WWJS… About
Matthew 25: 14-30
As an acronym, WWJS almost sounds conventional now, yet still relevant: What Would Jesus Say… Something we need to ask in our community. WWJS… What would Jesus say, if he were here with us, present to our question, if we could explore the story with him and discover a new, mighty lesson that would inspire us to dream something new?
Today’s message is largely inspired by the book Fishing Tips: How Curiosity Transformed a Community of Faith, written by John Pentland. Here’s a description of the book which has inspired many, many United Church folk across Canada to engage with visioning and discussions based on Pentland’s nine fishing tips.
“Fishing tips is an open invitation to be curious. John Pentland reflects on how Hillhurst United said ‘yes’ to throwing the nets on the other side of convention. The result was innovative, invigorating and transformative.” When Pentland started at Hillhurst United Church in 2004, located at the edge of downtown Calgary, the Sunday attendance was 80-100 people, Sunday School, less than 10, demographics, mostly elderly, Par givers 24, Monthly offering, $2,400, community, 120 families, annual budget $120,000, Sunday lunch 45-50 attending, website, minimal activity, social media, none, staffing, traditional staff model, one clergy/one office administrator/one organist, advertising, traditional-newspaper. In the year 2015, Sunday attendance 350-400 people, Sunday school, 257 registered/100 attending, demographics, variety of ages, family focus, PAR givers, 162, monthly offering $ 26,000, community, 435 families, 1000 on email list, annual budget $857,000, Sunday lunch 150 attending, website, active, 2,613 hits per month, social media 1725 on Facebook, Twitter 495, staffing 28 paid staff/hundreds of volunteers, advertising, media savvy, frequent stories. These are the statistics according to the first chapter, Numbers Tell a Story, in Fishing Tips.
If these numbers were the most engaging part of the story, if I didn’t agree with the ministry’s theology and community values, I wouldn’t introduce Fishing Tips to you. In fact, their theology is something I am sure our Immanuel people would eagerly embrace. Their community values are beautifully materialized in varied ministries; they are grounded in radical hospitality, spirituality, social justice, risk-taking. Plus, their affirming ministry is a hallmark that attracts many seekers in the city. Their numbers tell a story of transformation – but then again, numbers tell a lot of stories, even in today’s parable of the Talents. This parable depicts ‘talents’ as the seeds for business, the seeds for growth, the seeds for investment. The master in the parable seems to believe that the talents are best used in creating stories.
In today’s parable, the master leaves town and entrusts his property to his servants. Upon his return, the master praises and rewards those who had sought ways to increase their investment, but he berates the fearful one, who only tried to not lose what he had been given. Of course, there are some creative, compelling interpretations of the last servant’s action, – but today, I would like us to stay with the traditional lesson about the use of talents to increase them. The servants are entrusted with large amount of money. A talent was equivalent to approximately 6,000 denarii, that is, the earnings of a day labourer for twenty years. In Luke, the departing slaveholder, the master, gives instructions: “Do business with these until I come back.” In Matthew, the master leaves what to do with the money to each person’s initiative. The first slave, Matthew reports, the one who received five talents went off immediately and worked with them and gained five more. (Nothing’s written to describe how the slave doubled his money.) For the last servant, the master’s assignment is no privilege, but a terrifying responsibility because he fears failure, and fears severe punishment if he fails. So he buries the talent.
Pentland states, “If we were forced to choose just one Biblical phrase as a mantra, it could well be ‘Do not be afraid!’” It applies in so many places in our lives! What is it about fear that puts generosity and gratitude at risk? What is it about fear that causes us to bury our treasure? Why is burying our treasure unfaithful?” Pentland continues, “Jesus drew for us a vision of Kingdom that is like a mustard seed - something that holds an enormous creative expression incongruent with its tiny self. Jesus also used the phrase, “Where your heart is there will your treasure be.” - Let your love guide you, let it crack open that tiny mustard seed.”
When I most needed to hear the heartbeat within me, last Spring, I learned that I would need to find new definitions of ministry and leadership that I would be able to engage by heart. Something I would agree to theologically, so I would happily embrace it, to learn and grow. Especially as I was keenly interested in developing an essential, compelling, and functional definition and principle of leadership, I was searching for something which would work for me and work for the United Church. I found some fresh expressions in Fishing Tips. I wrote down my discoveries in my new journal, which I bought and kept with love to record my breakthroughs through a difficult, discerning, searching time. I even gave my notebook a name: “Life Abundance File”. When I open it, it smells like roses, (as I inserted the rose petals from my own garden) and the cover page says, “Blessing and Abundance are always present.”
In the pages I wrote on leadership, I can find my favourite quote from Fishing Tips: “Five-star level leadership holds an outward view, always considering, what, creatively, is possible.” I really believe leadership is about making possible what is possible. I live with it; I want us to all live with it!
I am still very consciously aware of the implicit patriarchy and power which play in the field of most business models, yet, what I learned anew, through last summer, was the value of (social) entrepreneurship for church ministry - without sacrificing equity. I learned that if a business model can meld creative expression and Christian passion for sharing the good news to reach out to diverse people, through interesting and inclusive programs, a hybrid of business and church can be the best model going forward. For this, we need to find a model for leadership that will enable this ideal collaboration of business and ministry. This is especially good for those who have known the experience of marginalization; (As we know, marginalization can have many causes: colonization, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, poverty, addiction, grief, age.) since life has taught them to see the gaps, many of these people are often able to teach others how to build bridges. With encouragement, marginalized people are often the right people to seek, creating inspiring opportunities. Entrepreneurship is really about finding and creating new opportunities, especially the uncontested, future-positive, new expression of ministry, building success. Our job as church is the task of a treasure-seeker, finder, enabler, and even seller.
For this task - growing with opportunities - I appreciate what Pentland suggests in the fifth fishing tip: Paying for what you want, not what you have, with the only condition being that we must be the dreamer, passionate people who know what we want; who know that the ground under our feet is not deficit - the bottom line of the budget -, but the abundance still available in all circumstances. What is faith? It’s unmooring ourselves into the abundance, treasure-wise: people, community, diversity, stories and love. Abundance as intention-wise, life-energy-wise, and let’s not forget: intention carries money, money carries stories. Pentland says, so often churches try to fund their future with what is left over from the bottom line of the budget - a few hundred dollars or, worse, a deficit. For example, if the church doesn’t have youth in their midst, the youth group budget may be taken out in the next year. However, as people of stories, we are encouraged to shift our minds to always budget for growth.
My hunch is, so far, our people at Immanuel are not fear-based scarcity-model thinkers. We have been extremely generous, and that’s not all - we value risk-taking in our faith journey. I hope that our future-oriented questions will engage us in meaningful conversations and help us reach consensus on what we want, over what we have, with each round of changes we make, asking always, What Would Jesus Say… What Would Jesus Say about our dreams? Our possibilities? Our opportunities?
I would wish to affirm that paying for starting an excellent Christian Education program and building community engagement through this venue can be one good example of seeking “opportunities”. With good vision, strategy and energy, what we seed will pay us back with the fruits of our faith being multiplied. We are not just doing jobs. We are doing ministry. If it is ministry, what excites you? How can you embrace the spirit of entrepreneurship with your work? We are doing faith. We are doing miracles. We are doing business, trading and dealing with the huge talents of so many people. When that happens, and the Master comes home, we’re not digging in the dirt to show the seed is still a seed; we can point, instead, to the miraculous materialization of Life’s abundance. What would Jesus say about that?
WWJS About… ?
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