May I ask you a question?  If the church were to cease to exist tomorrow morning, what would you miss the most?  I mean, every church, just gone!  What would you miss the most?  Some might say they’d miss the building.  Some might say they’d miss the routine.  Others might say they’d miss the music most of all.  I’d like to think someone would miss the preaching.  What would you miss most? 

I can only speak for myself, of course.  But, if the church were to cease to exist tomorrow, the thing I’d miss the most would be that rope.  The rope that keeps me connected to the community of faith the scripture refers to as the body of Christ.  For certain, we were created for a personal, one on one relationship with God through Christ.  Yet, the more I study the scripture and the more I observe God at work in this world, the more I am convinced that it is impossible to be vitally connected to God without being vitally connected to Christ’s body, the church. 

For certain, we’re all going to either have that rope or wish we had that rope when, not if, but when the blizzard hits.  Moral blizzards, financial blizzards, physical blizzards, relational blizzards or the perfect storm combination of all of those at once.  We’re going to need to find our way back when we’ve lost sight of the house.  Looking back on my life, I don’t know what I’d do without that rope that keeps me connected when the wicked storms blow.  That rope has saved my life more than once.  But, that rope has done more than that. 

It has also kept me connected to a community that keeps calling me to become more than I could ever become out there on my own.  Out there on my own, life becomes fragmented, pulled apart, isolated and lonely.  Within the community of faith God has given me in the church, my life is called toward wholeness and given a focus it can’t find anywhere else.  I don’t know what I’d do without that rope.  How about you?

In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul describes the church as exactly that, a community of faith in which we are drawn out of isolation and empowered by the Spirit of God for a way of living that extends our energies and gifts to each other and the world in ways that help deliver others from despair to hope.

Parker Palmer has described another kind of community he is helping create.  When I read his description, however, I couldn’t help but think that this is the way the church should be.  It was easy to adapt his definition of community to what I believe the church should be.  Here is my version.  People from all walks of life coming together to be part of God's family through circles of trust in which they reclaim their integrity and help foster wholeness in their workplaces and their world (Palmer, Hidden Wholeness).  Can you think of a better way to describe what the church should be?  People from all walks of life.  Circles of trust.  Reclaiming integrity.  Fostering wholeness in their world.  What else should the family of God be?

That rope I’d miss so much keeps me connected to a safe place in the storm.  It also keeps me tied to a community that keeps calling me to integrity.

It’s often assumed that churches call a pastor because they believe he or she will help grow the church.  In fact, if things are working like they should, the church will cause the pastor to grow as much as or more than the pastor will foster growth in the church.

Steve Stroope is the pastor of the Lake Pointe Church in Rockwall.  Steve and I were college and seminary classmates.  While we were in college, Steve was called as pastor of the View Baptist Church, a small, rural congregation about twenty-five miles south of Abilene.  As remote as the location was, under Steve’s leadership, the church grew remarkably both in number and spirit.  He once told me the story of how the church caused him to grow, too.

Steve had grown weary of watching the grass grow unattended behind his small church’s sanctuary, taller than a grown man in some places.  One day Steve decided to take matters into his own hands by trying to burn the grass off.  He set a match to it but the fire wouldn’t catch.  So, he fashioned a crude torch, set it afire and then ran up and down the field trying to catch as much grass on fire as he could.  His plan worked.  Soon, the fire caught and then the wind caught the fire.  Before long, Steve had a genuine West Texas out of control grass fire on his hands. 

The volunteer fire department soon showed up and so did neighbors and church members, everyone trying to save the south half of Taylor County from burning down, along with homes, ranches, farms and livestock.  After several hours, the fire was extinguished.  Steve was standing there in awe of the damage he’d done and the worse damage he’d nearly done when an exhausted, soot-covered deacon came up to him and said, “Don’t ever do that again!”  Steve never did try to set the church on fire again, and never forgot the lesson.  Sometimes, pastors remind their people how they ought to live.  Sometimes, churches call their pastors to a higher standard of living, too.  It’s supposed to work like that, both ways. 

Romans 12:11 states that every person in the church has been gifted differently.  Yet, we are all working for a common purpose.  We are one body with different members.  We all need each other.  None of us are complete without the other.

Last week, we defined integrity as the integration of all that we are into one person, one identity.  No secrets, no hidden selves.  Integrity is often defined as honesty.  In truth, honesty is a function of integrity.  As we integrate all that we into one, honesty is the natural result.  The church keeps calling us to that kind of integration within ourselves and with each other.  Circles of trust fostering wholeness. 

It is impossible to define what it means to be Christian apart from the gathered body of Christ, the community of faith we call the church.  We were created for an intimate, personal relationship with God through Christ, for certain.  It is also true that there is no way to fully experience that relationship apart from the community of faith we call the church.  The church is not the means or instrument through which we receive our salvation (1 Timothy 2:5).  It is the community through which those who have experienced that salvation are called to integrity of life and purpose in this world.

Each of my arms performs essential functions as parts of my body.  At the same time, neither arm would have any identity or purpose cut off from the rest of my body.  Arms and bodies go together.  Kind of like Iris DeMent sings.  “An arm’s just an arm ‘till it’s wrapped ‘round a shoulder; looped side by side, we go steppin’ out together” (Iris DeMent, “Sweet is the Melody,” My Life, Warner Brothers, 1994).  What she meant was that arms were meant for holding each other up and each other close.  Being a part of this body of faith, the church, calls us to that kind of oneness, that kind of integrity.  To the oneness for which we were truly created.  That’s what that rope keeps me connected to.  It does more, too.

That rope keeps me connected to a body of people in which I am empowered and enabled to extend my individual gifts to the larger community of humanity.  If Romans 12:5 describes our oneness in diversity, certainly Romans 12:6-11 describes the ways in which we should use our diverse gifts to enable and empower each other and those in the world around us.

Sometimes, asking someone to “join the church” seems about as thrilling as asking them to do something like “join the bank.”  I mean, how do you actually do that and what does it mean?  What would happen if we presented that possibility in terms of becoming connected to a community through which they could discover their unique strengths and then use them to serve others?  What if it were presented, first, as an opportunity more than an obligation?  Have you thought about all the opportunities we have to serve each other and this world, right here at Cliff Temple?

Think about Mission: Oak Cliff, our After School Ministry, Habitat for Humanity, our Child Development Center.  Every time one of us volunteers through one of these programs, we become the presence of Christ in this community.  We show this world in visible ways what the invisible body of Christ actually looks like.  It looks like someone tutoring a child.  It looks like our name on a Habitat sign in a sorely neglected neighborhood in this city.  It looks like someone who is hungry getting fed, someone naked getting clothed. 

All of these are nothing less than opportunities for each of us to validate what Jesus has done for us by extending our integrity into this community as light in the darkness, salt of the earth.  I didn’t always know that. 

Nancy and I recently bought some bicycles.  We bought them for fun and for exercise and so we’d have something fun to do together.  At first, I felt like a kid with a new bike.  That was until I got on it and rode it.  Then, I felt like a fifty year-old man on a new bike.  It must have been at least twenty years since I even sat on a bicycle.  I haven’t forgotten the basics.  But, things have changed, to say the least.  Things are a little wobbly and we’ve affectionately dubbed our three-mile beginner’s course “Tour-de-Cramp.”  But, something feels so right and so good about being on that bike every time I ride.

I remember once in high school going with Lynn Tatum to pick up a little girl for church.  What had started as a one-time student council Christmas project had turned into a weekly mission project of getting that little girl to church.  I’ve forgotten her name but I’ve never forgotten her or where she lived.  The house was dark and cold; she shared one bare mattress with her three siblings and one blanket between them along with an empty refrigerator.  I’ve often wondered what happened to her.  But, I graduated from high school and college and seminary and moved on getting busy doing other things over the years. 

Eventually, I just got lost in what I would call the Kingdom’s backyard.  It’s a world defined by competition among churches.  I got lost there for a while, looking for the significance that competition falsely advertises and never delivers.  For years and years I measured the significance of my ministry by how it compared to someone else’s Sunday School and worship attendance.  Monday Minister’s Luncheon’s became spitting contests, where, in the name of Jesus, we’d be sure to find out who else had more or less in church the day before so we’d know whether to feel better or worse about ourselves that week.  I lived like that for longer than I care to confess.  There wasn’t much integrity in it, to be honest.  Not much wholeness.  More isolation, loneliness, the rope lost in the whiteout.  Freezing to death in my own backyard.

Then, God let you call me as your pastor and said, “Here, why don’t you try out this old bike.”  I’ve served some truly wonderful people in my life.  But, I’ve never served a church quite like Cliff Temple.  A community of faith that says it is impossible to define what it means to be Christian apart from a very active social conscience.  I’ve now come to believe that, if her social conscience were taken away, there would be no Cliff Temple left.  “You remember that little girl on the bare mattress?” God seems to ask me now and then.  “Here, try this old bike out.”  And, he called me here.  I’ll never be the same.

You’ll forgive me, won’t you, if I wobble for a while learning to ride this bike?  Some of you young people may laugh if you ever see me riding my bike.  “What’s that old man trying to prove?” you might ask.  Well, he’s not trying to prove much, really.  Just know that he’s added some words to his vocabulary.  Cholesterol.  HDL.  LDL.  Triglycerides.  High blood pressure.  Someday, you’ll know those words, too.  But, by then, you’ll almost certainly be riding your bike in tandem with mine.  And, as wobbly as it feels and looks, there is something that feels so right and so good about being on that bike. 

If you see your pastor wobbling on this old bike a little, please forgive the way it looks.  He’s just learning some new words.  Like Mission: Oak Cliff and Habitat For Humanity and After School Ministry.  He’s been there before.  He just got lost for a while in his own backyard.  But, he found the rope again and made his way back.  He hasn’t forgotten the basics though things have certainly changed.  What he once viewed as obligation he now views as opportunity.  An opportunity to reclaim his integrity.  Now, he doesn’t know what he’d do without that rope.

What is that rope anyway?  What do you think?  Sunday School?  Home Teams?  Worship?  What do you think that rope is?  The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve decided that rope, well, that rope is Jesus.  He is what has kept me connected.  All these years, even when I was a little lost, he never let go.

I don’t know what I’d do without that rope. 

Do you?