Open To Opportunity 6-10-12

The Reading—Colossians 4: 2-6

Devote yourself to prayer and thanksgiving, but keep alert as well. Pray for us, too, that God will open a door for proclaiming the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison. Pray that I may proclaim it as clearly as I should. Be wise in your ways toward [those who have not heard and believed]. Make the most of every opportunity you have with them. Talk to them tactfully, seasoned with salt as it were, and know how to respond to the needs of each one.

The Gospel Reading: Mark 4: 22-25

He also said to the crowd, “would you bring in a lamp and put it under a bushel basket or hide it under the bed? Surely you’d put in on a lampstand! Things are hidden only to be revealed at a later time. They are made secret only to be brought out into the open. If you have ears to hear, then listen!” (The Inclusive Bible © 2007)
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Open To Opportunity 6-10-12
God, you lead us in your ways. Help us to stretch our minds to hear all that you have to say. Help us to stretch our hearts to welcome all of your children and all they bring into our midst. May these words bring some new ways of thinking and may that thinking always bring glory to you. Amen
After last week, I cannot stop thinking about what it means to be open. I wrestled with it for a while and then felt the call to preach a four-part sermon series on what it means for us to be OPEN. So this Sunday, we will talk about Open to Opportunity, next week we will study what it means to Persevere in Pray while we remain open. The third week we will talk about Energizing the Everday, and finally Navigating the New. I think that this will give us the opportunity to think together about what it means to be boldly open while we spread the good news of God’s freedom and acceptance. Even before we started having these conversations and certainly before I read any books on the subject, I believe that the Holy Spirit began working with the Strategic Planning Team to lead us in this direction. The last 5 words of our mission statement couldn’t be clearer—“ministry by all for all”. So it’s worth taking the time to study together what this might mean.
I read a lot of books, well, let’s be honest, I peruse a lot of books. Rarely does a book so grab ahold of me that I find the time to read it all. I’m reading one of those books right now and I want to share with you what I think that book has to offer us as we think about ways we want to grow as people, as a people, and as a church. It’s called “Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All”. It’s written by Lando Whitsitt, who is the Pastor of a Presbyterian church in Missouri, and the Vice-Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA. Whitsitt’s premise is that the Church, universal and local, has a lot to learn about being an open source church and I couldn’t agree with him more. Some of you have been around computers in more recent years and you may complete understand ‘open source software’; most of us, simply do not. But we have used the most famous “open source” platform, any time we go to Wikipedia. You may not have taken the time to see that Wikipedia welcomes additions and modifications to all their articles. That means, simply, that no one “owns” the content of Wikipedia—so there, you do know something of Open Source Software.
So how does this relate to our church? “Open Source, when referring to software in particular, simply means that the basic instructions for a program are open for anyone to see and edit.” Closed software, on the other hand is software that is closed except to the privileged few. You may be beginning to get Whitsitt’s point—he states that “like software, churches can also be open or closed.” Now I’m just going to guess that most of us, at some time or another, have experienced a closed church. Only a few ‘select’ people really ran the church and while others’ input appeared to be solicited; in fact, the input is rarely utilized. Let’s be clear and honest, every church has a set of rules—even us—and most of them may well be unwritten. When churches put more emphasis on the rules (aka Doing what we are used to and feels comfortable), newcomers may feel little welcome to bring their whole selves to worship.
Whitsitt challenges us: “Being an open source church is about making sure people can do the things they think they need to do to make church work for them. Too often churches and their organizational structures are so firmly established that it is virtually impossible for someone to come to the church and begin contributing to its life in a meaningful way. The new people feel like they are stuck at every turn.” Surely you don’t mean Open Circle, some of you may be thinking. We’re so new, how could we have rules that turn newcomers off? Let’s look at that together as we value our commitment to acceptance and radical hospitality.
Open Source Software has some very clear protocols which came out of the early years of navigating through these completely uncharted waters. Believe it or not, these criteria work for us as a church committed to radical hospitality and to creating a sacred place of ministry by all for all. Here are some of them:
One: Free Re-distribution—at the center of Christianity is an opportunity. “To proclaim Jesus Christ is to proclaim freedom, and to proclaim freedom is to proclaim Jesus Christ.” We do not “own” that central statement of Christianity. And as we find ourselves in places in our lives where we can stop holding on so tight, we, as individuals and as churches, become radically free. We know that the freedom which Jesus proclaims goes against all that the “powers that be” believe and, ultimately, got him killed; but as we read the stories of healing and redemption, we see that Jesus passed it on regardless of the risk to himself. Our gospel lesson speaks of this as well: He also said to the crowd, “would you bring in a lamp and put it under a bushel basket or hide it under the bed? Surely you’d put in on a lampstand!”
A second criterion is “Access to the Source Code”. The source code in a software program is what is needed to make changes—if only a few in a church have the access to the hidden things that make a church function the way it does, the rest of the folk are seriously limited from making an impact on the church. So in an open source church, everyone from the charter member to the pastor to the first time visitor, has access to the source code which enables them to impact this church with their presence. Why else do we ask new members if they will bring all that they are and challenge us to be the best versions of ourselves and our church?
The third criterion is called derived works—this means that every person has the right and ability to make the software, or teachings of the church, the very Gospel, if you will work for them. Therefore, we are called to contextualize the Gospel in every instance where it is proclaimed. Whitsitts calls us to celebrate a place and time where all who enter can make the Gospel relevant to their lives without making it less relevant to others’ lives. He says, “Celebrating contextualization means that we give thanks to God for the many ways in which the people of God live into freedom, and there will be as many ways as there are people of God.” Paul calls us in the Epistle read earlier that we are to “Be wise in your ways toward [those who have not heard and believed]. Make the most of every opportunity you have with them. Talk to them tactfully, seasoned with salt as it were, and know how to respond to the needs of each one.” Though Paul would not have understood the concept of Open Source Software, he most certainly possessed an understanding of speaking to everyone in ways they could understand.
The fourth criterion addresses the fear that when someone changes a message to make it their own, that change may reflect poorly on the original author. I think I get this—when someone asks me a question and I answer it from my perspective and that person makes it their own, I may not like how my original answer has been changed. And, I may think that my original answer is the one everyone should believe. Open source thinking calls me to understand that we are never in sole possession of the Gospel of Christ and must “seek out and celebrate other understandings of Christ’s person and work”. Put simply, your beliefs are no more likely to contain the ‘absolute truth’ than mine are. If we celebrate the diversity that making the Gospel accessible to all will bring through our doors, we can know that God will give us the courage to face our grasping onto our personal understanding of the Gospel as all there is. There is first, fear, and then, great freedom to be found in saying, “it’s not about me—it’s about everyone having free access to the Gospel of Jesus Christ’s grace and acceptance.
The fifth and sixth criterion are two that those of us who call ourselves ‘Christian’ should be able to easily understand. There is to be no discrimination against persons or groups of persons and no discrimination against certain areas of work. If we really find the courage to truly buy in to this process, we will find ourselves in a wonderful place of freedom—not only in our minds and hearts, but also in our church. We take it slow, but not too slow. We invite all, and strive to leave none out. We preach the Gospel of Christ that freedom is neither defined or owned by any one or several groups of people. So we celebrate this freedom and welcome all that this freedom brings into our midst in ministry by all for all. Amen and Amen