RESOURCING THE CHURCH FOR ECUMENICAL MINISTRy A ...

Sermon
Winds of Unity
John 3:1-10
Darla Glynn
Rev. Darla Glynn is the Associate Minister at
Community Christian Church, Manchester, Missouri.
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader
of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night ant said to him,
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come
from God; for no one can do these signs that you do
apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him,
“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom
of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus
said to him, “How can anyone be born after having
grown old? Can one enter a second time into the
mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very
truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God
without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of
the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be
born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses,
and you hear the sound of it but you do not know
where it comes form or where it goes. So it is with
everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to
him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him ,
“Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do
not understand these things?
I
don’t know about you, but when I was in seminary
it was drilled into us that context is everything.
Context, context, context, know your context before
thinking you can entertain your own role and the
moving of God in the midst of it all! Well, I don’t
think I have to tell anyone in the room about the
context in which the church finds itself in 2010
because we’re swimming in it! It’s a time that I would
almost characterize as “global anti-context.” In
other words, the minute we think we’ve assessed our
surroundings, they have already changed. This is
what I would describe as a “virtual contextual black
hole” known as post-modernity to most of us. The
only thing it seems, these days, that we can count on
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around us is escalating change itself. In fact, I think
Alvin Toffler characterizes this phenomenon best in
his 1970 book entitled Future Shock. Toffler, in short,
describes future shock as an “. . . accelerated rate of
technological and social change [which leaves
people] disconnected and suffering from shattering
stress and disorientation” caused by too much
change in too short a time. Does any of this sound
familiar?
It’s a time I would describe as a
“virtual contextual black hole” known
as post-modernity to most of us.
Now this might seem to be particularly distressing
and disorienting news, to say the least, for the
church who, as we all know, has always struggled with
the reality of change even when global change moved
at a much slower pace than it does today. It’s almost
as if we’re in an age where the church is chasing a
cultural freight train gathering speed on a down hill
track into a future abyss. In fact, I think if H.
Richard Niebuhr were alive today, he’d have to add
another chapter to his book Christ and Culture entitled
“Christ Chasing Culture.”
We may not like the sound of all of this, but as a local
church pastor this is how it feels to a congregation
forged and shaped primarily by the modern era,
which many of our congregations and conversation
partners have been. In fact, many of the members
of my congregation remind me of the father in the
musical “Fiddler on the Roof” singing his lament
about the loss of “tradition” while, at the same time,
frantically scrambling to read, as most pastors are,
all the emergent church books that have arrived on
the scene. A congregation that is simply hoping for