Bob Kaylor

A Presidential Visit

One of the fascinating things about living in Park City is the parade of famous people who come through here on a regular basis. Most of us residents rarely see these people, mind you, since they generally don't frequent the same restaurants and shops that we do. I mean, we usually wind up eating somewhere where food is served in a bag.

This week, however, we received the ultimate visitor--The President of the United States. Even as I am typing this about 7:30AM on Thursday morning, Marine One, the presidential helicopter, is flying over my house. In fact, we've been hearing choppers all morning. The President flew in yesterday for an overnight visit and a fundraiser for McCain in Deer Valley at Mitt Romney's house ($70K per couple--Jennifer and I didn't go. See, the Stanley Cup Finals were on TV and all, so...). The choppers landed at Treasure Mountain Middle School, which is where Rob's baseball team practices. The practice was delayed while the President landed and got in his motorcade, but one of the choppers hung around on the ground and the kids got to go through it after practice. Quite a thrill for Rob. Hannah even got a chance to go and see it.

Regardless of how you feel about the President himself, it's quite impressive to see all the pomp, circumstance, and security surrounding a visit by the "most important man in the world." What's interesting about it all, though, is that while the President is certainly important, there's a pretty good chance that most people will be pouring over his words and devoting themselves to him 2,000 years from now (or even 20 years from now). Jesus never flew in a helicopter, never had a town shut down because he visited, and had no motorcade, but is still "the most important person in the world." It's fun to watch the helicopters, but it's better to be impressed by Jesus!

Bob's (Not So) Excellent Adventure

So, yesterday after worship I headed down to Salt Lake to pick up my friend and colleague Brian so that we could head up to Ogden and attend the dedication of the new United Methodist Church there. We had a nice time celebrating with the folks there who have moved out of a hundred year-old building to a brand new facility. It's exciting to see a congregation stretch like that.

We came back about 6:30PM. I dropped Brian off at his house and headed up Parley's Canyon (I-80), only to find traffic at an absolute stop below Mountain Dell. Everyone was essentially parked, out of their cars walking around, etc. It's amazing what happens when people are forced to wait like that. I started having a variety of conversations with different folks, all doing some speculating about what was going on (a major accident caused by a man fleeing police and crashing into an ethanol tanker). I met two families from Kamas, one of which had 5 or 6 very young kids in the car. I felt for them, because they had all been napping before they had to stop. I had conversations with rough-looking biker types, well-heeled BMW drivers, and truckers all right there in the middle of the Interstate. Nobody was hopping mad, just joking quietly about our situation.

After about 45 minutes of waiting and realizing we weren't going anywhere for awhile, I hooked a U-turn using a ranch exit and headed back down to Salt Lake to grab some dinner and wait it out. The other canyon I could take (Provo) was also blocked by an accident and the only alternative would have been to drive back to Ogden, get on I-84 and go home the very, very long way. I decided I was too tired to undertake that, plus I didn't want to have to take out a small loan to pay for the extra gas for the 100+ miles that would have taken.

I motored back to Sugar House, ate a Chipotle burrito, noodled around Barnes and Noble a bit until about 8:15. I figured everything would have cleared by then. Nope. I came back to the exact same spot, hooked the same U-Turn and headed back down to Brian's place, where I hung out until 11:00PM. I looked at the web cams for UDOT and it looked like things were moving so, for the third time, I headed back up the canyon. This time I got stopped a mile further back in absolute standstill traffic. Again, it was out of the truck, chat with some others also standing around, and wait. About 11:50, traffic suddenly started moving--for about a half mile--and then dead stop again for another 20 minutes or so until, inexplicably, we were on the gas all the way back to Park City. I rolled into the house at 12:45AM.

While it was frustrating, it reminded me of the nature of community. We spend so much time whizzing by one another at high speed, but when we're forced to stop we begin to realize that our fellow humans are really worth spending some time with. Given time and space, we really can build some community together. I'm not a fan of being stuck in traffic, but if you have to be there you might as well find the silver lining!

Famous Last Words (Sermon for 5/18/08)

Famous Last Words
Matthew 28:16-20
2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Whenever I’m preparing a sermon based on the lectionary I always try to find a connection between the texts for the week. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious thematically and sometimes it’s not. This week, however, you’ll notice that both the texts we read are farewell discourses—last words of exhortation and instruction. Jesus gives final instructions to his disciples before his ascension (a passage now best known as “The Great Commission”) and Paul says some final words to the Corinthian Church with whom he has had a rather rocky relationship.

Final words are important because they’re often the first thing people will remember. Ending well leaves a lasting impression. It’s like the piano teacher taught many students over a lifetime career. When she got them ready for recitals, she would encourage them to perfect their endings. She insisted they practice the endings over and over again. When her students grumbled that it was boring going over and over these last few measures, she would answer: "You can make a mistake in the beginning or in the middle or in some other place along the way. But all will be forgotten when you manage to make the ending glorious."

Maybe that’s why the expression “famous last words” is so, well, famous. Some endings are glorious and some ignoble. I found a web site that listed a bunch of famous last words, dying words of famous people. Interesting stuff.

• Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen was on his death bed when his doctor said to him, “The angels are waiting for you.” To which Allen replied, “Waiting are they? Waiting are they? Well--let 'em wait.”
• Karl Marx’s housekeeper asked the dying man whether he had any last words. He said to her, “Go on, get out - last words are for fools who haven't said enough.”
• Mexican bandit Poncho Villa, when he was shot by assassins, said, “Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”
• Writer Oscar Wilde, dying in a Paris hotel, said, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
• And my personal favorite—Union General John Sedgwick at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse in 1864, seeing Confederate sharpshooters 1,000 yards away said, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dis—“

Last words can be sublime or ridiculous. They don’t necessarily have to be dying words. Jesus was going to be with the Father, Paul was moving on in his missionary work, but in both cases their last words were directed at those whom they had trained and nurtured in faith—words of command and commissioning for those left behind. Think of them as final orders—the last and most important statements that become the first and foremost words of instruction for a new generation of disciples.

I like the juxtaposition of these two “last words” because they round out the scope of what Christians are to be about. Jesus’ focus is on those outside the community of faith while Paul’s is on the relationships within the church. Focusing on both aspects of community are essential for disciples of Jesus—those within and those without.

The most important word in the Great Commission is “go.” Jesus’ authority has been given to the disciples—authority to preach and teach his Kingdom message, the eyewitness authority of the cross and resurrection, authority to heal and make people whole. Clothed with that authority they were to “go” and share it, use it, express it powerfully among “all the nations.” Their tasks were to “baptize” and to “teach”—proclaiming God’s forgiveness and new birth through Jesus’ death and resurrection and inviting people on a journey toward a new, wholistic, healthy, and redeemed way of life. The disciples were to be on a journey following Jesus and were to invite others to join the journey as well. Jesus’ last words were the first words that launched a worldwide movement of faith.

If you look in the book of Acts you see that the first name for the early Christian church was “the Way.” Jesus himself had said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Christianity was originally designed not to be a religion, but the way—a path to be followed, a journey to be undertaken, a mission to be carried out. Jesus’ last words to his disciples were a command to follow the way that he had shown them. All other ways and paths ultimately were dead ends.

I was thinking about this as I was reading the spiritual autobiography of E. Stanley Jones as part of my doctoral program. Jones was a missionary to India and traveled all over the world as an evangelist, preaching the good news of Jesus. Jones wrote his autobiography in 1968 at the age of 83 which, in my view, makes his words especially profound. Jones spent his whole life following in the way of Jesus and teaching others to do the same. His was a Great Commission life.

One of the things that Jones wrote about struck me as being especially profound. Most people see living the Christian life as being abnormal—that normal human life is characterized by sin and selfishness. But Jones remembered that we were created in God’s image—that we were created inherently for health and wholeness. In other words, “Everyone, everywhere, by his makeup is destined to belong to Christ, for he is made by Christ and for Christ.” When we choose to shake off that destiny, through sin and selfishness, we suffer. He writes about a man who became an atheist, saying to a friend, “Oh, I’m sorry but I don’t believe that anymore.” Jones asks, “Why did he say he was ‘sorry’ that he didn’t believe anymore? Why didn’t he say, ‘Hallelujah, I don’t believe that anymore? No, everyone goes away [from Jesus] sorrowful, for he is going away from home…Is it hard to be a Christian? No, it’s hard not to be a Christian. It is hard to live against life.”

That’s a powerful statement. We’re wired for the Christian life, wired for following Christ, wired to be in the Way. Follow it and we find peace. Step off the way and we suffer.

Jones writes about a doctor he encountered who understood this principle. The surgeon said to the missionary, “I’ve discovered the Kingdom of God at the end of my scalpel. It’s in the tissues. The right thing morally, the Christian thing, is always the healthy thing physically.” When we live in the Way, when we follow Jesus’ commands to live simply, to not over-consume, to maintain sexual purity, to love others unconditionally, to take time for prayer and Sabbath with God there’s a physical effect. When we live in the Way, we find our way to health, both individually and as communities. Jones quotes a Dr. William Sadler who said, “If humanity lived in a truly Christian way, half the diseases of humanity would drop off tomorrow morning and we would stand up a healthy new humanity.” That's not to say that diseases don't come through no fault of own, just that we give ourselves the best chance at healthy living when we follow the Way.

Jesus commanded his disciples to live in the Way and invited others to join them for the purpose of healing the whole world. The Great Commission is about conversion, but not mere conversion to a new religion, or about getting more people to go to heaven when they die. That’s a caricature of Christian faith. The call to Christian faith is a call to live in the Way—the Way in which Jesus leads us and promises to be with us “even to the end of the age.”

Faith isn’t about simple cognitive assent to a set of beliefs. Instead it’s a full commitment to a way, the Way, of living. If our faith does not drive our whole lives—from where we live to what we do with our money to what we eat to where we spend our time—then it is not the Way. Living in the Way changes everything.

That leads us to the second set of last words in this week’s scriptures. Paul writes to the Corinthian Church with a similar set of exhortations, again in the imperative voice. Notice the first one: “Put things in order” (NRSV). The NIV renders this, “Aim for perfection,” but the sense of the Greek is more aimed at restoring things to their proper place. In other words, Paul is exhorting the Corinthians to put their feet back on the Way, to “listen” to what’s important and to “live in peace” with God and each other.

If we want to experience health and wholeness, if we want to be at peace with ourselves and with others, if we want to make our lives count for something, then we must re-order our priorities and join the journey that is the Way. Like E. Stanley Jones, Paul had lived that Way and had discovered that there really was no other way of living that could be as life-giving.

I meet a lot of scattered people as I go around Park City—people whose lives are pulled in a thousand different directions, people whose ordering of life seems to be out of whack. I’m always amazed when I go to parties or to other gatherings and most of the conversations are about things. I was at one gathering where I tried to join in a couple of different conversational circles but I was disappointed. One was a passionate discussion about granite counter tops, another treatise on the floor plans of the houses in the neighborhood. When things become the only point of connection with people, that’s not the Way.

We’ve had a number of suicides in our town—an inordinate amount in my view. These are all people who, by all accounts, seemed to be successful. Depression is a disease, to be sure, but I wonder how much the illusion of success contributes to feelings of despair? What happens when you’ve achieved everything the world has to offer—money, home, car, vacations, etc.—but it’s not enough? How hard it must be to come to a point in your life when you’ve discovered that the way you’ve followed isn’t the Way.

I’ve talked to couples in crisis whose marriages are breaking up because one or the other (or sometimes both) of them insist on having things their way. There’s a belief that somehow if they could only exchange their spouse or their life situation everything would be better. Affairs, for example, are a destructive short cut in an attempt to find personal fulfillment, but it’s a path that leads off a spiritual and emotional cliff. Abusive relationships are one thing, but a willful dismissal of the marriage covenant is another. When the divorce happens people often discover that the way they undertook was a path to misery. That’s not the Way.

Over and over again we see the consequences of not following the Way. We see how hard it is to not be a Christian, the dashed hopes, dreams and relationships left in the wake of a hell-bent-for-leather run toward the so-called American Dream. The American Dream is not the Way. It will not lead us to health or fulfillment or peace, only to last words that are empty. Only the Way of Christ is the true way to life.

But here’s the paradox—it is also the way of death. When we choose the Way, we put to death the old ways of living we’ve become so used to. Paul uses this language often in his letters—“dying to self” and “dying and being raised with Christ.” When we choose the Way, we are saying no to other ways. We can’t be on two paths at the same time. Think about that famous Robert Frost poem—“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” The Way is the path less traveled by—the path that makes all the difference.

The last words of Jesus in Matthew, the Great Commission, are words directed at us as his church in this place. “Go and make disciples,” go and show others the Way. The truth is that if we, as followers of Christ, don’t ourselves live the Way and show the Way in our community, no one else will. As followers of Christ, we must put things in order and show how this really works. We can bring health to our community in the power of God’s Spirit…if we follow the Way.

Jesus’ words and Paul’s admonitions are a tough sell in our culture. To suggest that there is one true Way toward human fulfillment and completion is seen as being very pretentious. After all, we live in a “free” country and freedom means that we should be able to do whatever we want, right? Insisting that we must be obedient to a specific path turns people off to faith.

“Obey” is a four letter word in our freedom-loving culture, but the truth is that we all obey something—be it money, power, sex, self, or a host of other things. Ultimately, however, these things can enslave us. If we obey money, debt and the balance sheet become our master. If we obey sex, we are subservient to our passions. If we obey the need for power, we are enslaved to overwork and the furious pursuit of our reputations. Freedom without limits is the illusion of freedom.

There are certain laws that are absolute—obey those laws and you are free. A pilot, for example, is free to fly provided that he or she obeys the laws of flying. Ditch the laws and you ditch the plane. Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God as being the reality which orders all of life—the Way. Follow the Way and we are free to live without guilt, without the tyranny of immediate gratification, without the endless pursuit of things that ultimately do not satisfy. Follow the Way and we are free to be all and do all that God has planned for us—like God says through the prophet Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

“Go and make disciples,” was Jesus’ last command. To do that, we have to become followers ourselves. We need to be committed to the Way ourselves and doing that requires discipline. We get to know the Way by intentionally spending time with Christ in study and prayer and we get to know Christ even more as we live out the Way in our daily lives.

Paul’s final words to the Corinthians are a benediction—words of sending forth. “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” God longs to go with us on our journey in the Way.

This morning our communications team is doing some surveying about words that will come to define our church and its mission. There are a lot of good ideas there, but I’ll admit that I’m partial to phrases that invite people to join a journey, to join the Way. My prayer is that we will be a church on the Way, where people are being transformed by conforming to the Way of Christ.

But let me make this a little more personal in closing. All of us will someday have some last words—will they be words of fear or words of faithfulness? Will we look at our lives as having been fulfilled and having meaning because we have been on the Way, or will we look back and see all that we missed in our pursuit of other more selfish ways?

Ministering in different cultures, E. Stanley Jones found a simple gesture conveyed a lot of impact. He taught people to hold up three fingers which stood for three words: “Jesus is Lord.” Those are the words that determine our allegiance, and the words that launch us on the Way. When we submit ourselves to Christ, when we allow God to have the last word in our lives, we discover true freedom.

In a moment, I’m going to pray and I’m going to invite you, if you are seeking a new beginning, a fresh start on the Way, to pray with me. If you feel led, I invite you to come to the altar rail during the hymn to pray. It’s a way of taking those first steps on a journey with Christ. Maybe you don’t feel worthy, don’t feel like you could be a disciple of Jesus. That’s OK, none of us is worthy on our own. It is God’s grace, poured out through Christ, that makes us so.

No matter what mistakes you’ve made or what other paths you’ve chosen, today’s a new chance to begin toward a glorious ending!

Sources:
Jones, E. Stanley, A Song of Ascents

The Art of Woo (Sermon for 5/4/08)

Acts 1:1-14

This Sunday is "Ascension Sunday" on the church calendar, the Sunday before Pentecost that commemorates Jesus' "ascension" into heaven. When I was in Jerusalem last January we went to the Church of the Ascension on the top of the Mount of Olives (which is now a Muslim site). Inside the stone dome there is a rock which is supposed to be "the" rock that Jesus stood on when he floated up to heaven in the clouds…or at least that's how the story goes.

In reality, Luke's vision of the ascension of Jesus isn't so much about Jesus disappearing into the heavens as much as it is about ordering a new reality for the disciples. Most people reading this passage have concluded that Jesus went up in some kind of heavenly elevator and would return again one day to take the rest of us up in the clouds in the same way. It's here, however, that we have to read the context to understand what the ascension means.

Throughout the Bible, the distance between heaven and earth is not about up or down or how far away. Biblically speaking, heaven and earth are the two halves of God's created world, two interlocking dimensions. The ultimate goal, according to the preaching of Jesus, was that these two interlocking dimensions, close to each other but veiled, would become one which is what we pray for in the Lord's Prayer. The resurrected body of Jesus, according to Luke and the other Gospel writers, was the first (and so far only) object which is at home in both spheres, looking forward to the day when everything will be renewed and joined together.

To say, then, that Jesus was "lifted up" does not mean that he went somewhere out beyond Mars, but that he was being exalted and was going into God's space, God's dimension. The "cloud" is an important clue here--for in the Scriptures the appearance of a cloud is most often equated with the presence of God (Moses and the Israelites followed a pillar cloud by day, Isaiah saw God within the "smoke" and cloud of the Temple). To say that Jesus "ascended" is a way of saying that Jesus has gone into God's presence in the body until the day when all of us will be resurrected and live in the fully revealed presence of God.

If we get a little deeper into the historical context as well we see this even more clearly. Luke's readers would know that when a Roman emperor died, it was tradition for someone witnessing the death to say that they had seen his soul leaving his body and going up to heaven. I've not been there, but I read that in Rome if you stand under the Arch of Titus and look up you can see a carving of the soul of the emperor Titus (who died in the 80s AD) ascending to heaven. The message was clear to everyone at the time: the emperor was becoming a god, and his heir would thus be known as the "son of god," which is a very good title if you want to seize power and run the world. In Luke's account, however, there's a very clear sense that the emperor is being upstaged. Jesus did not ascend into the heavens, leaving his body behind somewhere and passing on his divinity to an heir. Rather, his whole, renewed, resurrected, bodily self was ascending, meaning that he was and still is the true ruler of the world, indeed the whole created order. Separation and succession weren't part of the story. It's a powerful distinction that we have to understand if we want to know what Luke's first readers understood.

Why is it important to understand it this way? Well, it has to do with the mission for the disciples in the earthly dimension. Jesus wasn't telling them to prepare to follow him into a faraway heaven, nor to prepare others to do that. A lot of Christian theology has focused on this incorrectly. The good news of Jesus is not simply that if one believes or prays the right prayer you will go to heaven when you die. It's a much larger vision than that, a vision about working to join the two halves together. The good news of Jesus is contained in his teaching about the Kingdom of God, the completion of everything, the restoration of God's goodness and peace and light for the whole sphere of creation. The risen Jesus had shown that it was more than possible by defeating death and revealing the life of resurrection. Now it was the disciples' turn to carry on the work of making the Kingdom a reality, doing what Jesus had done in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Christian gospel was never about escaping the world, but about redeeming it with the blessing and example of the one true King.

With that theological review in the back of our minds, let's look at the action here. Jesus pulls his disciples, the new and reconstituted Israel, together for final instructions. They are wanting to know the whens, whys, and wherefores of his return. In that sense they're very much like the Left Behinders who look at every political situation and see a clue to Jesus' return. "When are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel?" ask the disciples.

Jesus gives them a direct answer--essentially, don't worry about that. It's amazing to me that despite Jesus' instruction thousands of Christians continue to do just that, painting others as enemies and basing their theology on a kind of bunker mentality, sequestering themselves from the rest of the world while waiting for Jesus. I've had many conversations with people caught up in this kind of speculation to the point that they were so heaven focused that they could do no earthly good. It's that earthly good, however, that Jesus tells his disciples to focus on.

"You will be my witnesses," says Jesus, "in Jerusalem (the city), Judea (the surrounding country), Samaria (the neighboring country that the people of Israel hated) and to the ends of the earth (which, at that time, meant the whole Roman Empire). The word "witness" here is a strong one--it's "martyreo," the root of the word "martyr." They were to be fully invested in living and proclaiming the resurrected Jesus that they would share in both his glory and his suffering. Their response to the ascension was not to simply continue looking up at the sky, but to go to work. It's one of my favorite scenes in the Bible when the disciples are still standing there slack-jawed at Jesus' ascension when the angel comes and says, "Men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring into heaven?" It's time to do some earthly good by bringing the life of heaven you've seen in Jesus into the world. They were to do it by bringing the good news.

That's essentially what "evangelism" means--bringing the "euangellion--good news." Interesting that churches don't like to use this word anymore. When I first came on board here we tried to establish an evangelism team but nobody really wanted to lead it or be on it. It was suggested to me that we should call it "outreach" or "hospitality"--anything but the E word.

Admittedly there's some wisdom in that. Evangelism conjures up images of aggressive hard sell tactics. I was raised on that kind of evangelism. A couple of weeks ago there was a special on 48 Hours called "The Lord's Boot Camp," which was about a missionary training center in Florida that trains teens to do evangelism around the world. I am an alumnus of that particular organization. When I was in high school, I went to Scotland on an evangelistic team. We spent two weeks in the Florida swamps training, learning to present the Gospel as one might try to sell a car but with graver consequences if you as the buyer walked away from the sale. We were trained to start with the question, "If you died tonight, do you know where you'd spend eternity?" (a Platonistic question if there ever was one). This was a question you were supposed to ask almost immediately--no how do you do, no idle chit chat. Teen Missions approach, like so many evangelical Christians, appeals to the logical thought process that goes something like this: If I die tonight, I don’t want to go to hell. The way to avoid hell is to put my faith in Jesus Christ, the one who died and rose for my salvation. Therefore, I will trust Jesus and go to heaven.

Does it work? Well, God uses a lot of different channels for grace, so we can't rule it out completely. But the Gospel is not about an insurance policy, and Jesus is not a commodity to be sold for our benefit. Evangelism like that is about body counts. We used to have to come back every day after traipsing around the parks of Glasgow and report how many conversations we had and how many converts we had nailed down. I was very interested in reading books about Vietnam at the time and I remember thinking there was a real parallel idea of success--it's all about winning through attrition. I watched this special on CBS and was reminded of this when one of the teenage girls walked a tired and weeping senior citizen in a wheelchair through the sinner's prayer and then immediately said to the elderly lady, "Congratulations, you're going to heaven. I need to go get a form."

This was not the kind of "witnessing" I think Jesus had in mind. If we take his Kingdom message seriously, then evangelism is really about enlisting people in a world-changing movement of grace, announcing the salvation of the whole world through the liberating, resurrecting power of Jesus. Presenting that message is not about coercion, but about an invitation. In fact, we might say that it's all about the "woo."

G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa, who both teach at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, have written a book called The Art of Woo. But what is woo? Woo is relationship art — the ability to win people over without coercion, using emotionally intelligent persuasion. When we think of "woo" we think of romance, but it goes beyond that. Think courtship, invitation, solicitation. Woo applies not only to someone we want to know better, but to any relationship. Charles Lindbergh needed woo in order to attract backers for his trans-Atlantic flight. Nelson Mandela used it to lead a peaceful revolution in South Africa. Business leaders practice woo every day. Bono used it to convince conservative Senator Jesse Helms to back debt relief for Africa. The singer didn't approach the senator with facts and figures, but talked instead about Jesus' deep concern for the poor. This touched the deeply religious senator.

Motivational books urge you to “sell yourself” to your bosses and colleagues. But The Art of Woo advises you to present your ideas with self-awareness, matching a personal style to your own particular strengths and weaknesses. Evangelism isn't about selling Jesus, but about wooing, winning, and welcoming others on to the journey that is moving toward the redemption of the whole world.

So, how do you woo? How are we to share our faith in Christ and do real and biblically sound evangelism that really makes a difference in the lives of people? This is a huge challenge, but fortunately there’s help! Notice the promise of Jesus: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,” The word “power” here is the Greek word dynamis, the root of the English word “dynamite.” This is a robust and earth-shaking force, one that can topple earthly kingdoms and clear a path for God’s kingdom. This power is to be exercised in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. Filled with this Holy-Spirit-energy, the apostles are to evangelize, take the good news — the evangelion — of Jesus Christ to every corner of the world.

Holy Spirit power--that's something we need if we're going to woo. Jesus was telling his disciples that they would be going into some far-flung and possibly dangerous places. They'd need their "woo" on in a big way. But if you look at a lot of preaching throughout the rest of the Book of Acts, you see that their wooing was most often couched in personal stories. Peter tells the crowd at Pentecost what he had seen on Easter Sunday, Paul tells the story of his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road. It's the stories that were compelling to those in the ancient world, and it is stories that are key to the art of woo.

Think about it, guys if you're trying to get a girl to like you do you begin by giving her all your vital statistics, laying out a rational four-step plan telling her how being with you will alter her life? Do you do relationships by a formula? No! You tell your story and you listen to hers. That's woo--bringing two people together around a common story.

That's what evangelism really is…telling your story of how following Jesus has changed your life. When we’re trying to woo someone for Jesus, it’s essential that we speak from experience.

• We talk about the ways in which Christ’s teachings have guided and challenged us in our work and family life.
• We speak of the times and places we have sensed the presence of the risen Jesus.
• We express thanks for Christ’s gift of forgiveness, which has lifted the burden of our guilt and helped us to move forward.
• We share an experience of uplift and inspiration from a worship service or small group gathering.
• We tell of a time we saw the face of Christ in an unlikely person.

The key is to be an eyewitness, right along with the apostles of Jerusalem — to speak from our own personal experience.

I started doing my reading for my doctoral program this week and the first book I read was the spiritual autobiography of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who became prominent as a teacher of spiritual wisdom and faith. Reading the book and looking at Merton's childhood and young adulthood, you'd never guess that he would have ever become a Christian, much less a monk. It's the compelling story of his slow, long-term encounters with God, however, that are a compelling witness. When we tell our stories of faith, we're engaging in the art of woo.

The question is, though, do we have a story to tell? Have we had a passionate encounter with Christ that we want to share? The United Methodist General Conference has been meeting in Dallas this past week and one of the topics on the agenda is the declining membership of the denomination. There's always much hand-wringing over this and most of the time the solution is to try and throw money at another program or idea that will change things. To me it's all so much smoke. The problem is quite simple--Christians are afraid to tell their stories or, perhaps more precisely, they've not nurtured a life-changing relationship with Christ to the point that they even have a story to tell. John Wesley once wrote that his biggest fear for the people called Methodist was that they would have the form of faith without the spirit and power of it. We've got a lot of churches, but not a lot of dynamis. That has to change.

That change begins with us. Notice that after the disciples received this instruction from Jesus and went back into the city they didn't immediately start planning programs or hiring consultants, nor did they pick a couple of people to do all the work while the rest sat back and waited. It says "they all joined together constantly in prayer." It was during one of those times of prayer, we learn in Acts 2, that the Holy Spirit came upon them with dynamic power and they began to witness boldly.

Truth is, we can't woo others until we've been wooed ourselves by God--and that only happens when we devote ourselves to prayer. A few weeks ago I talked about a vision for our church that involves us getting back to basics, and one of the most basic basics for Christians is prayer, asking God for a movement of the Spirit and allowing ourselves to be equipped as dynamic witnesses for our community, our region, and the whole world.

So, I'd like to extend an invitation to you to learn about prayer and to be in prayer. Prayer is something we all need to be taught, so I'll be inviting you to come and learn with me. I'll be scheduling several prayer workshops throughout the summer--different kinds of prayer, different experiences. We'll be announcing those opportunities shortly. One that's coming up is the Sacred Writing Workshop in June which is an opportunity to learn how to pray by reading and writing psalms. We're also scheduling a week to have a prayer labyrinth here at the church, which is a form of walking prayer. I want to make prayer our focus for the summer, so watch for these opportunities.

Secondly, I'd like to invite you to come and join in prayer together on a regular basis. I, for one, would love to have some folks pray with me in my office before each worship service. Would you be willing to do that? I'd also be excited to have someone organize a regular weekly prayer group that can meet here or anywhere. Maybe God is calling you to do that this morning.

When Jesus ascended, he didn't leave us alone. We have access to the dynamic power of the Spirit if we'll only ask for it. We can be powerful witnesses if we'll only deepen our own encounter with God. My sincere belief is that if we follow the model of the early disciples, we'll not only be experts at the art of woo--we'll be a church that "wows" people into God's Kingdom.

Sources:

Homiletics, May-June 2008

Wright, Tom, Acts for Everyone, Vol. I, Westminster-John Knox Press, 2007.