - Sermon, May 13, 2018
Community
UMC, Quincy
“By
the Power of the Holy Spirit: Leaders are Raised Up”
Pastor
Andrew Davis
May
13, 2018
Acts
1: 15-17, 21-26
The
feeling of being back to reality can be a challenge after having a week off
before, although still been trying to shake this chest cold. Then again, each time I’ve had to deal with
one, it takes a few weeks to fully shake.
Although you’d think I’d un-learn how to ‘burn the candle at both ends
and the middle.’ I’m also grateful for technology that connects us across the
distances, as I got to watch the class of 2018 at Wesley Theological Seminary
graduate on Monday via the livestream on the seminary’s website, while
reflecting back to my own graduation in 2016.
It gave me a lot to reflect on seeing our graduates heading off into the
world to begin their own ministries, whether it’s pastoring a church, working
for a non-profit, or other forms of ministry or vocation. Seems fitting that we are in the season of
graduations as our college students and high school students prepare to take
their next steps.
Today,
we are in the midst of several things, with today being Mother’s Day, in which
we honor our mothers, grandmother’s, aunts, and other women who are motherly
figures for many of us. While some women
have never had children before or might not have been able to have children,
there is still this opportunity to be a motherly figure and mentor for many,
especially our young people today and as we talk about raising up leaders among
us… I can’t wait to see how our girls
and boys will grow up to see them become our leaders someday…
In
our reading from Acts this morning, the disciples are coming back to Jerusalem
after Jesus’s ascension, as today happens to be Ascension Sunday, which is the
end of Jesus’s earthly ministry and is now the disciples’ turn to lead the
newly forming church, or as it was called at the time of the writing of Acts,
‘followers of the way.’ Since Easter, we have been considering some of the
readings from the Book of Acts, in which the disciples are teaching and healing
in the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s the name of Jesus Christ and the power
of the Holy Spirit that speaks to us today.
As
we see in the first chapter of Acts, Peter is emerging as the leader of the
disciples and the newly forming church, as it’s the same Peter that tried to
walk on water, or oftentimes opened his mouth and inserted his foot when we
walked alongside Jesus, even denying Jesus three times before Jesus’
death. Yet, in an act of grace and
mercy, Jesus still relies on Peter in his post-resurrection appearances, and
now Peter seems to be the one who is rising above his own shortcomings and
leading the community of believers, as written in the first half of the Book of
Acts. Yet following Judas’s death,
Mathias is chosen as one of the new disciples to replace Judas (who betrayed
Jesus) and to help lead the new community of believers in the name of Jesus and
by the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s
now up to the disciples/apostles to share about the resurrection and witness to
the faith in Jesus, just as it’s up to us today as disciples of Jesus
Christ.
It’s
quite appropriate this morning that we talk about leaders being raised up,
especially as the committee on lay leadership prepares to begin its work in
raising up leaders for 2019 (although I can already see some start to hide
under the pews…). As we sang the hymn,
“We Are the Church” last Sunday, verse one says how the church is the people
and the leaders of the church are among all of us out here. Now, one of the things that people will roll
their eyes at is being asked to serve on a committee, yet serving on a
committee is a blessing. I will not deny
that things can be bureaucratic at times, yet leadership is a blessing and a
true honor when asked to serve. At the
same time, leadership has its share of challenges too, which I think adds to
the inspiration of serving because it can help us grow as disciples and people
of faith.
When
I was taking best practices of church leadership and administration with Rev.
Dr. Lovett Weems Jr., Dr. Weems defined leadership as ‘taking God’s people to
the next step of faith,’ which is what we are called to do when leaders are
raised up or when we are raised up as leaders.
That was what the apostles and Peter were called to do after Jesus
ascended to Heaven, as it was up to them to now take the new community of faith
to the next step of faith. Even our
mothers, or mother-figures have a hand in raising us up as leaders, as I know
my mom sure did. For many of us today,
there are challenges when it comes to leadership and leading God’s people. I know I don’t need to sound like a broken
record about the lack of people coming into the church and the worldly
challenges we face. Similarly, I don’t
necessarily like to look to the past when churches were bursting at the seams
because what worked then may not exactly work today. In our own church, we are fortunate to have
people who step up when called on, although we are constantly looking towards
how we lead ourselves into the future.
Aside
from leading our church as pastor, I serve on the conference committee on young
people’s ministry and the Great Northern District Council on Ministry. This past Fall after our district
celebration, our district superintendent, Rev. Dr. Dave Samelson gave everyone
on the district council a copy of Tod Bolsinger’s book, Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory. Throughout
the book, Todd Bolsinger uses the example of the Lewis & Clark expedition
to the Pacific Northwest during the Jefferson administration in addressing challenges
they faced along the way, and how Lewis & Clark with their crew had to
adapt to finding new ways of leading into uncharted territory. In the world we live in today, Todd Bolsinger
explains that
Adaptive challenges are
the truest tests of leadership. They are
challenges that go beyond the technical solutions of resident experts or best
practices, or even the organization’s current knowledge. They arise when the world around us has
changed but we continue to live on the success of the past. They are challenges that cannot be solved
through compromise or win-win scenarios, or by adding another ministry or staff
person to the team. They demand that
leaders make hard choices about what to preserve and to let go. They are challenges that require people to
learn and to change, that require
leaders to experience and navigate profound loss.[i]
For
the apostles and for Peter who is the leader that emerges, they are the ones to
carry on Jesus’s work, which has carried on into today as we continue that
work, we all need to continually see what needs to be kept and needs to be let
go of, even though letting go is a challenge in itself. Sometimes, I’ll half-jokingly make a
reference to the Crusades, which was a dark time in the history of
Christianity, but is what it can feel like when change happens. And, change is
when leadership is tested.
When it comes to leadership in
general, Bolsinger further explains that
Leadership is not authority. It is not the title or position that a person
holds. Leadership is different from
management. Leadership is not running
good meetings, keeping good books, overseeing good programs and making good policies
(as important as those are!). Management
is a kind of stewardship. Management
cares for what is. Leadership is focused on what can be or must be…[it is] about an
organization fulfilling its mission and realizing its reason for being.[ii]
If you turn to the very front
cover of your bulletin, we have the UMC’s mission and our church’s
mission. When we think of leaders to
raise up, everything ultimately centers back to fulfilling the mission of the
church and how that mission will best be carried out. Back in the apostles’ time and still
relevant to our time, that mission was about fulfilling the ministry Jesus was
sent by God to teach us how to love one another, how to live, which became The
Way to this new community of believers. Even as Jesus ascended to Heaven, he assured
the disciples that his presence would still be with them by the power of the
Holy Spirit and the Good News is that his presence is still with us today.
Not everyone wants to be a leader
and that’s okay, but we’re all disciples and we all have a role in fulfilling
the mission of the church and Jesus’s work in the world today, by faith and by
putting our faith into action. When we
trust the power of the Holy Spirit, we may be pleasantly surprised in the
leaders who are raised among us, just like Peter and Matthias. As we go into the new week, how will you rely
on the Holy Spirit to help fulfill the mission of the church and is God calling
you to be a leader in any way, shape, or form?
In the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let the Church Say, Amen!!
[i]
Todd Bolsinger, Canoeing the Mountains:
Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2015),
19.
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