Written and Delivered by John Hagerman

Father Paul asked me to share my faith story with you today and to talk about my vision for the future of St. George's. While I'm not a gifted theologian and teacher, like Paul, I think today's Epistle provides a fitting context for what I want to say.

In the Epistle Paul is talking to the Corinthians about spiritual gifts. He says, "There are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone."

Talking about spiritual gifts is not something I would have done 10 years ago. As a matter of fact, 10 or 15 years ago I had serious doubts about a God who could activate anything.

I grew up in this church. Many of you knew my mother, and called her your friend. Some of you watched my brothers and I grow up here. But once I moved away, I drifted from the church. In the world around me I saw lots of justifications for rejecting the church. I became disenchanted with the way I saw religion being used in the world to justify hatred, oppression, and bloodshed.

I became agnostic, and I even tested the waters of atheism, because I simply could not bring myself to accept what I kept hearing the media, and those around me, tell me I had to accept if I wanted to call myself a Christian. I couldn't deny the mind God had given me in order to accept what I saw as superstition and magic. I couldn't accept that God had created us just to turn us into sinners willing to do and say almost anything to escape eternal torture and horror in hell. If that was what God wanted, if that's what being a Christian meant, I wanted no part of it. That wasn't the God I was raised with in this church but that God was nearly erased for me by those touting fundamentalist doctrine as the only true way to be a Christian. Then I had a son…I think most of you know Holden.

When he was a few months old my wife Jan and I figured it was time to have him baptized, but then another voice challenged me. I was asked why we wanted…why I wanted to have him baptized since we didn't belong to any church and practiced no religion. It was a good question, so we put the baptism on hold, and I started examining where I was in relation to God.

I read lots of books and the more I read, the more different ways I discovered to look at God and Christ. I saw new ways to be a Christian without giving up my intellect to superstition and magic. The more I read, the clearer it became to me that the voices I'd been listening to were wrong. God wasn't mean, or cruel. In fact, the more I read the more I realized that the faith of love and joy I had been raised with here, in this place, was far closer to the Truth in the Bible than the mean spirited, judgmental, manipulative faith I kept hearing and reading about.

After checking out a lot of churches, Jan and I decided that St. George's really was where we belonged. Here was a community of people who obviously loved each other, and who embraced us. It didn't hurt that St. George's also had a new rector who was very good at teaching us about the Good News and helping us understand how to live that Good News in our lives. I'd come to St. George's occasionally over the years, mainly to please my Mom, but this time…this time I was coming home to my future…to the future for my whole family…And I think most of you know we jumped in wholeheartedly, once we'd made the decision to join.

That's the part of my faith story that got me back to Saint G. Most of you have at least an inkling of some of the things Jan and I have done around here, so I'm not going to go over all that. What I do want to talk about now is the future--especially in the context of the spiritual gifts Paul was talking about in the Epistle today.

He said, "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." He said we are all given spiritual gifts. I think he also implies we're supposed to use those gifts for the common good. We're supposed to put them into action.

To me, that's the real foundation of our faith--using our gifts for the common good. It's easy to talk about gifts, we do that a lot around here, but how do we really know what gifts we've been given and how do we know what we're called to do with them? That's a tough question, but I think we can find an answer by looking at the first part of the Epistle.

Paul says, "When you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak." The idols could not speak, but the Spirit does speak. The Spirit calls us to use our gifts for the common good. But what actions are we supposed to take? What is the Spirit calling us to?

To me, this is the key. A call is not just something that you might hear or feel, a calling is pro-active. It's something that implies an action to be taken in response. But are we listening for that call? What is St. George's, as a parish listening for? Are we willing to take action?

Certainly, we're called here to listen to the words of the Bible and the words spoken from this pulpit, but is that all? Do we come here to quietly take in the words, share a little camaraderie with our friends, and then just go home? Are we just a social club that only pays lip service to what we're called to be? Or do we come here to answer that call and take action in the world?

What about the world? Do we watch the news at night, or read the newspaper, and think how horrible for those innocent people stuck in a war zone or commanded to fight in a war, then go about our daily lives without hearing a call for what we can and need to do? Do we hear about disasters like tsunamis and hurricanes, earthquakes and famines, or starvation and disease, and only hear a call to the pocket book? I know this parish, the diocese, and the Episcopal Church as a whole, was very generous financially to the disasters that struck the world in 2005. We all dug in and gave what we could, but how many of us stopped to "listen" for what else we were called to do? However small? However limited our resources or our time, talent, and energy?

How many of us have we driven by a homeless person without "listening" for a call to change a life? How many of us hear about violence, and abuse, and extreme poverty right here in our city, and across the world, and only think about how sad it is without "listening" for what we can do to make life better? Isn't "listening" for the call to help the poor, the victims, the sinners, and the oppressed, what the Spirit calls us to do? I think so. I also believe being called by the Spirit is a gift…a gift that can reveal the future for our church. But answering that call will take courage to face changes in our church, and courage to take action. It all starts with "listening."

In three weeks, on Friday and Saturday, the 9th and 10th of February, St. George's will be hosting a conference on church growth. The name of the conference is, "Listening Into The Future: Unleashing Passion And Innovation To Grow Our Church." I'd like to invite every single one of you to come to the conference. We'll be "listening" to the success story of St. Andrew's parish in Omaha for ideas we can bring to Saint G to help us grow. We'll be "listening" to how to look at the difficult questions that keep us from growing--like how to overcome being too comfortable with our traditions to "listen" for a call to fulfill new possibilities--like how to energize church communities that have been complacent for too long--like how to "listen" for what passions we have as individuals, and share as a community, and how to unleash those passions in fresh ways that can re-invigorate our community and grow our church.

We'll be "listening" to the shared wisdom of many churches, and the new wisdom gained by that sharing. We'll be "listening" for calls to new possibilities in liturgy, music, outreach, publicity and marketing, that might help us grow. We will also "listen" for how to reconnect with ancient traditions and practices in ways that can make them relevant to the people of the 21st century. I'm sure we will be called to actions we can take today to become the kind of innovative communities that have the flexibility to incorporate the old in new ways, to serve every member of every parish, and that attract and welcome everyone seeking a place of spiritual connection. It's a tall order, and it's likely to take us Episcopalians out of our comfort zone.

Back before the American Revolution, Episcopalians were looked at as loyalists to the crown. I mean, our heritage WAS the Church of England, so I suppose the suspicion of Episcopalians was probably somewhat founded. And Episcopalians learned how to do their worshipping and good works "under the radar." We learned not to draw attention to ourselves, especially when any attention might mean ostracism, persecution, and possibly even murder. We learned to be quiet, and stay within our communities.

We still do it today. We come to church, worship, see our friends, do quiet good works, and try not to draw attention to ourselves. Unfortunately, in today's world, the churches making noise, the churches "listening" for what people want and being noisy about giving it to them, are the churches that are growing, while we wither quietly away. The churches whose members willingly go out in the world and tell everyone about how wonderful their church is, who talk about how uplifting their faith is, are the churches that are growing. We don't do that. Too frequently we tend to act like that social club -- comfortable with ourselves, but not comfortable with going out into the messy, dirty, chaotic and noisy world -- and not all that comfortable with inviting that world inside here with us.

When was the last time any of us talked about our church, or our faith, with anyone we didn't already know well? When was the last time any of us told our faith stories to a stranger outside of church? We can all probably name a time or two we did, but we've learned to keep it to ourselves. We've learned to be quiet. And we've learned those lessons so well it may yet kill us.

I see possible futures for Saint G in our history of love and sharing. I see possible futures for Saint G in every face here--in the spiritual gifts and passions each of us have and in the things each of us prays for in the world. I see possible futures for Saint G in learning how to use our spiritual gifts to unleash those passions and for developing a culture of innovation that will help us grow so that we can always be here to serve the needs of all of our members AND the needs of all who have yet to walk through the doors.

But I see this future happening only if each of us embraces it and are willing to serve it in whatever ways we can. My faith is deeply personal; as I'm sure yours is, but we are all also part of a community that can survive only if every one of us is an active participant in moving beyond survival into celebration. It is a dirty, noisy, chaotic world, and the prospect of digging in that dirt can be frightening. But guess what? That world isn't going away. In fact, in the lives of our parishioners, that world is already inside here with us. All the bad news we hear about may be part of the daily lives of someone in our parish. We can hide our heads in the sand, but we can't escape that fact. But you know what else is alive in our daily lives here at Saint G?... love and joy just wanting to be expressed and spiritual gifts waiting to be taken into action. It's up to each of us to answer that call.

I want to share one last thing before I'm done. It's something Jan found and posted on our refrigerator. It's called "Commitment." It reads, "I am only one, But still I am one. I cannot do everything. But still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."

We can all "do something." We were all given spiritual gifts. However small, or large, however little or abundant our energy, talents, or resources, we can all "do something." And when we all "do something together," we can create a future that will see this church filled every Sunday. We can create a future where St. George's becomes an abundant source of love and joy in the world.

If we all embrace our spiritual gifts, if we embrace our old traditions in new ways, if open our hearts and minds to new possibilities, if we "listen" for opportunities to fulfill what we are called to do, if we are willing to risk change, and if we all, each and everyone of us, "do the something that we can do," then we can fulfill the gifts the Spirit gave us and make this place, this congregation, a living testimony to the God of joy and love and wonder I grew up with. That God has always been with us, all we've ever needed to do is to "listen" for God's call, then act on it. AMEN.