Okay. This is the second one of these meetings I
have been part of. The first time, one
year ago…I was so new here, my head was spinning. I knew almost none of you. I didn’t know that my house was in
Silverlake, instead of Silver Lake. I
couldn’t tell the difference between Forest Home and Forest Lawn. I thought Sherman Oaks was a forest, and that
the Grove had trees. I thought the LA
River was…well, a river! I was fairly ignorant about the magnitude of
the rivalry between the school down on Figueroa, and the one over in
Westwood.
But things are different now. I’ve been here a whole year. We’ve shared a lot of things, joyous and
difficult. We’ve been through weddings
and funerals, operations and new babies, baptisms and holidays, meals and
ministry. A lot of living has gone on.
I had a friend in Seattle, who, when
he heard I was being called to be Senior Pastor at Hollywood Pres, said with a
certain amount of trepidation in his voice- and I quote- “Whoa.” When I asked him
to be a little more specific, he said “That is one big ship.” He wasn’t actually referring to the numeric
size of the congregation…but to the size it had once been, to its urban
location, to the blessing and weight of the history and tradition here, and to
the more recent years where the ship’s rudder seemed to be causing it to
meander around a great deal.
Then when I arrived here, somebody
said “It’s
going to take awhile to turn the ship around.” That old ship adage is
pretty true, really. It takes a while for a ship to turn around. It
takes a lot of people to do it, working
together. It requires some skills that
never had to be used when there was smooth sailing. And along the way, a
few
people inevitably decide they want to jump overboard because they aren’t
sure
about where it is going.
I just want to say this: I believe this ship, Hollywood Pres…is headed
in the right direction. Because
we are pointing it in Jesus’ direction.
Naturally, we can’t all agree on
exactly which direction that is sometimes, and we will undoubtedly wander off
course occasionally. But the compass is
true.
No, we can’t get there all
at once. That has been made abundantly clear to me this
year. But: we are moving the right
direction.
We are trying
some things, in worship and in classes, to help our community actually get to
know one another, and mix together the wonderful diversity of ages we have
here.
We’ve tried in this year to get the
staff in the right places, and work together more as a team.
We’re trying
to upgrade some of the communications vehicles, and visually spruce up our
campus and publications so it looks like a place with some vibrancy and new
life happening- because it is!
We are partnering
with churches and groups in Hollywood to care for some of our friends on the
street, as with the shelter project, recognizing that we are an urban
church.
We’ve reorganized
our Session a bit to try and focus more on specific ministry areas.
We’ve taken some good steps.
If I’ve said it once this year, I’ve
said it fifty times: what’s important is that we are moving the right
direction. Almost everything we are
doing could be done better. And we’re
not doing some things we should be. Nothing
gets fixed all at once. But are we
moving the right direction? Are we
moving as a community? Are we moving
toward Jesus?
If we are, then I want to just put on your radar the
kind of church I think we are headed towards becoming:
- a church that knows and loves this
city, that longs for Hollywood and each of our neighborhoods to be better places
for people to live and work.
- a church who realizes that we are
in a new day, in a mostly non-religious culture (or anti-religious), and is willing
to think creatively to engage that culture and walk with people.
- a church full of people eager to
integrate their work and their faith
- a church more worried about growing
deeper in Christ than about counting how many people we have.
- a church that, as one pastor
said, is so devoted to God, and so
irrationally committed to each other that it cannot help changing the world.
- a church so intent on following
Jesus that we cannot help doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly
with our God.
We can’t make ourselves into that
church. But the Holy Spirit can. The ship is slowly turning. It can’t
happen all at once. But are we moving the right direction? I think we
are. Towards Jesus. 2012 is going to be a really fun year. And I’m
glad we’re in it together. Amen.
