“Forming the Future Church”: a sermon for TRINITY SUNDAY 2025 (JUNE 15)
Does the Church have a future? Does our church (PCC, presbytery,
congregation) have a future? Does the
people of God have a future? I believe
we can confidently say that the Trinitarian God will always have a people in
this world. However, the survival of any
individual denomination or local Christian community is far from
guaranteed. If a species of living
creatures ceases to reproduce, that species is doomed to extinction. If any congregation fails to “produce” a new
generation of committed believers, that congregation is destined to
disappear. This language of
“reproduction” comes straight from the New Testament – the apostle Paul told
the Corinthians:
“I am …
writing this … to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you
might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers.
Indeed … I became your father through the gospel.” (1 Cor. 4.14-15)
When he wrote to the Galatians, Paul’s rhetoric
intensified:
“My little
children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is
formed in you, I wish I were present with you now and could change my
tone, for I am perplexed about you.” (Gal. 4.19-20).
So, how do we go about “reproducing” ourselves? Does this question have anything to do with
us, or is it someone else’s problem? May
I suggest that we have – within this very room – much of the needed potential to
produce a new generation of Christians who can both live wisely and provide leadership
to the Church. Allow me to illustrate
this.
LESSONS FROM THE INTERN
In 2015, a
film called The Intern was released, a picture about a certain Ben
Whittaker (Robert De Niro), a 70-year-old widower who is bored with retirement
and is looking for fresh purpose in life.
About the Fit, a Brooklyn-based startup led by young wife and
mother Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway), launches a pilot project for “senior
interns”. Ben applies for the position
and is hired along with two other senior and one “ordinary” intern, a
millennial named Davis (Zack Pearlman).
This is Davis’s first job, as his parents have given him two weeks to
move out of the family home. Davis, who
is tasked with being a “floater” (intern available to help everyone), searches
in vain for an affordable apartment, and Ben eventually allows Davis to move in
with him. Davis refers to himself as
Ben’s “mentee”, as Ben counsels him in how to dress, be disciplined and take on
responsibility.
Ben, who
was assigned to work with Jules – the founder/CEO of the company – finds
himself initially ignored by his young boss, who doesn’t believe he has much to
offer. However, Ben soon shows his value
be taking the initiative to complete thankless tasks. Eventually, Jules comes to realize that Ben
has 40 years of experience in marketing/sales, and assigns him to work
alongside her secretary/personal assistant Becky (Christina Scherer). Ben quickly begins to contribute to the
company’s strategy, as well as serving as Jules’ driver. Ben becomes her confidant and is able to help
Jules wrestle with tough decisions and navigate the often-thorny life issues of
family, marriage and career. As these
two characters bond, competency meets wisdom, and the result is new-found
courage and fulfillment for both.[1] Could we hope for something similar to occur
in our churches – might “senior” Christians undertake to mentor young
(un)believers and model for them lives of authentic holiness?
CHRISTIAN FORMATION
IN THE EARLY CHURCH
How was
the second generation of Christian leaders formed? Granted that the apostles were trained by
Jesus himself, how did the apostles prepare the next generation to take their
place as the leaders of the Christian community? Did the apostles establish a seminary and
submit ministry candidates to a rigorous academic program consisting of courses
in the (Hebrew) Scriptures, pastoral ministry, etc.? (Another question we might be tempted to ask
is: where do seminarians come from?).
Interestingly, our current strategy of clergy formation more closely
resembles the Jewish rabbinical training of Saul of Tarsus than that of both Jesus
and Paul the apostle (cf. Ac. 22.3; Phil. 3.4-6).
The
strategy of the apostle Paul was the same as that employed by Jesus – apprenticeship
(i.e. discipleship). In more recent
times, yet still before the era in which trades are taught in a “school”, young
people desiring to learn a craft would be “apprenticed” to someone who had
“mastered” the trade in question. The
master blacksmith, say, would transmit not only the technical knowledge
concerning his trade, but also the attitudes and life-rhythms most conducive to
the efficient plying of his craft. This
would include how to interact with customers, how to get “to know” the basic
materials (iron, etc.) and tools and how to fashion each object in such a way
that would produce the desired result.
This approach to “teaching” was not abstracted from “real life”; on the
contrary, this method initiated the apprentice to a whole new way of
life, along with the necessary skills to thrive in this new environment.
As Jesus
had selected 12 disciples (apprentices), so Paul chose many young people to
assist and learn from him during his “career” as an apostle – one can think of
Barnabas (who actually chose Paul, though the roles were soon reversed), John
Mark, Silas, Titus, Epaphroditus and Timothy (cf. Ac. 19.4; Rom. 16). The circumstances of Timothy’s “call” by Paul
are quite dramatic (cf. Ac. 16.1-4).
Arriving, for the second time, in the town of Lystra (modern Turkey),
Paul heard about the good reputation of this young man (whose mother was a
Jewish believer in Jesus), and sought to recruit him to his “apostolic
team”. Since Timothy’s father was a
“Greek”, Paul felt the need to circumcise his young apprentice, so as not to
offend the sensibilities of the Jewish communities that they would encounter
during their travels (this is all the more bizarre when we notice that Paul had
recently attended the “Jerusalem Council” where he had argued passionately that
circumcision NOT be imposed on Gentile converts: cf. Ac. 15.1-35; Letter to the
Galatians).
The freshly
circumcised Timothy would serve as Paul’s amanuensis which often meant taking
dictation from the apostle in the confines of a prison cell; he would
eventually be placed in charge of the church in Ephesus, which is where Timothy
was when Paul sent him the two canonical letters that bear his name. Timothy’s hometown – Lystra – was to Ephesus
what, say, the town of Rigaud is to Montreal.
Ephesus was a metropolis, next to which Lystra must have looked like a
backwater. Paul had spent almost 3 years
in Ephesus during his first visit to the city (cf. Ac. 19.1-10), and Timothy
had been with him throughout this period (Ac. 19.22).
In his
first letter to Timothy, Paul charged his apprentice:
“Let no one
look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in
your speech, conduct, love, faithfulness, and purity.” (1 Tim. 4.12)
As we saw in the passages we read this morning, Paul
was far from the first mentor that shaped Timothy into the “pastor” that he
eventually became. Timothy was raised in
the Christian faith by his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois (cf. 2 Tim.
1.5; 3.15). This is striking – Timothy’s
grandmother must have been among the very first converts to the new faith –
perhaps she was present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost…? It is hard to overestimate the importance of
the role of parents in the faith formation of their children. I remember my mom making me say my prayers
every night before bed – I recited the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 23 every night
for many years. What we are taught
during the early stages of our development is hugely influential and stays with
us throughout out life, even if we drift away from church services and the
public practice of our faith. Thanks to
the influence of both his grandmother and his mother, Timothy became a respected
leader in the Christian community of Lystra.
When Paul came to town, he knew that he wanted to invest in Timothy and
form him into an effective pastor, teacher, missionary; in short, an agent
of the Church’s future.
THE APOSTLE PAUL AS MENTOR
They say
not to tell anyone your plans; rather, they say, show people your results. Well, true to form, the apostle Paul did
both.[2] Paul was nothing if not ambitious (Rm. 15.20;
cf. Gal. 1.13-14; Phil. 3.4-6). It seems
that even in his previous life as a Pharisee (Ac. 23.6), Paul had always been a
self-starter. Not one to follow
precedent or wait for instructions, Paul had always had the tendency to take
the initiative, to chart his own course, to blaze a trail into unmapped
territory. Whether it was hunting down
followers of Jesus in foreign cities (cf. Ac. 9.1-2), or out-pacing his peers
in terms of “zeal” for his Jewish faith (cf. Gal. 1.14), Saul the Pharisee was
always out in front, leading the charge.
As Paul the missionary of Jesus would quickly discover, taking
life head-on means absorbing a lot of hard knocks (cf. 2 Cor. 11-12). It might be easy for us to accuse Paul of
having lacked prudence, wisdom, or even good old common sense. “What a sucker for punishment,” we might say
to ourselves with a smirk as we read the accounts of his many
(mis)adventures. Whatever our opinion of
Paul may be, one thing is clear – Saul of Tarsus was built differently. Once he was convinced of something, there was
no possibility of half-measures – it was always all or nothing, come hell or
(often literally) high water (cf. Ac. 27.1-44; 2 Cor. 11.25).
Whether as
a Pharisee or as an apostle of Jesus, Paul had ever seen himself as a man on a
mission – whether striving to defend the integrity of the Jewish faith “against
all enemies, foreign and domestic” or striving to “proclaim the good news in
places where no one had yet heard the name of Jesus” (cf. Rm. 15.20). This was because he did not want to “build on
someone else’s foundation” (cf. 1 Cor. 3.10-15). Paul was a true pioneer, he wanted to be on
the cutting edge of the kingdom of God, to push the frontiers of the gospel to
the (literal) “end of the earth” (cf. Ac. 1.8).
As Paul concludes his letter to the Christians of Rome, he informs them
that he wants to pay them a visit “on his way to Spain” (Rm. 15.24, 29). Spain was quite literally the western edge of
the (Roman) world – beyond which lay the vast unknown of the “Outer Sea”. Paul tells the Romans that he has “fully
proclaimed the good news” in the eastern end of Rome’s domains (cf. Rm. 15.19),
and that it is now time for him to strike out westward, beginning in the very
heart of the empire.
Paul’s
single-minded goal was to become like Jesus, and he called upon the Philippians
to imitate him (3.17; cf. 1 Cor. 11.1).
As their apostle/pastor, Paul was “Jesus” for the Philippians, and he
calls them to be “Jesus” for each other (2.1-5). Christians are called to “carry the cross” in
both their communal life and in their public witness, all in the hope of
experiencing resurrection glory when Christ returns to establish God’s new
world (cf. Rom. 8.18-25). This is the
pattern of reality – indeed, all attempts to experience “glory” in the Present
Age are doomed to end in disaster (Phil. 3.18-19). The only way to salvation is the way of
voluntary suffering now, i.e. participation in the work of Jesus (cf. Col.
1.24, 27), in the hope of everlasting glory in the Age to Come. The cross comes before the crown.
Paul – the
“slave” of Jesus (Rom. 1.1; Gal. 1.10) – showed us how to follow a crucified
King. His encounter with the Risen Lord
on the Damascus Road marked Paul’s “crucifixion” (cf. Gal. 6.14) regarding the
self-assertive ethos that had guided him up to that moment and his
“resurrection” into a new life of self-emptying, obedient service to his
crucified-and-risen master (cf. Phil. 2.5-7; 3.4-11). Indeed, Paul’s autobiographical remarks in
his letter to the Philippians showcase two kinds of apologetic strategy – on
the one hand, Paul’s former apologia had involved him in the pursuit of
intellectual brilliance, socially mobility and respectability, and what’s more
– zeal to the point of using violence to defend the integrity of Jewish
tradition, and, on the other, a strategy of downward mobility, accompanied by
the loss of status, credibility and security, that was albeit no less
zealous. Only that, once he had been
commissioned as an apostle, Paul exposed himself to as much, if not more,
violence than he had previously visited upon the followers of Jesus. Paul put himself forward as an example of
faithfulness to Jesus for his converts to follow (cf. 1 Cor. 4.16; 11.1; Phil.
3.17; 1 Thess. 1.6; 2 Thess. 3.9). Saul
of Tarsus’ “testimony” was the story of a (by all accounts) successful young
adult having his life turned upside down by Jesus and throwing it all away in
order to embrace his cruciform calling to apostleship.
Paul
new that to live in light of the victory of God-in-Christ was to embrace the
cross – the place where the “rulers of this Age” had failed to grasp God’s
“foolish wisdom” and had attempted to eliminate the divine threat to their
power (cf. 1 Cor. 2.7-8). Paul strove to
make his readers understand that, at the end of the day, their lives no longer
belonged to them (!); they now belonged to Jesus:
“For the love
of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all;
therefore all have died. And he died for all, so
that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who
died and was raised for them.” (2 Cor. 5.14-15)
MY “INTERN” EXPERIENCE
I’ve had
the opportunity to work with a Boomer who re-entered the work-force after
retiring from a career as a social worker.
We collaborated in the context of a chaplaincy-run suicide-prevention
program in the Canadian military. As a
fresh, new chaplain, I had been tasked with directing this long-standing
program of which my “senior” colleague had long been a part and in which he believed
passionately. Even though there had been
a fair amount of friction between my colleague and the previous director of the
program, him and I got along well. I
adopted a “learning approach” to the task, gained my colleague’s trust, and
together, we were able to set new records for participation in the program over
an 18-month period.
Josh Nadeau
describes how older Christians generously served as wise friends and mentors to
him and his wife as they struggled to find a way forward for their life of
faith.[3] These friendships were spontaneous, informal
and part of the warp and woof of their routines at different points along their
journey. Josh and his wife had the
privilege of meeting and sharing life with older couples who were simply
following Jesus to the best of their ability in the midst of their particular
circumstances. That’s all it takes and it
takes all that! May we seek to
create spaces where both boomers and millennials can gather, connect and engage
in that time-honored craft of spiritual friendship. Amen.
[1] Cf. DeVries, Mark and
Scott Pontier, Sustainable Young Adult Ministry: making it work, making it
last, Downers Grove: IVP, 2019, p. 121; Sellner, Edward C. Mentoring:
The Ministry of Spiritual Kinship, Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 2002,
pp. 162-66.
[2] Or did he? We actually don’t
know if Paul ever made it to Spain (see below)… in any case, his prayers (Rom.
15.30-32) weren’t answered in the way he would have wished (cf. Acts chapters
21-28). Paul did indeed get to Rome, but
his journey was anything but “restful” (cf. Rom. 15.32).
[3] Cf. Nadeau, Josh, Room
for Good Things to Run Wild, Nashville: W Publishing, 2024, pp. 125-44,
190-92.
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