Dividing up the Chores
Exodus 18:13-24

I want to start my sermon off today with something that may seem a little bit boring, because statistics sometimes can be that way. But there is a purpose, and if you will just hang on with me, we are going to get through them and back to the text that Carol read to us and back to our own lives as a community of faith. It’s interesting that there was a recent, fairly comprehensive survey that was done of American Religious communities. And there are a couple of significant things in that study, particularly, I think, for us as United Methodists. Now the common sorrow for the last two decades for mainline churches has been that we are declining. There has been the comment that we are no longer mainline, but side lined. And different words like that have been used. This comprehensive survey that was done showed something that was kind of interesting. First of all, the primary reason for the decline in numbers of mainline people is that we have 1.5 children as compared to some other denominations, which I won’t name, who have many children. But the other interesting thing is that mainline churches tend to be much more careful about their membership roles. As the mainline churches were going through the statistical analyses, what they discovered is something kind of neat for us Methodists. That was that there we at least 2 to 3 million more people who actually were related very closely to us than we'd given ourselves credit for.  

Does anyone know anything about Southern Baptists? My wife was one before she married me. Southern Baptists are much looser with their membership roles, and they have claimed to be the second largest denomination in this country for quite some time. The truth is that the Southern Baptists and the Methodists are fairly close in membership, and it is really a tie as to which one of us is the largest. Now what is the joy in that for us as a denomination? It is that we are really not in a state of decline. And I want to state that the truth is, we still are one of the strongest churches in this country. By the way, the Catholic Church is still the largest church in the country: 1 in 4 people in the United States are Catholic.   It is kind of interesting that they out swamp the rest of us by a mile.

The Methodist church is the most geographically spread denomination in this country. There are more United Methodist churches than there are post offices, for example. There tend to be Methodists in places where there aren't other people. Did that come out right? Though Arizona predominantly Mormon and Catholic, we still have a fairly strong presence. Interestingly enough, when I graduated from seminary, the Methodists were so big in West Virginia that I had letters from both senators of my state. I was shocked that the church was big enough to have a lot of political clout. I've never gotten a letter from a senator since I moved to Arizona, because we are not big enough to have that kind of clout. And, by the way, there are some good things that go with that as well. So, it’s not all bad. The interesting thing about our denomination is that we tend to be a small member congregation, basically because of the way we look back at our roots. When you look back at those old circuit riders, they went into cracks, hollows, prairies, and up mountains to access places—wherever people were. And they started congregations in some pretty isolated places, and they made their circuits. Even to this day we find a lot of circuit preachers that preach at 3 or 4 churches. I had a friend who, when we graduated from seminary, had eight churches at which she preached. Can you imagine that kind of circuit?

My mother in West Virginia is a Methodist minister.   She has two congregations, and she is in semi-retirement. She preaches at those two churches every Sunday morning, and there are about 35-40 people at these churches. What I am saying is that this is not untypical. Last year I told you that I had all these statistics, didn't I? Last year I was sent to a conference for new pastors of large congregations. You’re looking at this church and saying, I know there are a lot of churches in Texas with 3 or 4 thousand people on a Sunday morning. How can we say this is a large church? The truth is that our congregation is larger than 95 out of 100 Methodist churches. I want to give you a piece of advice that I was given by my mentor at this workshop. He shared this with the whole crowd that was there. We went through the sizes of our respective congregations and our average worship attendance, and when you look at PUMC, we've got about 800 members right now, and we are going to catch a few more today.   We are hitting right at 600 in our worship on the weekends. When you look at our church, it is at a place, size-wise, that works the best administratively.

The advice that this pastor gave us was that if we tried to control everything that happened in a church the size of PUMC, the pastors would amount to dictators or something like that. In effect, we would burn out and have to quit our jobs, and people would hate us and drive us out of our jobs—if we haven’t quit. One of those two things or both would happen. In a church the size of PUMC we were told, no one individual or one group of people can control everything that happens. And by the way, that is a good thing. What that means is you have to involve other people. You have to empower people, and you have to give them the ability to do what God has called them to do.   Now that all this statistical stuff is out of the way, I am going to step back into the story that Carol read to us about Moses and the children of Israel. I will remind you just a little bit about the background of that story and who Jethro was.   As you recall, Pharaoh’s daughter found Moses in the bulrushes when he was a little Hebrew boy. He was essentially raised as a surrogate son in Pharaoh's court. One day he was out and he saw an Egyptian soldier beating a Hebrew slave. And so out of rage and passion, he killed the solder, which meant that he had to leave or he would be killed. So he went out East to some people that were semi-related to the Hebrews, and there he met Jethro who was there, and he married one of Jethro’s daughters. They had a couple of children, and when Moses got his call at the burning bush to go back to Egypt to rescue the children of Israel, Moses left his wife and two sons back where they were—where they would be safe. It’s wonderful when you go back and read this story in Exodus and think about the reunion of this family after Moses brought the children of Israel out of the wilderness. Now what's of particular interest to us in this story is the human side of it.   Jethro is not one of the children of Israel. He was, however, Moses’ father-in-law.   He probably cared about Moses deeply. As we enter into this story today, what we discover is something that we are trying to discover as a congregation. Moses had this group of people, and their affairs had to be taken care of.   Isn't Moses the one who got a call from God? It is who got the call, right? Isn't Moses the one who hears the word from God, and then administrates whatever that call is?  Jethro says to Moses, “Moses, if you keep on like this you’re going to kill yourself. You can’t keep doing this.    Here is what you do. You assign people over thousands, and over hundreds, and over fifties, and over tens.”   In other words, if you read between the lines, Jethro understood something that any good biblical community understands—that God does not just call an individual out to do God’s work. God calls communities. And God finds within those communities those gifts and graces that each person has, so individuals can do what they need to do so that the whole community might live out God’s will.

Now the point I want to make about this is that there is an assumption that Jethro makes that may not be said explicitly in the text of Exodus, but I think is pretty profound.   By the way, Paul’s letters in the New Testament address this in more detail, which is another sermon that I will get to in a few more months. But the point is that God’s calling is never to one person in a community of faith. And as powerful and  charismatic as Moses was, Moses was not the only one who could hear God, serve His will, and act it out in the life of the people.  Now, what are we to hear in Jethro’s admonishment?   Just that Moses’ job as the leader of that community is to make clear what the statues and the rules are that God has called the community to live by. But then Moses is called to entrust others within the community with those statues and those laws, that they may exercise those laws and the wisdom that God has given them.

  Now I'm going to move out of that story and give you a side story that has a little bit of humor in it, and the next time my uncle shows up, you can tease him. My aunt and uncle live in Glendale, Arizona.   My Aunt is only four years older than I am; she is my dad’s sister.  My uncle is the same way—I think his next sibling is 25 years older than he is.   My Uncle Ray is a banker, and by the way, a very successful banker.   He issues small business loans and has worked in many states for banks covering a multi-state area. When I moved to Arizona 20 years ago, the first time that Ray came to the church that I was serving was at Epworth in West Phoenix.   He shook hands with the treasurer.   I asked Ray how he knew our treasurer.   He said that this church applied for a loan from his bank a year ago.   I said, “Ray, did you give it to them?”   “No, I turned them down,” he said.   “That's great!   Why did you show up here—to let them know I was related to you?” I exclaimed.   To show you that the church is always a forgiving place, they actually forgave me for Ray’s bad business practices, and actually let him come and worship there.

But it was really interesting.   You know, my uncle and I were talking one day, and here I am talking to a businessman about congregational life and how a banker looks at churches. Now what he said to me, which makes sense, is that bankers are cautious about giving churches money, and there is a big reason for that. If churches don't ante up the money they owe, and if banks foreclose on churches, it just doesn't look good in the bank’s   PR package. But the other thing he said to me, which was really quite interesting, regarded this huge church in Phoenix.   If I mention the name of it, many of you would recognize it. It has been built on the personality of one individual. And what my uncle said to me was that if you look at it from a business point of view, this pastor is raking in the dough, he has lots of people coming, so on the surface it looks like its a good business deal. But, he said, the minute that the pastor dies or has a heart attack or is incapacitated in any way, the whole thing crumbles. Because his church is built on one persons personality, and in spite of the revenue that they are generating, giving this church a loan is a huge risk from the banking point of view.  

Now, what does that have to say about what sometimes seems like the boring polity of a mainline Methodist congregation? We have rules, and the rules say that the governing body of our church is our church counsel.   There is a nominating process, and by the way, no one can stay in a job but for a few years at a time, and then they have to move on so that someone else takes over leadership. We make the same assumption that Jethro made when he was talking to Moses: that the leadership of any congregation is only as healthy as long as the leadership is spread out.   Decisions are not made by one person, even by one who may be very good at making decisions.   In the end no congregation can take on the personality of any one individual. What I want to say to you is, that as charismatic as any pastor might be (myself included), what I want you to understand is that the will of God in this congregation will always be found not in one person, but in the collective leadership that the church has.

Now I'm going to get to the good stuff. In a couple of months we are moving to a new building. All of us are nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof. And we are scared, and we don't know where we are headed, and we don't know what it means for us to move into this new building. And we are excited yet afraid that people might actually show up and come after we move into our future. I mean we are. And it’s that ambiguity with which we struggle. Anytime we are in a crisis, whether it’s a bad crisis or a good crisis (and moving into a new building is a good crisis), we need to fall back on those things which are foundational—those things that give us a strong sense of who we are and keep us reminded of who God has called us to be. After pastoring this church for a year, what I want to say to you is that there are some things here that are similar to other churches that I've pastured. There is a great variety of people in this church. There are Democrats and Republicans and there might be Libertarian or two that I haven't fettered out. There are men and there are women. There are old people and there are young people. There are people who see their passion and call to get out and be a social witness to justice in this community. There are other people within this church that see their passion and call as sharing God’s word and making sure that we as individuals know that we have that personal and intentional relationship with God. There are people who know that their job is to make sure that they stand there and hand you a bulletin every Sunday morning.   That is their call. What I want to say to you is that what makes you different from some of the other churches that I have pastured is your understanding of the richness of that diversity of call that God has given you as a congregation. You seek to find that common gospel, the live transforming power of God thorough Jesus, and live it out as a community. And what I've seen is a celebration of that call as you struggle with each other sometimes.   The struggle is not negative, but it is a positive way to define what God has called you to be. Just like at home, folks, we all have our chores here, and we have to each do the chore that God has called us to do. Some of those chores demand things of us that we love, but I want to ask you who in your home actually likes to clean the toilet? The point I'm making is that not all things God calls us to do are things that we really want to do. We may be called to less desirable chores, none the less. And we must understand that the gift of this community is the power of the broad leadership of this church. What I want to say to you is that my joy of being the pastor of this church after a year is that I perceive no factions here or factions there. I see a people who understand a multi-faceted call of God that is PUMC.   And I really see the positive energy that comes from the work that you do to be God’s people. I'm sure that as we keep marching to the promise land that God has called us to, that God will continue to bless us as God’s people. Each of us seeks diligently to find the chore that God has given each of us to do, and we live out that commitment. Now I will tell you that I'm a little slow on the draw on a lot of things.   I wanted the nominating process of this church done by the end of the summer and we haven't even started it. And Carol and I are co-chairs of that process. What I want to do is ask all of you to be thinking in the days ahead about what chore has God given you. What unique call do you have?   Look around you, and God may be telling you what someone else’s chore ought to be. And you can tell me that, and I will inform that person that God told you that.

But the bottom line is this—we are all in this together folks. What God has called us to do as his people, he's not called us to do alone. And I hope that we can learn from the lesson of Jethro and Moses—that delegating the responsibility is God’s way. May we know that God is with us.

Let us bow our heads for a word of prayer.