My brothers and sisters in Christ,

            It is a tremendous privilege to bring to you my second report as your pastor.  It has been a joy to serve you for another year; so much so that sometimes it is hard to believe that we are already nearing the end of our second year together. I am so often filled with gratitude when I think about how God has brought us together to share in each others lives and this journey of faith with one another.  I am encouraged when I think about the ways that God is renewing us and shaping us through each other to be his holy people. 

            You may remember that a year ago, in my first annual report, I laid out three goals that I thought were important for us as a church over the coming year.  (1) A renewed commitment to being shaped by God through worship and discipleship.  (2) An emphasis on outreach rather than numerical growth.  (3)Serving others simply for the sake of being Christ-like servants.  Often when a business or some other organization sets its goals for the coming year, they are ones that can be easily measured or quantified so that at the end of the year it can be clearly determined whether or not those goals were met.  Were sales increased?  Are the profits greater than last year?  Did we meet our bottom line?  It shouldn’t take much to realize that our goals for this past year were not exactly those kinds of goals.  I can not put a bar graph up on the screen that shows how much our commitment to worship and discipleship has increased over the last year.  There are no statistics that indicate how much outreach we are doing.  And there is no formula for determining how Christ-like we are. 

            Of course, in many ways that was precisely the point of those goals.  In a world where success is constantly defined by the bottom line, a world where we try to measure everything by some statistic or formula; the Church must be a gathering of people who refuse to be defined in this way.  We must be a people whose trust and confidence is not in numbers or any other worldly measure of success.  We must be a people who are defined by a certain character, a certain identity and mission, whatever the results might be.  Our success is measured not by graphs or charts but by stories of faithfulness and obedience. 

            And when I think about our past year together, I think of numerous stories of faithfulness and obedience.  I think of a community of faith whose worship is increasingly intertwined with the story of Christ.  I think of a congregation who faithfully studies the scriptures through Sunday School and Bible studies and a people who continually seek the heart of God in prayer.  I think of a church who just this past fall celebrated our own Nazarene heritage and identity during our Centennial celebration. 

            When I think of our past year together, I think not only of the ways that God is renewing us through worship and discipleship but also of the ways in which he used us to reach out to others.  We were faithful to God’s call to reach out to our community through new events like the Kid’s Carnival lawn and handing out bottles of water at the Apple and Pork Festival.  God continued to work through events that have been a regular part of our life together as well; events like VBS and Trunk or Treat.   I also think of the commitment and dedication of the Outreach Committee in taking eight weeks to re-evaluate our outreach strategy as a church and considering how we might live out the gospel in new ways in our changing culture. 

            However, probably more than anything else, I think of the ways that we have served our community.  A year ago, I laid out the challenge of being a community of faith that serves others simply for the sake of being Christ-like servants without expecting anything in return and I believe that we have lived up to that challenge. We have lived up to that challenge in the Spaghetti Supper at Webster Apartments that we had as a part of our Centennial Celebration.  We served our community through ringing a bell for the Salvation Army and collecting 150 jars of jelly for the holiday food baskets.  We became more Christ-like as a community in our benefits for other community organizations, such as the choir benefits for Dove and the dinner to support Habitat for Humanity.  We even have plans for more Christ-like service in the coming months with the blood drive in just a couple weeks and a Single Women’s Day in the works.  Of course, all of this is in addition to our monthly service to our community through our 4^th Wednesday meal; not to mention other acts of service that may go unnoticed or unmentioned.  It fills my heart with joy to think about these many ways in which we have served others in the past year without expecting anything in return.  More importantly, I think it fills God’s heart with joy as well.  I imagine our God smiling down on us every time we served another and as a result became more like his Son, Jesus Christ. 

            Of course, these goals of worship and discipleship, reaching out and serving others, will always be a part of who we are.  We do not abandon them simply because we have come to the beginning of a new year.  Over the next year we must continue to commit ourselves to being shaped by God through worship so that we can become more faithful disciples who reach out and serve and disciple others.  So as we look at our new goals for the coming year, I encourage you to see them not as entirely separate from what we have done over the past year but as a continuation and re-focusing of the same ideas.

A Renewed Commitment to Our Teens

 I suspect that many of you are like me in that your teenage years were a crucial phase in your journey with Christ.  Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone is “saved” when they are a teenager or that we are done growing in God’s grace once we leave high school.  We know that God can and does work in powerful ways at any point in a person’s life, young or old.  However, I am confident that if you are here today there is a very good chance that it is because someone was there for you during your teenage years, guiding you and modeling for you what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  I am certain that if it were not for the way that God spoke to me during my teenage years, I would not be up here giving this report today.  If it were not for the faithfulness of my parents, my friends, my friend’s parents, my youth pastors, other volunteers in my church and on my district who helped with events like quizzing, teen camps, mission trips, and Nazarene Youth Congress, there is a very good chance that I would not be a pastor today. This is testament to the fact that it is the responsibility of an entire congregation to help its teens grow in Christ’s likeness and to mature in God’s grace. 

I have had the privilege over the last few months of teaching the teen Sunday School class.  You should hear the questions they have been asking; intelligent and meaningful questions that go right to the heart of the Christian faith.  They are asking questions that show that they are genuinely wrestling with what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in our changing world and not just tagging along on the coat tails of their parent’s faith.  Right now, they are laying the foundation of their identity in Christ which will serve them and sustain them for the rest of their lives.  Who among us wouldn’t want to be a part of that?  Who here wouldn’t want to be able to say that we had a hand in setting someone on the path to a lifetime of ministry in Christ’s name?  Lance and the parents of our teens do a truly tremendous job in providing discipleship and outreach opportunities for our teens but it is the responsibility of our entire congregation to make our teens a priority.  Youth ministry is not an addendum to the church’s ministry.  It is not an optional, extra-curricular activity aside from the “real” ministry of the church.  Helping a new generation find their identity within the Body of Christ is critical to who we are called to be.

So this morning, I am calling upon everyone here, to find some way in which you can invest in the lives of our teens.  I don’t care how old you are, how out of touch you think you are, or how much you think you don’t belong in youth ministry.  All of us can contribute in some way.  So I am asking each and every person here to go to Lance or a parent of a teen or one of the teens themselves over the next few weeks and months and ask a simple question: “How can I help?” Every single one of us must be involved in some way in ministering to our teenagers and helping them become ministers themselves. 

Spending More Time with the “Un-Churched”

            Last year, our second focus area was an emphasis on outreach rather than numerical growth.  In other words, we focused on being a congregation that is reaching out to our community in order to show them that we love them and care about them regardless of whether or not that means they will come to our church.  This year we need to continue to have that same emphasis but I want to be bit more specific about how we are going to do that; namely, by spending more time with the “un-churched”. 

            This is important because we live in a rapidly changing culture.  As far as I can tell in my young age, it seems to me that there was some point in our recent history at which Christianity was sort of the “default” religion in America.  In other words, it was sort of assumed that all “good” people went to church.  As a result, we could expect people to come find us and walk through our doors as long as we put on events or revivals to attract them to our church.  This is increasingly not the case.  We no longer live in a culture where the majority of people assume that you have to be Christian to be a good or acceptable person.  In fact, a recent study of 16-29 year olds by the Barna group found that Christians are not only not viewed in a positive light, we are increasingly perceived as arrogant, ignorant, hypocritical, sheltered, judgmental, overly political, homosexual-haters.  In much of our culture, Christianity is more likely to be seen as a hindrance rather than a help to living the kind of life we are meant to live as human beings. 

            As a result, we have to re-think the ways that we are going to reach out in Christ’s name.  We can no longer rely on programs or gimmicks, social pressure or a “Christian” culture to fill our pews.  We’re going to have to actually go outside of our church walls and engage with people where they are.  In all likelihood, it will take a greater investment of time and energy than it ever has to see someone become a disciple of Christ.  In this respect, the road ahead will be more difficult than it has been in the past but I don’t think that will be an entirely bad thing.  In fact, it will probably make us look a lot more like Jesus since it means we will simply have to spend more time with the so-called tax collectors and sinners just as Jesus did. 

            So my second challenge to you this morning is one you might have thought you would never hear from a Nazarene pastor: Go to the local bar and get to know the people there.  Go where you have to go and do what you have to do to spend more time with that neighbor, co-worker, or friend.  I am asking all of us to simply spend more time with people who don’t go to church.  I’m not even asking you to sit down and have a spiritual conversation that leads them to Jesus before they go home.  I’m asking you to spend time with them and get to know them without an agenda.  I am asking you to listen to them and to love them just like you would one of your brothers or sisters in Christ and to trust God with a quiet confidence that he can work in that relationship in the way that he sees fit.  I am not only asking you to do this individually.  I am also asking the outreach committee to utilize these coming summer months to help us do this as a church; to create events that are not necessarily extravagant or expensive but simply give us an opportunity to spend time with our neighbor.  In the coming year, we must spend more time outside of our walls with those who have never been inside our walls. 

Expanding Our Vision of Christ-like Service

            As I said earlier, I believe that we have done an excellent job in meeting our third goal of serving others simply for the sake of being Christ-like servants.  However, I believe this is still an area in which we need God to continue to expand our vision of the ways in which we can be the Body of Christ.  We must not simply become satisfied with the ways that we are currently serving.  We must continue to seek new opportunities for serving others in Christ-like ways. 

            I have a dream for our church in this respect.  It is a long term dream that will take many years to achieve if we choose to pursue it.  Nevertheless, I dream that our church will come to have a reputation in this town – a reputation of service.  I have a dream that some day it will be a common practice in our community for people to tell stories about our church; stories of how we were there for them when times were hard.  I hope that some day it will be a common part of our town’s vocabulary to say “I remember how the Church of the Nazarene was there for me when I didn’t have enough to eat and couldn’t pay my bills.” Or “I remember when the Nazarene church helped my brother while he was at Kleemann Village when no one else would.”  Or “Just last week those Nazarenes were at it again; tutoring kids in Webster Apartments, caring for the elderly at Hawthorne Inn, helping the unemployed find work.  Those Nazarenes are always somewhere serving someone.  It’s like we can’t get away from them.”  It is my prayer that we can develop that kind of reputation as a church. 

            However, I also hope that in vigorously serving our community here in Clinton, we will not forget that we are a global denomination with brothers and sisters around the world.  In many ways, those brothers and sisters need us as much or more than our own community does.  So I hope that as we set our hands to work here that God will also continually lift up our eyes to see the work that he is doing around the rest of our world.  In that spirit, I wish to encourage our newly elected NMI council for the coming year to begin the process of organizing a short mission term mission trip to somewhere outside of our own country so that we might have the opportunity to serve in Christ-like ways, not only here at home, but also with our brothers and sisters around the world.  

            (1) A renewed commitment to our teens.  (2) Spending more time with the “unchurched”.  (3) Expanding our vision of Christ-like service. These are the places that I believe God is leading us in the coming year.  However, let me add one more personal note before I close.  I have wrestled mightily with these three goals.  I have questioned them and questioned them again in the recent weeks.  One of my biggest concerns in being a pastor is that, as a leader of a community of faith, as someone that you look to for vision and direction, it is always a great temptation to insert my own agenda where only God’s agenda belongs.  That concern has arisen in my mind more than once with reference to these three goals for the coming year. 

            In addition to that, I know that these are hard times.  There seems to be only poor economic news every where we look and we are feeling the crunch here as well, both individually and as a church.  I know that some families are finding their financial means a bit more scarce these days and even this past Thursday, as the Church Board looked over the budget for the coming year, we saw that things are going to be very tight in the months ahead.  I also know that youth ministry takes a considerable amount of money while simultaneously being unlikely to generate any more tithe money. I know that outreach and service also take money without necessarily benefitting our church in any immediate way.  Worst of all, a mission trip is one of most expensive endeavors we could undertake as a church.  With all that in mind, it would be very tempting to cut back, be conservative and put our ministry on cruise control until more promising times.   

            But if I know anything about our God, it is that he tends to do his best work when things seem least promising.  It is when there are only a few loaves and a few fish that he feeds the thousands.  It is when the waters are raging that he calms the storm.  It is when our Lord is crucified, dead, and buried in a stone sealed tomb and our hopes are dashed and are dreams crushed that our God raises Jesus to new life and thereby promises us new life as well.  It seems that it is when things are as dark as we have ever known them to be that the light of the resurrection shines the brightest. 

            In our passage from Acts this morning, we heard that “with great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus”.  I believe that if we will renew our commitment to our teens, spend more time with the “unchurched”, and allow God to expand our vision of what it means to be Christ-like servants in these challenging times, then we too will witness to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus with great power.  Or to put it another, more familiar way, we will be a community that is a faithful image of God’s love.  May our God empower us with his Spirit and his life-giving resurrection power. 

                                                                                                In Christ,

                                                                                                Rev. David Young