Report to the Congregation by Mark MacGougan, Warden
Posted on
Annual Meeting Sermon
God is good-
All the time!
All the time-
God is good!
Here’s the deal. The doctor had you take some tests. Now the test results are back, and the doctor sits you down and tells you that you have five years to live. It’s not an exact number. It could be four, it could be six. But the point is that you apparently don’t have the decades and decades you thought you had.
What do you do now? What, if anything, are you going to do differently starting tomorrow?
This is a challenging question in the abstract, but by all accounts it is even harder in the moment. When we’re under stress, the lizard part of our brain takes the controls and starts punching all the buttons and turning all the knobs. We lose our equilibrium and we’re likely to end up going to one extreme or the other – denial or defeat. If we go to denial, we take no action because we don’t see a problem. The doctor is wrong. Anyway, there’s bound to be a cure by then. If we go to defeat, we take no action because we don’t see any point. My life is over, excuse me while I close my eyes and curl into a ball.
I have some advice for each of us when we face a situation like this. Let me mention here that, although this is a sermon during an Episcopal service, this advice does not relate directly to any of today’s Scripture readings. The best I can do is that there are three pieces of advice and today is Trinity Sunday.
Advice Number One: Assume the Doctor is Correct
By this, I mean that you plan and live your life taking very seriously whatever deadline you’ve been given.
Do you have a will? Is it up to date? Do you have advanced medical directives? Make sure you do.
Are there loose ends in your life? Get them taken care of.
Is there someplace you’ve been meaning to go or something you’ve been meaning to do? Don’t put it off any longer.
Advice Number Two: Do Everything You Reasonably Can to Make the Doctor Wrong
By this I mean see if you can put some more time up on the board. Maybe you can turn that five years into ten years or more.
Take care of yourself. Eat right. Take your medications. Do your research. Talk to other doctors and other patients.
You will notice that there is a tension between advice one and advice two. The doctor is correct and you can make the doctor incorrect. I am asking you to hold two seemingly contradictory things in your head at the same time. You can do this.
Let me remind you that today is Trinity Sunday. One God, Three Persons. In addition to celebrating God today, we also celebrate the church’s God-given ability to hold two contradictory ideas in our heads at the same time.
Advice Number Three: Surround Yourself with People You Love
Your family, your friends and neighbors, people you get a kick out of and people you’d like to get to know better. This is something that would be crystal clear to you if the doctor had said you have one month to live. When we’re talking about years, though, it’s something we can lose sight of, and we shouldn’t.
Now, as we consider these three pieces of advice, one thing that you might notice is that these things are good advice whether or not you have five years to live.
We all should be living our lives with urgency. We all should take good care of ourselves and surround ourselves with people we love.
Somehow, when we think we have all the time in the world, we tend to lose focus. We lose sight of what is most important and valuable. And unfortunately, sometimes it takes a rude shock to serve as a wake-up call, reminding us to focus on the things that are important and valuable.
In fact, aside from possible malpractice issues, it would probably be a good thing for doctors to tell all their patients that they have five years to live.
So why am I talking about this? Let me say first of all that it isn’t because I’ve been given a dire prognosis myself.
I’m talking about this partly because we all tend to live in denial of our own mortality, and I believe there is a spiritual value in facing our mortality and planning and living accordingly. But, like many sneaky preachers you’ve heard over the years, I’m also setting this up as a metaphor for something else.
Today is our parish annual meeting. As one of your wardens, I need to report to you on the health of this parish. So we’ve run some tests on the parish, and the test results are back. Are you sitting down?
According to the tests, Trinity Church has five years to live.
The number is not exact. It might be four. It might be six. The issue is not medical but financial. The money that you and I pledge and give to the church each year covers about half of our budget. The rest of the money we need we draw from the parish endowment funds. This actually worked pretty well when the parish had an endowment of six million dollars or more. Our current endowment is about one point two million dollars. We need to either boost our endowment up to where it used to be or else double our pledge income. If our pledge income stays the same and we spend our endowment down to zero, we would probably have to shut the doors.
This is a scary thing to say out loud, and I am hoping that I have prepared you to hear this news in a constructive way. This is threatening information, so beware the lizard brain. We need to steer clear of denial and defeatism.
We are going to avoid those extremes by remembering the advice. What was the advice? Hold on, it’s Trinity Sunday, there were three pieces of advices.
Number One: Assume the Doctor is Correct
We need to take this seriously. What would we do as a church community if we knew absolutely that we only had five more years?
Such a situation does not need to limit or paralyze us. Think of the very first Christians. Many of them believed that their churches only had a few years because they expected Jesus to return and history to end. And they did not curl up in a ball, they went out and changed the world. Now it is our turn.
Here at Trinity Church, we are trying to live our church life with a sense of urgency. We will talk in the meeting about the Mission Discernment Initiative and also about Partners for Sacred Places. These are both efforts to think creatively about what God’s mission for Trinity Church is right now.
Do you have your own thoughts about what is most important for Trinity Church right now? Please let me or Percy know your thoughts.
Advice Number Two: Do Everything You Reasonably Can to Make the Doctor Wrong
I believe that every one of us here can do something to help put some more time on the board for Trinity Church.
Do you give to the church? Do you pledge? Do you tithe? If more of us were tithing, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Do you (1) have a will and (2) name Trinity Church in your will? Wills are not just for people who are so rich that they have estates that actually look like estates. Everybody should have a will. If you pledge to the church, it only makes sense to remember the church in your will. You don’t have to leave the church all your assets. Let me even suggest a number: 10% - a tithe of your assets. That would leave 90% of whatever you have to your heirs.
There are plenty of other things each of us can also do to help. Invite a friend to church. Be hospitable to a visitor. Volunteer.
Advice Number Three: Surround Yourself with People You Love
We do a pretty good job of that here, but I think we can do better. With Father Don away on sabbatical, I’m struck by the extent to which he’s been the glue that helps to hold us together, and we need to be more mindful of building our own connections with one another.
Let me mention a few opportunities. In fact, this being Trinity Sunday, let me mention three opportunities:
1. Foyer Groups
Long time parishioners will remember something we did years ago called Foyer Groups. These are groups of 8 or so people who meet every so often for dinner together in someone’s home. Over the course of a year, these people get to know each other in a way beyond what’s possible when we just see one another in church services. Make a resolution right now that when we roll this out, probably next fall, you will all sign up for Foyer Groups.
2. Photo Directory
The church really needs a new photo directory. We have some old photo directories, but they are very out of date. You can tell they’re old because if you look me up, I’m young.
We have some good options for how to do this, but we need a couple of volunteers to help organize the process of getting people signed up and scheduled to get their pictures taken.
Is that something you could help with? Please let me know.
3. Try a New Activity
Every week we list activities that go on here. Try something new. Try drumming or the Bible study. Go to a book group meeting. I’m going to be leading a comedy workshop on Monday evenings in July and August. Come to that. There is no pre-requisite. Our primary goal will be to have some fun together.
When you participate in an activity you learn about whatever the activity is, but you also get to know the other people there in a new way.
So those are some of my thoughts as we approach our parish annual meeting later this morning. I have tried not to sugar-coat things. Hopefully I didn’t go too far and scare everyone. I do believe that God will see us through our challenges in a good way. That doesn’t mean I believe it will be easy. I can imagine a scenario where God does make it easy. You know, the mysterious stranger leaves a winning Powerball ticket in the collection plate. That sort of thing. I would take it.
But it seems much more likely to me that God will see us through our challenges by pushing us as a parish and each of us individually to change and grow in ways that are initially uncomfortable for us but ultimately help us to be better people and a better church.
God is good-
All the time!
All the time-
God is good!
Amen.