This morning at Advent Lutheran Church (ELCA) we celebrated Pentecost and Confirmation.
Sermon
My message, “Forecast: Sustained Winds” is based on Acts 2:1-21, 41.
You can watch below or read the manuscript.
Excerpt
The Life-Giving Wind is always blowing – sometimes as a breeze and sometimes at gale force. Wherever the Life-Giving Wind blows, the church is about renewal not repetition.
Churches that do the same thing over and over again often see diminishing results and more disturbingly find that they are led by programs or tradition rather than by the Life-Giving Wind.
Several months ago, Advent’s staff and council learned about something called the congregational life cycle. Notably, while the congregational life cycle often follows the human life cycle, it doesn’t have to.
People progress through life stages from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood then on to middle age and retirement before reaching old age and finally death.
When congregations are attentive to the Spirit and intentional about renewal, they can do better than halting the aging process; they can actually return to earlier life stages. Can you imagine Advent becoming a teenager again?[1]
[1] For more on this check out George Bullard’s work that builds on and contextualizes Isaac Adizes’ organizational lifecycle model for the church.