Glen Avon Presbyterian Church

“ Anticipating the Unanticipated”

Rev. Lon Weaver

December is a month of anticipation and fulfillment. More precisely, it is - first - the month of anticipating what was originally not anticipated, the coming of the Savior into the world as a newborn baby. Second, as the last month in the secular calendar, it is the month of the secular year in which we reflect on what has been fulfilled in the year about to close. More particularly, it is the month in which we contemplate how the realities of January 1st through December 31st either matched or contradicted the anticipations we brought into the year as it began. Thus, in these two senses we think of December as a month of anticipation and fulfillment.

For Robyn and I, the mission discernment process has been a story of the unanticipated. I had heard a lecture of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Bandy in late 2005 and was persuaded by his message: the church must listen to the existential needs of the culture or risk irrelevance and, ultimately, death. Thus, I felt it important for the churches of the northland to hear that message. While I anticipated the coming of Dr. Bandy as our Glen Avon Seminar speaker, I didn't anticipate the range of responses to that event and to the subsequent process of discernment. Bandy is a part of a much broader movement known as the emerging church. Along with Glen Avon, churches in Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire in particular have taken the message of the emerging church with great seriousness. (Our colleague, former Glen Avon Associate, and present Chippewa Falls Pastor Barry Boyer sees it as one of the most important movements that has come along in his pastoral ministry.)

Interestingly, while Robyn and I were both blown away by Dr. Bandy's Glen Avon Seminar presentation, we were surprised when about a dozen adults confronted us with the question, “What is Glen Avon going to do about the emerging church's challenge to consider how to shape our ministry in a way relevant to the culture?” We were surprised by the range of responses within the congregation to the discernment process which then began. It ranged from great excitement to great suspicion. We were surprised by the direction of the discernment process as it evolved from one of considering additions to our present ministry to one of thinking of how to deepen our present ministry. That is, discernment for the Mission Discernment Team has changed in a way captured by the phrase, “not structure, but spirit.” The Mission Discernment Team has discovered that, at core, we must never stop asking the how questions of ministry. How does our worship transform the worshiper by the power of the Holy Spirit? How do we ensure that every ministry is concretely rooted in prayer? How does our Bible Study deepen each participant's relationship with Jesus Christ? How does every opportunity for fellowship deepen our love for Christ and for one another? How do we make our service to the poor and lonely rooted in the compassion of Christ? How does our hospitality become truly “hospitable”, so that we are willing to be changed by the unique personalities of people who choose to come into our midst, knowing that we may well be “entertaining angels without knowing it”? (Hebrews 13:2) I don't think we'd anticipated all of that.

During one stressful period for Robyn and me, we received a particularly kind and unexpected message. A deeply committed member wrote to us and described what the congregation was experiencing as “something marvelous”! The message was both “marvelous” and unanticipated.

All of that has driven home to us the essence of what it meant for the Christ to come into the world. The weakness of the baby Jesus, the humility of the stable setting of his birth, the ordinariness of his mundane earthly life, all of it driven through with divine power: this was the miraculous entrance of the unanticipated into history. It is a “divine surprise” that we've managed to make predictable and anticipated after some 2,000+ years. May Advent and Christmas 2007 grant us times in which we can experience the unanticipated depth of the Christ-miracle once again: Immanuel, “God-with-us”! (Isaiah 7:14)

Amen.