I don’t believe myself to be anyone out of the ordinary when I say that when I was little I didn’t listen to the sermons. I was either sent down to Children’s Church or too busy working on my children’s bulletin to be bothered by what the old guy in the pulpit was saying. Through my teen years, I spent a fair amount of time in the nursery helping out and when I was a church camp, I would spend my time doodling the name of the flavor of the week at camp that all of the girls had their eye on. Even when I got to college, it was hard to focus in on what the pastor was saying. I floated from church to church, not really feeling like I belonged and then when I finally did find a church that I liked, I decided I much rather liked spending my time keeping the DK girls entertained. When I wasn’t entertaining them, I normally spent the sermon fretting and stewing over the next choir concert or theatre production or my lack of any sort of a future mate or a issue that my friend was having.
My ears where completely shut off. When I worked at the BHP, the closest church was 20 minutes away and I had to be at the box office by 11am so it just didn’t work and when I was on tour, we normally traveled 5 to 6 hours on Sunday so we didn’t go to church very often, and when we did, I was too busy acting the part of the fun little director that had just led all of their children in a wonderful production. After a year of almost no church, I moved back home and going back to church felt like I was resurfacing after a deep dive underwater. I could breathe again. With aching lungs, I yearned to breathe in more and more of what was going on around me theologically and in ministry.
Since my return to North Platte, I have learned to listen to sermons. Given, my mind still wanders from time to time, but I do listen. And in the course of listening, my life has been changed. My faith box has been flipped upside down and I’ve spent the past two years of my life sorting and sifting through everything in there. I've picked up every piece and examined it. Determined if it was worth keeping or throwing away. Over the course of my self examination, I have read different books, talked to different people, and continued to listen. But this entry isn't a review on Love Wins and its not a test in freshmen Intro to Christianity. This entry is about the five specific sermons that I remember more than any of the rest, and will carry with me through the rest of my life.
1. Significance v. Success - Greg Mamula on Graduation Sunday 2010 - I’ve mentioned this sermon in a previous post but it definitely deserves mentioning again. His opening story (because almost every good pastor opens with a story of some sort) told about how, when he was younger and growing up on the upper east coast, he and his friends would enjoy taking a walk through the cemetery to look at all the old graves. He said it was interesting to calculate at how long people had lived in the 1800's and what people had chosen to have put on their headstones. Greg wanted to have something put on his about how he was the greatest baseball player ever. Greg then went on to talk about Simon Peter and the choice he had to make as a fisherman. Does he stay and continue to lead a life as a successful fisherman or does he choose to lead a life of significance by throwing down his nets and following Jesus?
This sermon impacted me because I was at a time in my life where I was very frustrated with this town and all the political ramifications it holds. Did I want to continue to live my life of success or was I ready to put it all aside and choose the less popular decision to live a life of significance? This sermon was my do or die moment when it came to my faith, and I haven't looked back since. A lot of my decisions have not been popular, and I'm sure a lot a my critics would laugh at some of the choices that I have made, but I'm trying to live significantly, and I really don't have time for the success of this world.
2. You are a Masterpiece - Greg Mamula on closing night of Mid-High I 2010 at Camp Moses Merrill - As we had less than 20 campers there that week and as they all professed to have given their hearts to Jesus, instead of the usual closing night sermon of “God loves you and wants to save you from the sin you are living in so lets all bow our heads together and pray and you can raise your hands if you want someone to pray with you” bit, Greg opted for something a little bit different. He gave them each a piece of paper and some crayons and told them to create. And while they created, he spoke. He chose to tell these 6th, 7th, and 8th grade boys and girls that they are wonderfully and beautifully made and the God of all creation is delighted in them. We watched a video at the end from the Skit Guys that depicted God “chiseling” away all of our imperfections. It hurts, and it can be hard to let go of pride and jealousy and selfishness, but if you give God the hammer and chisel, he’ll turn you into a beautiful masterpiece.
This sermon hit hard after a long week of spending time with campers, dealing with friends who were struggling in their marriage, and working through an internal debate about who I truly believed God to be and what his plans were for me. I’ve been overweight for most of my life and spent the better part of 22 years as a single girl. I had the same self esteem that I did in 4th grade when everyone had spice girl CDs and blue and purple shiny, puffy coats and I was listening to Kim Boyce on a tape cassette walkman. I had never been popular, well liked, or very attractive. Could God really find me beautiful even when the world didn’t always share his opinion?
3. Strange Waters - Tom Wiles sometime in early spring 2011 at First Baptist Church, North Platte - The most vivid thing I remember about this sermon was that Tom told a joke how some guy always knew how to find his favorite fishing spot because when he found where the fish were biting, he’d take a piece of chalk, lean out of the side of the boat, and draw a big “X” on the side so he would know where to come back to the next time he went fishing. Super entertaining joke, but the main point of the message talked about how we need to pray to go to strange waters. We spend so much time floating around in the same tiny circle, we forget that there is a lot more ocean out there. Instead of sitting around, being complacent, and not moving, we should be praying that God leads us into strange waters so that we can grow. So that we change and be stretched in our faith. So that we can reach outside of our tiny little bubble that we live in and help someone.
I have really been struggling through whether or not I’m supposed to go in to ministry full time or if I’m supposed to just continue being an active layperson in my church. I mean, seriously, there is need for every kind of person in the church and just because I'm not (or you're not) a senior pastor at a mega church does not mean that you do not have a place as a servant in God's kingdom. This sermon helped me realize that at this point in time it doesn’t really matter whether I’ve made up my mind about joining the ministry professionally or not, what matters is that I look for and strive towards strange waters. It matters that I go to Puerto Rico to learn more about my faith. It matters that I go to Joplin to work along side my husband and our family to try and alleviate some of the anguish and the struggle that some people are facing down there. It matters that I go to St. Louis to spend a week with some of the most beautiful children I have ever interacted with and show them the love of Christ. It matters that I go to youth group and develop relationships with “my girls” and attempt to play ultimate frisbee with the boys. It matters that I sing. It matters that I create. It matters that I try and smile at everyone that I meet in hopes that their day might be made a little bit brighter by simply catching a smile from a stranger.
Keep swimming, rowing, or whatever, towards those strange waters. You’ll never know what you will find there.
4. Survive, Thrive, Get Out Alive (Celebrate God’s Glory) - Dr. Carolyn Gordon during the Friday night worship session at the American Baptist International Biennial Convention in Puerto Rico, June 2011 - Dr. Gordon spoke to a massive crowd of American Baptists on the opening night of worship. She spoke of living in a spiritual desert. She spoke of how difficult it can be we you are feeling spiritually deprived. Beautifully, she told of the crocus and how it blossoms in the dessert in spite of not having any water and in spite of the severe lack of a possibility that it’s seeds will spread. I heard her talk about yearning for an oasis. How we need to learn to focus on the fact that even though we may walk through a really dry and difficult time in our faith journey, there is water and relief at the end. Its mundanely cliche to say, but rough difficult times often lead to times of wonderful blessing and fruition.
This was maybe the first time in my entire life where I felt like someone addressing a crowd was speaking directly to me. Almost a year before I left for Puerto Rico (and the night before Greg told me about the opportunity to audition) I had the most surreal dream that a very dear friend of mine and I were auditioning for something at our church and she wanted to sing "America" from West Side Story. The only problem was, she could only remember the opening line so we stood up on the stage and just sang "Puuuuueeerto Ricooooo" over and over and over again. Then, the night before my flight to Puerto Rico, I had another dream where that same friend and I were at a different church, and this time we were showing up to perform for the congregation. Since Greg and I auditioned, I had just had this feeling that something BIG was going to happen in Puerto Rico. I knew there was going to be some life changing moment when I was there. Some big hand coming out of the rain clouds and pointing in a certain direction while that God voice boomed from above saying "Do this. Go there. Serve here."...So I went to Puerto Rico. I went with a bursting heart and open ears and a mouth full of prayer in the hopes and the anticipation that something was going happen. And I got sunburned. Went to meetings. Bought souvenirs. Ate some amazing food. Spent some seriously meaningful time in conversation. And I worshiped with some 2,000 other Christians...but there was no big hand from the sky; no booming voice from the clouds. Not even a whisper in the deepest part of my soul.
Sitting in the audience that Friday night I was just lost. I had felt that I had been sitting on a sand dune in that stupid, proverbial desert for over a year with no end in sight. Even though I returned to North Platte with a smile on my face, telling everyone how wonderful it was (and believe me, it was a beyond amazing experience), I felt so defeated. But buried deep down in my defeat was a little seed of hope. Hope that Puerto Rico was the oasis that I needed and soon I would be past the desert and be free to blossom in the full glory of God's love. Currently, I am still feeling the heat, but I believe in my heart of hearts that it is getting cooler, and water is just on the horizon.
5. Your Reputation v. God’s Identity - Tom Wiles two weeks before our youth group left of St. Louis (July 2011) First Baptist Church, North Platte - In this sermon, Pastor Tom brought up lots of different people in lots of different situations, but his main point resounded in me just like Greg's sermon about significance vs. success. Tom talked about Joseph and how he chose to give up his reputation as a well known carpenter and a respectable part of Jewish society to take on God's identity for him as the husband of the woman that was carrying the Messiah. What would you have done?
This sermon came just as our youth group was making the final preparations to leave for our mission trip to St. Louis. And while the sermon hit home while I was sitting in the pew, it wasn't until later in the week that I really chewed on it. I was sitting upstairs at the Christian Activity Center in East St. Louis with my new BFF, nine-year-old Donjahnae, and she was braiding yarn into my hair. While she was weaving away she chatted about her home life and what she liked to do at school and how she had a fairly new baby brother. Another group was working there at the same time that we were and while they were not overly accommodating to our group, we tried to be friendly. So when they interrupted my salon session with Donjahnae and asked us all to come downstairs for a brief bible lesson, we obliged. The leader of the other group was a preacher who, if you ask me, didn't take his audience into account. That guy spent the better part of fifteen minutes telling those kids (most of whom come from households that live on a $6,000 a year income) to be grateful for what they have. You are telling these kids to be grateful? These kids. We snuck extra snacks into our lunch so that we could share them with these kids. We drove through their neighborhoods on our way to the center and saw the homes of these kids. We heard the stories of missing daddies and tired mommies from these kids. AND we caught some of the biggest smiles and received some of the warmest hugs from these kids. These kids have so little compared to all of the crap that we all have sitting around our home and yet the willingly open up their sweet little hearts every week to the random new volunteers that come in and say thank you when the drive away. These kids don't need a lesson in how to be grateful....Sorry. I digress. As I sat there in this crowded and stuffy room all I could do was tear up. Donjahnae turned around and looked me with her big, beautiful, brown eyes and whispered "Brittany. Why you cryin'?" And I looked down at her and the only thing I could tell her in response was, "Friend, I am crying because I love you so much and because the God that created you and I loves you even more than either one of us could imagine." She smiled back with a look of shock and awe that only a child can show, then she wiped a tear from her eye and snuggled closer to me.
I thought about my reputation and God's identity for me again and again that week. I thought about it every time I climbed the four flights of stairs to the small room that I shared with two of the most beautiful girls on the planet. I thought about it when I Zumbaed with 20 campers from 6 different states. And I thought about it as I, the ever unpopular one, made friends with people that weren't even from our mission group or church. And I thought about it every night as Sam, Greg and I sat down with our youth group to debrief the day's events and pray together for each other, our mission sites, and those we had left at home.
My reputation or God's identity for me? If my reputation was what I left behind in North Platte and God's identity for me was this new life that I had discovered with Donjahnae, and the wonderful girls that I bonded with, and the boys from our youth group that I laughed with, and with my sweet boys from Louisiana (Oh Grayson, Kennay, Landon, and Brady!), is there really a choice in that?
I have been home for almost two weeks now, and in that time I have started a new job, worked on half a dozen craft projects, and my husband has ripped out all of the tile and some of the plaster in our upstairs bathroom and is replacing a window as we speak. A lot has happened and my mind has felt a little muddled. When that happens, I tend to lapse into "facebook thought." This normally happens during periods of high stress or after spending copious amounts of time on this forsaken social networking site. I sure you can laugh with me when I say that I sometimes sink into thinking thoughts that are only as long as a status update. So, if you have read all of this ridiculously long blog (or just skimmed through to the end just to see if I ever actually made a point) and still have no idea what I am talking about, then here it what it boils down to:
My job is just my job. But my purpose in life is to SERVE the Alpha and Omega, to LOVE everyone that I come into contact with, and to CREATE with passion because God has blessed me with so many beautiful things around me and with the ambition to share His works with others through any media possible.
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-Brittany
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