Written and Delivered by The Rev. Canon Paul S. Nancarrow, PhD

A friend of mine in Tennessee--who found herself in the unexpected position of being in training for ordination to the diaconate--used to say to me "If you want to hear God laugh, just tell God your plans." She'd usually follow that up by saying "But when God closes a door, God opens a window--maybe not the opening you'd expected, but an opening."

I think of Pam and her sayings in connection with our reading from Acts today. But to really see that connection, we have to get some of the background of the story. The assigned reading begins with Paul's dream of a man from Macedonia inviting him to come bring the church to Europe; but the three verses immediately before that are also very telling. Listen to Acts 16:6-8: "They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas."

Now if you could look at a map of Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, you'd see that Paul's planned route is to journey to the northeast--but the Spirit keeps preventing him, God keeps closing doors in front of him, so he ends up going in the other direction, off toward the west. And it's there that the Spirit gives him a vision in the night calling him to keep on going west, where he'd never expected to go, to sail around the top of the Aegean Sea into Macedonia. And when Paul comes to Macedonia, into Philippi, the leading city of the region, he finds that the Spirit is already there, the Spirit has been preparing the heart of a rich woman named Lydia to receive the message--and because her heart is prepared, Lydia is willing to offer Paul her house as a base of operations in this new territory for spreading the Good News and building up the Church.

So the upshot of this story is that Paul had his plans, he had his mission itinerary all mapped out--but the Spirit had other plans, and Paul had to be willing to put his map aside and go where the Spirit led him. And when he got where the Spirit led him, he found there was more going on there than he'd realized, the Spirit was already working the the people who were there, and by joining with them and following the Spirit together they helped to grow the church. In this story Paul discovers--as I suspect he discovered over and over again throughout his life--that if you want to hear God laugh, just tell God your plans; and that when God closes a door, God opens a window;--and more than that, Paul discovers that the Spirit is always doing more than we can see at any given moment, and we can discern the Spirit's leading better when we discern it together.

That's what Paul gets out of the Acts story today--and I think that's something we here at St George's would do well to get, also. Because we here at St George's have some experience with having our plans change unexpectedly; we have some experience with familiar doors closing and new windows of opportunity opening up; and I think we have potential--I thing we have great potential--for learning to discern how each one of us sees a bit of the Spirit's leading for us all.

For a long time now--months, a year, a year and a half--we have been talking about how St George's needs to change. We've said--quoting Bill Tully, the rector of St Bartholomew's in New York--that we need to grow or go, and that if we're serious about growing we're going to change, and you're not going to like it, and neither am I. We've talked about how change takes us out of our comfort zones--and though none of us like being uncomfortable, many of us can see how some discomfort now could lead to great strengthening, great growth, just down the pike. We have been talking about that for some time. And some of that talk has begun to materialize in actual change.

One of the changes I think we're starting to make at St George's has to do with the way we do leadership in our congregation. Now "leadership" is one of those kind of difficult words: on the one hand it can seem very nebulous and fuzzy to talk about styles and modes and methods of leadership; on the other hand good leadership and poor leadership have very practical, concrete, down-to-earth consequences. Thinking about how we as a congregation change leadership can seem very abstract, but it's something we need to do for very concrete reasons.

And what I think is changing in our congregational leadership is that we are beginning to move from a kind of leadership that is top-down, hierarchical, and oriented to command-and-control, to a kind of leadership that is bottom-up, grassroots, shared, and oriented to giving people permission and resources to do the things the Spirit is leading them to do.

In the church I grew up in, in the church seminary trained me for, in the church many of us are familiar with, things happen because the recognized leaders--the Rector, the Wardens, the Vestry--make them happen. If someone in the congregation sees a need, or has a problem, or comes up with a great new idea, they take it to the Rector, the Wardens, the Vestry--and then these leaders come up with the plan and find the resources and recruit the people to make sure the need is met, or the problem is solved, or the idea is brought to fruition. In this view the leaders are at the top, and all the communication and action has to flow into and from them before it can happen in the congregation.

And that style of leadership can do some good things. It makes it clear who's in charge, it has clear lines of authority, it makes it easy to assign responsibility. It's part of our comfort zone, because that's the way we're used to churches working. But it's not the only way to organize. In the last decade or more, businesses and corporations have moved away from this kind of top-down, command-and-control kind of leadership, because they've recognized that this kind of system isn't always flexible enough to meet the demands of a changing market and a shifting business environment. Younger adults--almost anyone 40 or younger--aren't too sure if top-down, hierarchical organizations are really capable of representing the true needs of everyone involved. A new kind of leadership has begun to emerge--and some churches are beginning to recognize this leadership as well.

In a more grassroots, shared kind of leadership, it isn't always the people at the top who make things happen--in fact, it may be hard to tell where the "top" is in any case. Things happen because the people get together to make them happen. If someone in the congregation sees a need, or has a problem, or comes up with a great new idea, they talk about it with their friends, they run the idea by other people and see who's interested, they begin to build coalitions, they check in with the Rector and the Wardens and the Vestry, and the Rector and the Wardens and the Vestry give them suggestions about who else they might talk to, or what funds might be available, or what resources they might tap into, or how they might network beyond their initial group--and by pulling all these things together, it's the people themselves who see that idea through, it's the people themselves who lead that idea into being. In shared leadership it's the people who are the leaders; and the "people at the top," the Rector and Wardens and Vestry, are all about building bridges and making connections to help the people lead.

This kind of leadership, this shared leadership, can be tremendously exciting, it can release a tremendous amount of energy in a congregation. But it can also feel kind of loose, kind of fuzzy, kind of chaotic--with shared leadership it's hard to tell who's in charge, it's hard to be sure who's running this show, it's hard to make sure we're all really going in the same direction. And I think that's where we are at St George's right now. We're beginning to get into some shared leadership. We're seeing new ideas bubble up from the grassroots. Things like the Prayer Shawl Ministry--which wasn't part of anybody's Master Plan, but came from a few people coming together and saying "This could be a cool thing for us to do." Or things like the Growth Group, which has been meeting ever since February, ever since our "Listening Into The Future" conference, where a whole bunch of different people come together to brainstorm new and innovative ideas for how our congregation can move into growth. These and other kinds of ministries bubbling up from the grassroots are signs of a new kind of shared leadership, a new kind of distributed decision-making, emerging in the life of our congregation.

And while that can be very exciting, it can also be kind of challenging. When things bubble up from the grassroots, it's hard to tell what the overall plan might be. When someone has an idea there, and someone has an idea there, and someone has an idea there, it's hard to know if all the ideas are heading in the same direction.

And that's where the story from Acts comes back to us. Paul had a plan; but the Spirit changed the plan. Paul knew where he was going; but the Spirit called him in a different direction. Paul had to head out, not altogether sure where he'd end up, and discovered that the Spirit was already moving in other people to meet him on the way. Paul discovered that things bubbling up in different places might yet all be the work of one Spirit, and he had to learn to discern that Spirit moving in many ways. And I think that's the call for us, too: to learn the practice of discernment, so that we can see the one Spirit moving through our shared leadership, moving through our distributed decision-making, moving many of us to have different pieces of the plan, so that all of us together can make new things happen in our church.

Discernment is one of the ten practices of thriving congregations Diana Butler Bass writes about in Christianity for the Rest of Us. Discernment is something the Vestry tries to be mindful of in every one of its monthly meetings. Discernment is something we've been working toward in our Wednesday evening prayer gatherings. Discernment--learning to recognize where the Spirit is moving in our real lives--is something any and all of us can learn to do with each other. Discernment is, I believe, a practice God is calling St George's to engage, as a whole, as we grow into shared leadership and distributed decision-making and new ideas to help the Church grow.

That's the Good News for us today: the promise that the Spirit is always doing more than we can see at any given moment--and if we look for the Spirit together, we will release more energy than we could ask or imagine. Let it be our prayer today the the Spirit will give us visions, and the Spirit will prepare our hearts, and the Spirit will be at work in us as we bubble up new ways to do God's work in the world. Amen.