First Presbyterian Church
What I Did During My Summer Vacation
Sermon forAugust 29, 2004
by Mike Ferguson

Most of you know already that our family spends one week each summer attending Cascades Presbytery Summer Conference in McMinnville. It's not relaxing enough to really qualify as a vacation, but with all the brain food that we're fed each year, there's little doubt we'll be attending for a long time. And besides, since Susan spends the week studying, the church funds half our trip. So thank you, church. I guess today's sermon will have to do for payback.

The conference allows us to sign up for two classes. Today I'm going to tell you about the man who taught my afternoon class. Jerry Van Marter is an ordained Presbyterian pastor who of course answers to a very high calling. He is the director of the Presbyterian News Service. For 90 minutes each day during the whole week of our conference, a class of just four students got to pick Jerry's brain and learn more about how our denomination runs. I found his insider account fascinating. I thought of Jerry when I read the lectionary scripture for today, which LaVonne just read for you. Jerry is in a position to use his authority in ways that would not build up the kingdom of God, but he doesn't do it. I know, because I have been reading his stories for years, and I've admired him a long time. He could go straight to the head of that banquet table in Jesus' parable, but he has the good sense just to show up and tell about what he sees and hears. For that reason, if I'm hosting a banquet, I want Jerry right down in front.

Jerry knows what a good story looks like. He or the three reporters he supervises have made dozens of trips overseas to write about what the church looks like outside our shores. Jesus advised us to invite poor, crippled, lame and blind people over to our houses; Jerry and his group go that one step better because they go to the places where those people are already. Now, I know what you're thinking. Why is Mike, himself a newsman, spending a week of his vacation taking a class from another newsman? Isn't that a little like a letter carrier taking a long hike during his vacation? Or maybe a school teacher who agrees to teach a Sunday school class? Well, yes it is. But I can't manage to lie on a beach any more than a day or two without coming home with a wicked sunburn.

So I like spending my vacations doing things. Learning more about our denomination was a great way to spend a week. Besides, Van Marter convened our class outdoors at Linfield College beneath the shade of a great old tree. So, as it turned out, I got to work on my tan and learn at the same time. I did a lot of learning. I learned that PNS, the Presbyterian News Service is a news agency, not a public relations firm. It's a little like a newspaper - it has editorial freedom to report on all aspects of the church, good and bad.

Sometimes church leaders don't like what Jerry and his small staff does. Do you remember Susan Andrews, our denomination's former moderator, who preached at this church during our spring presbytery meeting, commissioned our youth to attend Triennium, and flung water on some of us, yelling at us to "remember our baptisms"? Well, Susan wasn't always happy with the news service, Van Marter told us.

Once, she took a trip to Colombia and other South American countries, and she had a real political agenda for going. She expected the Presbyterian reporter to basically follow her around and report on what she did. She was, after all, our denomination's elected leader during 2003-04. When leaders talk, reporters are supposed to listen. Well, Van Marter didn't think having his reporter follow Susan around was the best way to handle the reporting. He told Susan that his reporter would check in with her periodically, but would write her own stories about what she saw. Susan was less than happy and told Jerry so, but she went along with Jerry's decision. And after the series was published on our denomination's Web site, where they're read by about 20,000 readers, Van Marter got a gracious note from Susan. "It had those three little words we all love to hear," Van Marter told us."You were right. She said the stories turned out much better than they would have if we'd done it her way."

Like journalists everywhere, Van Marter and his staff have to cover obvious stories of nationwide importance: General Assembly; Triennium; the major issues  that continue to divide us; the national conference of Presbyterian Women; that sort of thing. But they also have enough money in the budget to send reporters overseas and stateside to report on either hot political topics, like the continued problems between Israelis and Palestinians or the fighting in East Timor, or just great features on Presbyterians who are making a difference.
Van Marter did a series like that this summer when he wrote about Presbyterian churches in the Seattle area sharing their buildings with very small congregations, be they African, Asian or Jewish. The presbytery executive there, Boyd Stockdale, had that vision for the churches in Seattle presbytery, and he passed that vision on to at least a dozen Seattle area pastors. The bonds established between Presbyterian churches and smaller churches who share their building are lasting bonds, and the relationship is good for both groups. One of the pastors who participated is my former pastor. He and his congregation shared their building with a group of Christians from Kenya.

Another piece Van Marter wrote dealt honestly with our denomination's membership loss, noting that the percentage lost in 2003, 1.9 percent, was the most significant loss since Presbyterian reunion in 1983."Statistically, we are not losing people to other churches," the article quoted the denomination's stated clerk, Clifton Kirkpatrick. "Our problem is we are losing our people to the secular world - to no active church affiliation. All of us - pastors, elders and deacons - need to give special attention to nurturing our members, supporting them in meaningful ministry, and reaching out to them when they begin to fall away from active membership."

Pretty tough stuff. That's not the kind of reporting you get from a public relations firm, but it does give the average Presbyterian some idea of how serious the problem is. Not all of the news service stories are terribly serious. One, posted earlier this year, is about a Presbyterian pastor who lived in a nursing home in Naples, Florida, until her death last year. Before she died, she suggested the Naples volunteer fire department pose for a calendar like the New York City firefighters did, beefcake style, in order to raise money for the local hospice program. Mr. October, Rollie Hall, said he signed autographs for weeks. Mr. September, an auto mechanic named Adam Tripp, claimed women all over town had their calendars permanently posted to September.

Then there's the TV show "Faking It," where everyday people spend a month learning a new skill well enough to fool a panel of expert judges. The producers of "Faking It" have decided they want a Presbyterian pastor or Sunday school teacher to learn enough to fake being a catwalk model or personal trainer to the stars or comic. Where do these TV guys get their ideas? And why do we play along with them? I don't know, but Van Marter wrote about it just this week.

Another article dealt with a question I'll bet every child has wrestled with- whether we'll see our pets in heaven someday. Are they sinless, so they get in? Mark Twain thought so. He once wrote, "Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would get in." Or, since they can't make a decision about their salvation, are pets immune from both heaven and hell? The piece concludes with a Methodist pastor speculating that God will surely allow our pets to join us, since "it seems reasonable that God would want humans to use their full capacity to love in heaven."

One Sunday soon you'll get our PYGs' full report on Triennium, held in July, but here's what the news service reported: A second-time attendee, Michael Rubenaker, showed up for Triennium dressed like he usually does: in a Mohawk with a Scottish kilt and a belt secured with a buckle portraying a skull. Here's what he had to say:"I enjoy seeing all these diverse different kinds of people that I usually would not be able to get to know back in my hometown. I obviously don't dress like the normal person, and a lot of people are scared away from me. But then you come here and it's completely different. People will point you out and come over and introduce themselves. It's so uplifting." Another youth said her church "is very low-key" and that she'd "never been to anything outside (her) church like this. Just to see all these people really helps you grow in your faith, in knowing that there are other people like yourself out there." I know our own PYGs will have lots more soon to tell you about Triennium.

I am so grateful for people  like Jerry Van Marter who can tell the truth about our churches, about us. So is Barbara Brown Taylor, one of America's great preachers, who writes that she recently received a letter from California doctor who had listened to some sermon tapes Taylor had made years ago and others shed made more recently. "I think you've come a long way," the doctor wrote Taylor. It seems in the older tapes, she'd turned Jesus' critics, like the Pharisees, into one-dimensional, cardboard cutouts and "self-righteous prigs." "Jesus' ministry," Taylor wrote, "involved engaging real people with real concerns, not defeating cartoon characters."

She told the story of a friend who told her to "XYZ" following a lunch, because Taylor's zipper was indeed not closed. Taylor, who really was voted one of the nation's 12 best preachers by Newsweek magazine, says she needs people in her life who will tell her to XYZ the things she says from behind the pulpit."Who will tell me to XYZ, to see the contempt that I do not see?" she asks."My working answer is to make regular lunch dates with people who see things differently than I do, for it is in their presence that my own vision comes clear: the community in which I practice faith is not the Christian community - not even the Jedeo-Christian community - but the community of all humankind."

That's just the vision Jesus has for us as we move to include the stranger among us, to invite in the person who is struggling or hurting or yearning for a church home. That is precisely the kind of church that people like Jerry Van Marter are hoping we'll become, and he's spending his career highlighting examples all over the world of people willing to work at making God's banquet the great feast that it's set up to be. Amen.