A Rare Breed

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Our church is one of an increasingly rare breed: a congregation that is multi-generational in makeup. More and more congregations--especially the flagship churches of the church growth movement--are focused on a particular group: twenty-somethings, baby boomers, young professionals on the rise, and so on. It has long been recognized that in churches, as elsewhere, “birds of a feather fly together.”

Problem is, that’s not what the Kingdom of God is supposed to look like. According to Jesus, the Kingdom of God is like a tiny seed that grows into a tree with strong, welcoming branches where all the birds of the air make their nests (Luke 13:19).

So I celebrate the diversity of ages and stations in life represented in our church. I love the spontaneity of the children, the vitality of the youth, the social conscience of the young adults, the moral earnestness of the mid-lifers, and the wisdom of the mature. I like seeing races and nationalities different from my own in worship. I like being in a church where thoughtful Democrats and Republicans can move beyond the predicable ideological posturing to ask, “What does that have to do with the Gospel?” I like being in a church where people are defined not so much by how they are alike, but how they are different and yet bound together by the Christ who forms the heart of our fellowship.

Well, okay, to be honest, most of the time I like those things, because diversity does bring with it certain tensions. People of varying generations and traditions have differing values, preferences, and expectations.

Take Sunday’s Processional of Commitment. For the past half-century or so on the first Sunday in November--All Saints’ Sunday--members of our congregation have marched forward, one-by-one, to place a commitment card in the little church on the altar. Most older, long-time members of our church deeply value this time of celebration and commitment. It’s one of the few times First Baptist folk leave their pews to process down the aisles, joyously proclaiming their love for Jesus and the church!

But to some newer members of the congregation--and younger people in general--the Processional of Commitment feels showy and ostentatious. This newer generation didn’t have a hand in creating this tradition and doesn’t always understand or appreciate it. A good number of these folk choose to skip Processional Sunday altogether.

In the spirit of a better Kingdom ethic, let me suggest an alternative: if the Processional of Commitment doesn’t appeal to you, feel free to sit quietly in your pew and silently enjoy the pageantry and joy erupting around you. And those who march must promise not to raise an eyebrow at those who don’t! We’re in this together after all. We belong to one another. And we belong to Jesus.

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The Frosty Fool

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Millionaire David Pizer has made arrangements to freeze his body after death. He believes medical science will someday be sufficiently advanced to restore his frozen remains to life.

To insure he has ample funds for his next life, Mr. Pizer has set aside 10 million dollars in a “personal revival trust.” Given the miracle of compound interest, Mr. Pizer figures when he wakes up in a couple hundred years, he will be one of the richest men in the world!

This seems the ultimate expression of Jesus’ parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21). In that story, another self-absorbed business tycoon can think of nothing better to do with his wealth than to build bigger and bigger barns to secure it. Just as he is poised to “eat, drink, and be merry,” the man dies unexpectedly, leaving his vast fortune for others to enjoy. God declares this man a “fool” for storing up treasures for himself but not being “rich toward God.”

Of course, it’s easy to see others’ folly but not so easy to recognize our own. Most of us think neither Mr. Pizer’s story nor Jesus’ story of the rich fool has much to do with us. But Jesus didn’t tell his story to the Mr. Pizers of the world. Jesus told this story to regular folk struggling to find work, pay their bills, and keep hungry mouths fed. In other words, Jesus told this story to people like us.

We are in the Stewardship Season at church, that time of year when the calendar, if not Jesus, forces us to face an uncomfortable subject: money. How much (or little!) we have and how much (or little!) we can afford to give away. This year more than most, this is a difficult conversation because so many folks are struggling financially. In our anxiety, we are apt to think first about how little we can do.

Jesus would shift the conversation from one of our scarcity to God’s abundance. In fact, his remedy to our financial worries is to “Seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness and the other things you need will be provided as well” (Matthew 6:33; Luke 12:31). For Jesus’ people, the first question is no longer how much can I stuff into my barns, but how much can I invest in God’s Kingdom, Christ’s church, and the Good News, proclaimed and lived, that changes everything.

This year, amid all the anxieties swirling about us, try to decide what you can and will give first to the God Movement at the top of Poplar. We are the First Baptist Church of Christ, after all. Our priorities and our calling are right there in our name.

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Second Street Angels

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Atop three buildings on Second Street in downtown Macon, six angels keep silent vigil. They are First Baptist angels. I call them our “Second Street Angels.”

Those angels have kept watch from their present posts since 1884, or thereabouts. Before that, they were fixtures in the First Baptist sanctuary that once stood where the Crest Finance and EZ Finance buildings stand today. That sanctuary burned down after smoldering embers from a defective flue took hold in the organ, then blazed throughout the building. A lovely gothic sanctuary, said to be “second to none in the state,” was reduced to a smoking ruin.

Which begs the question, Where were our our Second Street Angels when our sanctuary burned down? Were they asleep on the job? Did they let us down?

According to the frequent emails I receive featuring angels, angels are the private security force of the faithful. So long as the angels are on your side, you have nothing to fear. No harm can come your way.

That wasn’t so for Jesus. In fact, the Devil tempted him with just such a half-truth about angels: “Throw yourself from the pinnacle of the temple and the angels will protect you!” Not so, said Jesus. You shall not test the Lord your God.

When the time came for Jesus to lay down his life for the sins of the world, the Bible says he could have called 72,000 angels. He didn’t. Because sometimes, the path of suffering and loss is the one that bests serve the mysterious purpose of God.

So where were our Second Street angels the night our Second Street sanctuary burned down? Weeping in attentive anguish I would imagine. And plotting the revolution that would plant our witness atop Poplar--in an even more magnificent sanctuary--where we worship today.

Our Second Street Angels each has a sickle in hand. Jesus said he would send his angels at the end of the age to reap a great harvest. That’s when it will become clear, if it is not clear already: the beautiful sanctuary on Second Street--and the lovely Sanctuary atop Poplar’s Hill--never were the wheat. The buildings were the chaff; the wheat was and is the people that by God’s grace, yet bear witness to the “love that wilt not let us go.”

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With God, There Is No "Them"

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Those searing images of devastation in Indonesia and the Samoan Islands are hard to watch. They pop up on our television and computer screens, or in our newspapers, and we recoil in shock. Seeing so many people devastated by nature’s fury, leaves us shaking our heads in disbelief and sadness. Perhaps we breathe a prayer for the victims and their families. Perhaps we feel gratitude for the Christian service agencies, international organizations, and our own government working to aid in the recovery. But in very short order, most of us are back to wondering if our alma mater will win this Saturday and what’s for dinner.

While it may sound callous to admit, this is not altogether surprising. When we do not know the victims of a disaster personally, especially a disaster on the other side of the world, our capacity to feel the anguish of the victims is somewhat limited. Our most deeply felt sadness is reserved for people we know whose suffering is tangible, and touchable, and painfully close to home.

I wonder, though, what it must be like for the One to whom there is no “other side” of the world; the One for whom not even the sparrow’s fall escapes divine notice; the One whose tears we see on the face of Jesus; the One for whom the Samoan fisherman, whose family and home perished in a Tsunami, is not a statistic, but the intimately known and dearly treasured child of God?

After the earthquakes that spawned a tsunami in the Samoan Islands and brought death and ruin to Indonesia, my wife, Bambi, introduced me to a web app called “Google Earth.” One of the views this application provides is a series of red dots showing all the earthquakes presently occurring. It’s unbelievable. There are red dots everywhere. Of course, most of these seismic disturbances are not large enough to cause a problem, or shake the world in remote places or under the sea where nobody lives, so they escape notice. But when Jesus said 2,000 years before Google, “there will be earthquakes in various places” as the “birth pangs” of the new creation (Mark 13:8), he surely knew what he was talking about.

What if in heaven, there is a cosmic monitor with little red dots that shows all the earthquakes, metaphorically speaking, presently occurring upon the earth: joblessness, sickness, bereavement, divorce, depression, and all the rest? And what if the One looking at the red dots, does not look with detachment, but with anguish and with tears? Because this One has lived our life, walked our earth, plumbed our darkness and died our death, that he might live at the epicenter of the world’s pain and need? In other words, where you live. Where I live. And where that bereft and bewildered Samoan fisherman lives too.

That would be and is the Good News, that our God is Immanuel: God with us and with “them” too.

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Falling Into Seasons

by Bob Setzer
The other evening while going on a run, I felt something not felt in a long time: I felt cool. Not air conditioned, pretend cool but wet, clammy T-shirt, chest-tingling cool. I couldn’t believe it: still September in Macon, Georgia and the crisp, cool embrace of fall was in the air.

The last couple of years, we didn’t get much fall. Punishing hot summers extended well into the “winter” months and then suddenly, the blooms were back. In February, as I recall. The autumn leaves went from green to brown to dead with hardly a moment’s burst of autumn glory to mark their passing.

I’m hoping for better this year. I’m hoping for a fall where jackets and cardigans are essential rambling around gear. I’m looking for a fall where hot apple cider drives the chill from your bones. I’m aching for a fall where a bright, colorful canopy of leaves lifts the eyes and the heart to the Artist behind the masterpiece.

For much of my life, fall was the season of new beginnings because that’s when I, or my daughter, or the kids in the neighborhood went back to school. Fall meant new notebooks with fresh, unmarked pages, new pencils with sharp, unbroken points, new classes, new friends, new challenges. Now that school starts in early August, the elegance of starting school when the world around us beckons change, is lost.

But in the church, at least in our church, fall has long been the ingathering season, the regrouping time, the time for reconnecting and starting again. We return from our summer travels hoping to see --and be seen by-- our fellow worshiper a little more often. Come October, our brain trust of talent--also known as “committees”--is turning over a new leaf and the family budget is being reworked and hopefully, funded. The long, dawdling season of Pentecost--from June to December--is almost over. Soon Advent, the restart of everything will be here complete with the Chrismon tree, and Cherub choirs singing.

Yes, I love the fall and the beauty about to debut all around us. But we are formed not just by the sights we see but by the stories we tell: the story of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, Peter and Mary Magdalene, and supremely, the story of Jesus. We are also formed by the stories of the brother or sister at our side, behind and before us, in the family of faith. So this fall, bring your summer stories, your fall hopes, and your best and brightest dreams to the top of Poplar. Because for many of us, like the tired, summer trees aching for autumn glory, it’s time for a new beginning formed by a Spirit-breathed, Story-fed hope.

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