~ Matthew 28:18-20
I had an interesting moment at the Minnesota Baptist Conference (MBC) office yesterday. I was up there taking my friend Rob Boyd to lunch and the office manager stopped me as I went by her door. It seems an elderly woman donated some historic books to the MBC and one of them contained extensive information about Elim Church. It was a 25th Anniversary history book discussing the years 1888 – 1913. She thought we should see it before it was donated to the BGC History Center at Bethel University. I brought the book back to the church and showed it to Nancy. She recognized it immediately and pointed out the unique partially Swedish, partially English character of the book. Then she drew my attention to the following passage…The Willing Workers Society was organized in February, 1901, by a group of younger members of the Elim Church, who were filled with a sincere desire to do something for their Master. After much deliberation, it was decided that the word of the Master, “Go ye into all the world” – applied to all time and that there still were many who hand not hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. At this time, Dr. Frank Peterson submitted a proposition to us, in which he suggest that we take upon ourselves the support of one of three native missionaries in Burma.
The passage then goes on to excitedly detail the work this group did. But then the passage takes a different and far drearier turn.
After a time, however, an opposition developed among the older people of the church, the chief argument against the society being the use of English at our meetings. The feeling that there was no room for the society grew and as there was no pleasure in continuing to a work which did not meet with the approval of the church, the meetings were finally discontinued and the work dropped.
Friendship formed among that band of Willing Workers, however, has not died, but has grown stronger with the years, and recollections of the happy days when we imagined that we were winning at least a part of the world for the Master often brings a smile to the lips or a tear to the eye. Perhaps what we did in our youth and ignorance was not altogether in vain after all. Who can tell?
It is easy to look back through the rose-colored lenses of history and feel amusement at difficult church struggles over moving away from Swedish in the congregation. But I wonder what people will be saying about our struggles fifty or a hundred years from now, should the LORD tarry? What will cause our grandkids to chuckle and point fingers?
This fellowship has taken a fairly stunning number of risks in just the last decade. We are intentionally reaching out to homeless and poor friends in our neighborhood. We are making space in our building and time in our schedules to provide clothing for the poor, food and friendship. We took a big risk last year and committed very intentionally to improving our student ministry efforts. And you should all know that, through Pastor Mayme’s efforts, we have won a grant from the Youthworks Foundation to become their pilot program location for studying inner city youth ministry. Among other things, this gives us $12,000 to hire a part-time student ministry intern to work alongside Mayme to multiply her efforts even further. Pretty cool, huh? This is a church where things are always tough, but things are always happening! We take risks here. We are working hard to keep an affordable preschool program running. We have opened our doors to many other groups, most recently the Abbey Way and Tree of Life congregations. We have not settled for the easy path. This church has been very intentional about trying to be “an oasis in the city” as we believe God is calling us to be.
But now, interestingly enough, in addition to all this other stuff, Almighty God has given us sort of a second-chance opportunity to revisit a sticky ministry language issue a century after some young folks felt Elim Church stifled their missionary efforts…
Pastor Joel Ramirez, the MBC Director of Hispanic Ministries, has made a proposal to myself, the Leadership Team and our pastoral staff to help us begin a work among Hispanics here in our neighborhood. This work will start very small – a weeknight language class and small Bible study. Pastor Joel, who is a seasoned Hispanic church planting expert, is so excited about the potential of our location, he is willing to lead the effort here personally even while his support will initially come from other places.. How cool is that?
Additionally, I have also been asked to chair the MBC’s Hispanic Ministries Action Committee, which seeks to direct and coordinate the Hispanic ministries of the conference all across Minnesota and, very soon, the Iowa district we’re merging together with. Frankly, this request makes Monica and I chuckle a bit, since my ministry experience in this area is currently limited to marrying a cute and feisty dictionary! But we believe God might well be in this thing…
Does Elim Church continue to believe “go ye into all the world” still applies? Do we honestly believe that challenge includes Hispanic friends and neighbors right here in Northeast? I know we do.
So I propose we rewrite history. I propose we continue to work together so that, years from now, people will be amazed at our spiritual sensitivity and not our silly stubbornness. I challenge all of us to pray about yet another opportunity God seems to be putting on our plate. As always, there are details to be worked out and questions to be answered. But we believe Almighty God continues to move in Elim Church.
You each have an important place in this church. This is not a church where we can content ourselves with a few of the people doing a majority of the work. Even though we already have a disproportionately large number of people actively engaged in one ministry or another, we need to push ourselves even further. There is a place here at Elim for every single one of us to do our little part. If we do that, who knows what people will say of us a hundred years from now!
Bless you Elim Church! May God show us all how to handle the blizzard He is walking us into!
Amen.
