One of the great struggles in pastoring a church that has been chronically shrinking is that people tend to want to focus on their struggles and frustrations than on trying to find ways to be faithful to our shared calling.  This creates a vicious cycle which accelerates the very decay that is contributing to the negative focus.  It is, in effect, the process through which congregations dies (though the fatal blow is actually losing sight of the Gospel).

Central has been wrestling with this problem for decades, and I’m onl the latest pastor to be frustrated with it.  I’ve been here five years and sometimes it feels like all I’ve done is accelerate the decay even more by forcing people to admit it’s existence as a serious problem that can’t be passed off to “those people,” we all have to own responsibility for our predicament.

Yet, that isn’t all I’ve done – and I keep needing to remember that.  My whole purpose in pointing to the death among us it to draw us to the greater reality – that resurrection is peeking through all around us.  We have some new disciples preparing for baptism, the core of the congregation seems to enjoy being together, the leadership of the Church is working out a vision to do ministry, and people who are coming into contact with Central are beginning to see something of value going on here.  We still have a long way to go (good suburbanites that most folks are, talking with the neighbors – much less actively living out their faith with them – is still high on the “scary things to do” list), but the signs of resurrection are here among us – we just have to choose to look at them.

This leads to the picture above.  One of our students drew this image of our Church for a school project.  Look at the signs of color and life!  For this student, Central Baptist is a “place” of joy and light and color.  I showed this to the congregation on Sunday, not as a “warm fuzzy moment” (I don’t really do those), but as an encourgement that those who are often the most perceptive among us (children catch masks quite easily, don’t they?) sees Central as a place of life.  I also encouraged us to keep trying to be Jesus to each other, so that by the time this student is my age (35) or a woman named Eleanor’s age (99) he might still picture the Church with vibrant color – as a sign of life.  Who knows if anything will come out of it, but I sure can hope.