It’s the Sunday after Easter. The microphone didn’t work, and I kind of wonder what would happen if we didn’t have all these other little props to build us up. Would we be able to worship anyway? I’m wondering if that might have been something the disciples were feeling a little bit. On the evening of the very day that Mary had gone to see the empty tomb, she called John and Peter there to see it themselves. Even though they already had already seen and reported the empty tomb, the disciples were huddling together, behind a door locked by fear.

I’ve come here this morning not so much to preach a sermon but to give you a testimony. I need to climb out from behind the pulpit because I believe we speak to people differently when we’re standing up than when we’re sitting down. This morning, I’m sitting down to speak. I just want to have a conversation with you. My testimony is shaped by the scripture for the morning as well as two events, one from this past week and another from some thirty years ago.

Kurt Vonnegut, the renowned novelist, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, among other works, died this week at age eighty-four. Some years ago he was asked if he had any advice for young writers. He said, “What I would tell them is that you should never write what you think people want to read; you should write the novel you were born to write, whether anyone reads it or not.”

About thirty years ago, my grandparents on my father’s side had come to visit me in my first church in Forestburg, Texas, a community of about three hundred people in Montague County. On Saturday I was going out to make some visits. I still remember my grandfather saying to me as I walked out the door, “Just remember that you are not called to be successful; you’re only called to be faithful.” I realize that sounds kind of cliché. We’ve all heard that. But, when somebody that you love very much and you know loves you personalizes it for you, it becomes a plaque that hangs on the wall of your heart’s memory forever.

Fear, as the disciples demonstrated to us, always locks the door through which Jesus, in turn, calls us to walk. If we are going to be faithful we are going to have to walk through the doors of fear and toward the mission to which Jesus has called us. I’ve come here this morning, the Sunday after Easter, to confess a fear to you. I am afraid that I’m going to die having never been known as a successful pastor. Can you believe that? I said it. The reason is because I can’t seem to find any way to fill this building back up. I can’t seem to find any way to get more people here than were here last year. I’ve tried just virtually every trick I’ve got up my sleeve.

There are a number of reasons that’s discouraging. One of them is because it ought to discourage you if I’m more aware of those who are not here than I am aware of those who are here. Thank you for being here, Bob. Thanks for being here, Don and Sybil. And Homer, I’m glad you’re here. I’m really glad you’re here! We weren’t sure you were going to be here a year ago and, you’re here! I’m grateful that whatever brought you here this morning. What motivates me too often is the fear that I’m not going to get more people like you in this room on Sunday morning at 11 o’clock. What would Jesus say to me?

What bothers me most of all is that, motivated by that fear, I may fail to write the novel I was called to write and, instead, write the one I think everyone wants to read. Or, I might actually achieve success at the cost of being faithful. Then, when I stand before Jesus someday, what is he going to say to me? “Well, done, thou good and successful preacher”? Is that what he’s going to say? Is that what I want to hear him say?

Cliff Temple used to be a brand name, like Prestonwood or Fellowship or any number of churches you could name today. Part of what we’ve all been dealing with, you longer than I, is grieving over the fact that we’re not a brand name anymore. Did you know that Cliff Temple was the first church ever to have a full-time minister of education? Did you know that Cliff Temple Baptist Church was one of the very first churches, if not the first, to have a gymnasium? Did you know all those great things about Cliff Temple made it a brand name in a day when it was the seventh largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention? When people thought of churches, they thought of Cliff Temple the way they think about Mercedes, or BMW, or Coca-Cola or Dr Pepper. It was a brand name. We’re not a brand name anymore. Does that mean we’re not successful? If so, what are we going to do about it?

Arthur Flake is known as father of Baptist Sunday School. He wrote the book. One of Flake’s rules of Sunday School growth was, build the space and the people will come. In the post-World-War-II-baby- boom years, when all these men were returning from the war and the world was scared to death by the possibility of a Cold War nuclear holocaust, churches couldn’t build enough square footage for all the people who wanted in. That’s not true anymore.

There was a day when churches defined their meaning and their value to the world by how many people they could put in the pews at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning. There was a day when “missions” meant sending as much money as you could to some agency somewhere else so someone else could do your mission work for you. Those days are gone, forever!

We are not a brand name but here’s what we are. This is what I have come to believe about you and me. Frankly, I find a lot of hope in this. Cliff Temple Baptist Church is no longer a brand name but we are an experiment in kingdom outpost mission work. Did you know that? We are an experiment in kingdom outpost mission work!

I’ve told you this story twice before. It’s a wonderful story. About five years ago, when little Kristen Anderson was only six, I stopped by her Sunday school class one morning just to talk to the children. Kristen’s infant cousin had died the week before, a victim of SIDS. I wasn’t aware of that just yet. As I was talking to Kristen she asked me if Jesus took care of little babies. I kneeled on the floor so we could see each other eye to eye. I assured her that Jesus did take care of little babies; that’s when Kristen told me about her cousin’s death. I asked Kristin how old her cousin was. Kristen stalled for a moment and then answered, “She wasn’t a number, yet.” I can still remember the lump in my throat as I assured Kristen again that Jesus even takes care of little babies who “aren’t a number, yet.” Jesus does, doesn’t he? The question for us to answer is whether we will be faithful to take care of people who don’t count to anyone else, who aren’t a number in anyone’s book.

If a church strategist were going to look for a place to plant a church that was going to grow full of middle and upper-middle-income white people, the last place on God’s green earth he would pick is Tenth and Zang. Yet, if Jesus were going to pick a place to plant an experiment in kingdom outpost mission work, he could not find a better place than Tenth and Zang! We are at the heart of what kingdom work is about. The only question is whether we will stop grieving the loss of our brand name and embrace the identity that is now ours.

We live in a culture, even in the church, that is constantly asking, “What have you done for me lately?” Unlike any church I’ve ever known, we have the opportunity to say in response to that question, “We will do for you is give you an opportunity to be a part of a church where we are striving to be the presence of the living Christ among those who aren’t a number yet in anyone else’s book.”

We live in a community where the political leadership of this city has made it its agenda to drive the poor people out. We have the chance to stand here and speak truth to power by saying, by the way we live, “Blessed are the poor, for though they aren’t a number yet, the inheritance that is theirs is the eternal kingdom of Holy God.”

What I am now trying to do is look for places in this church where God is demonstrating that and asking myself how I can become more involved. It really isn’t good enough that our churchhas the Buckner partnership and the Goslin Care Ministry. It really isn’t good enough that Kenny does what he does on Wednesday night with 24/7, where nearly one-hundred youth come weekly to hear a gospel they’ve never and are now being baptized and are becoming disciples of Jesus. It’s great that all those things are happening in the After School Ministry and through the Child Development Center and on and on. The real question is whether I am personally a part of that. Are you personally a part of that? It’s not good enough for that to be our church’s mission. The question is, is that your mission? What is your personal mission anyway?

I was reminded this week that our God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. I was thinking about our Thank Offering. Do you know what the Bible says? Does it say that, where there is a lack of funding the people perish? Is that what it says? No! “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). Whenever we do what the disciples were told to do, specifically, to walk through the doors they had earlier locked in fear, whenever we do that and latch onto the vision that is ours in Christ, we will never lack for God’s provision.

What is your mission? The disciples were broken. They were broken in fear. Their dreams were broken, their hopes. Jesus walked into the room and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

We went to Latvia a couple of years ago and again last summer. One of the things that touched us was the incredible sanctuaries, some dating back to the 13th century, that somehow survived WWII, where German and Russian soldiers battled just outside their doors. Those sanctuaries are filled with incredible stained glass and priceless works of art. The saddest thing about them is that more tourists visit those sanctuaries any given day of the week than worship in them on Sunday. What happened?

Part of what happened is that the people became more concerned about preserving the sanctuaries than the mission they represented.

Part of what happened was that those people became more concerned about how many people filled the sanctuaries on Sunday than went out in mission on Monday. And, the direct opposite of what they wanted happened. They died. Now, when you go to visit those places you will see the little donation boxes in the corner. They want you to help pay for the upkeep of the tourist attraction.

One place particularly broke my heart. Liepaja, Latvia. It was once a closed city where the Soviets based their nuclear submarines. A whole Russian community was abandoned when the Cold War came to an end. Unless they had private funds the native Russians couldn’t get back home and ended up stranded there. They and their descendants now live in housing projects that make some of our urban slums look like Highland Park. Children just barely able to walk all the way up to those old enough to be in college are left on their own every day to fend for themselves. You can imagine what happens to those children. Barefooted, half-naked, not enough food, no medicine, no school. Nothing.

We walked into a Russian Orthodox Cathedral that wasn’t any further from where I’m sitting than to our parking lot across the street. The priest, in this room filled with this priceless artwork was not upset about the fact that the children were on the street, uncared for. He was upset by the fact that our women wore sleeveless dresses into his sanctuary. It made me want to rip off my shirt off and say, “Watch this!” There was no connection between the resources in that sanctuary and the appalling needs just outside its doors.

I want to tell you about a conversation that’s been worrying me a little bit lately. I’ve confessed my fear. That buys me one prophetic opportunity, right? I’ve heard some of our people saying, “It’s wonderful what Kenny’s doing,” and, “It’s wonderful what happens in ASC3ND,” and, “It’s wonderful what happens in the Goslin Care Center and in all these community ministries but those people aren’t paying our bills; they really aren’t our people.” If we say that those people are the children of God but, at the same time, say that they are not our people do you realize what we’re saying about ourselves?

Where there is a commitment to the vision of God to step toward the things that cause us the greatest fear there will never be a lack of God’s provision to fulfill the mission. The day we become more concerned about how many people come in here at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning than we are concerned about how many of us walk through those doors to serve the community that scares us to death is the day we truly die. If we found a way to pack these pews on Sunday morning in such a way that we make TIME Magazine’s Church of the Year but we do not fulfill our mission to the people who, in this community’s eyes, aren’t a number yet, then we will not hear the blessing of God, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

This is the sixtieth anniversary, today, of the day Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier in the field of baseball. I wonder how scary that was to be the first black man to walk out onto a baseball diamond. I wonder what insults were hurled at him in the locker room. I wonder what tough times he faced on the streets for being in a white man’s world. Yet, where would baseball be today if it hadn’t been for Jackie Robinson? Where would we be today, if the disciples had not heard what Jesus said and followed it? “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

There is one simple principle of physics that I do know. Something can’t be fixed until it’s first broken. Jesus couldn’t be raised until he died. Churches cannot be resurrected to their new identity until they let go of the identity that is no more. I’ll make a commitment to you. You can hold me accountable. I’ll stop being afraid of not being successful if you will join me in holding each other accountable to be faithful to the mission God has given us in this place.

Will you do that? You don’t have to. I’m just asking. Now, I’ve made my confession. Will you make yours?