Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship ·July 10, 2005

Celebration Sunday

Of Broadway Christian Church’s Outreach Giving

June 2004 – June 2005 = $159,321.21

Prayer of the Day

We thank you, God, for your generosity made known to us in creation, in joy, and in Jesus.  When the world seems a discouraging place, help us be part of the solutions.  Protect us from hate, our own and others.  Amen.

Scripture
Matthew 13:1-9

That day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.  Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there while the whole crowd stood on the beach.  And he told them many things in parables saying, “Listen.  A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.  Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched, and since they had no roots, they withered away.  Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty fold.  Let anyone with ears listen.”

An Introduction
Kim Ryan

Indeed, this morning, I invite us to have ears to hear and eyes to see – to see that every dollar represented in this $159,321.21 is a seed, one seed, one dollar.  Alone it might seem small and seemingly insignificant, but together, planted in good soil, it grows, and it brings forth fruit.  Now we will never see all of the fruit of those seeds, but we can trust in the power of God to take a tiny seed, a single dollar, a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, and multiply its fruit thirty fold, sixty fold, a hundred fold.

Roger is here to tell us about the seeds and the fruit of his own life and of his work through Week of Compassion.

[Editor’s Note:  Roger Fisher, former long-time Broadway Christian Church member, is currently the Director of Residential Life at Texas Christian University in Forth Worth.  He is also the immediate past national chairperson of the Week of Compassion Committee.]

Message
Celebrate Outreach
Roger Fisher

Good morning, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to visit with you during Outreach Sunday.  Before I start, I must say I was surprised this morning when I met your intern Ryan and realized that not only is he here with you this summer, he was one of my staff members last year, and he will continue to be next year.  I understand he is doing a very good job, and I’m glad, or I’m going to have to have a talk with him when he gets home.

I hesitated when Kim invited me to make this presentation, but I have to admit that the idea of participating in the annual barbecue chicken dinner after the worship service prepared by Glen Geiger and his pit crew was the deciding factor.  I can vividly remember those annual affairs and welcome the opportunity to sample that fare once again.

Actually, another reason I hesitated on Kim’s invitation is something Don Day or it might have been John Poehlman told me several years ago.  He said an expert on anything was just anyone more than 50 miles from home.  So please bare with me, as I am more than 50 miles from home, and I’m not an expert.  However, I have recently had some experiences with church outreach, and I am more than willing to share those with you this morning.

To begin, whatever passion I have developed for outreach began in this very church about 20 years ago.  I attended a men’s breakfast group early one morning and the speaker that morning was Lee Norbury from the local Habitat for Humanity chapter here in Columbia.  Up until that time, I was somewhat aware of outreach activities in which the church was involved, but I never really got involved myself.

The reasons I used for my noninvolvement were typical, such as I’m too busy at work.  I’m too busy raising a family.  And at that time, I’m spending too much time at Daniel Boone Little League to get involved.  But something struck a chord in me that morning at the men’s breakfast that made me realize I wanted to contribute to the process of building a home for a worthy family in my community.

As this morning’s Scripture read, I guess the seed was planted, and it took root, because the very next Saturday, I got up early, packed a light lunch, grabbed some tools, and I headed for the Habitat site.  The volunteers that day were painting the interior of the house, so I was handed a paintbrush, a bucket of paint, and was told to begin in the living room.  I can remember that day very well, because I was wearing a ball cap with “Goodyear” written across the front of it.  Even though I introduced myself to the other volunteers, I was referred to as Mr. Goodyear.  “Mr. Goodyear, you are doing a good job.”  “Mr. Goodyear, you are done in the living room; now go to the bedroom.”

This experience began my journey through many years of volunteering as both a builder and a board member for Habitat in two different cities.  As an aside note, I think it also led my wife in becoming a staff member of Habitat in Fort Worth.  I have met many great people through this experience, many of whom have been the homeowners themselves.

One day after a home dedication in Fort Worth, I asked the new homeowner why she had chosen that particular lot.  It was located right across the street from a very dilapidated fourplex with trash all over the yard and broken-down cars in the driveway and garbage cans all over the street.  I asked her why she chose this lot, and she said, “Because every morning when I leave my beautiful new home, I look across the street and remember how far I’ve come in my life, since I once lived there when I was on cocaine.”

Wow!  What a testimony she made to all of us.

Talking with you, the members of Broadway Christian Church, about outreach is like preaching to the choir.  This church has always been and continues to be active in outreach ministries.  You have been active in Habitat, St. Francis House, Loaves and Fishes, and annual mission trips, like the one I went on when my daughter was here.  She was a senior in high school, and Kim took us to a church in Denver and made me sleep on a concrete floor for a week.  I did learn to make a great beef stew in the soup kitchen, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Today you begin the sponsorship of yet another refugee family in your community.  I also want to mention the major commitment in your support of the Bethany Fellows program.  The future of our denomination, and I truly believe this, will be greatly affected by this program.

All of this is being done while still maintaining the local ministry program of the church.  And you look to the future in your recently-completed feasibility study that confirms Broadway is a strong, committed congregation with “good financial stewardship, positive energy, and a sensitivity of God’s work among and through you.”

On a personal note, let me explain a parking-lot conversation with a former board chair of my church in Fort Worth.  Our church in Fort Worth pledges ten per cent of its operating budget to outreach, which is a sizable sum of money, since we are the third largest Disciples of Christ church in the denomination.  But our members also match that with personal gifts, so the outreach budget is extensive.  The former board chair recommended to me as we were standing in the parking lot one evening after a meeting that maybe since individual members contributed so much to outreach, just maybe the church didn’t have to give ten per cent.  Well, for over 30 minutes, I explained to him how the outreach committee worked, how difficult it was to determine which of the many requests we received should be funded, how important the church was to the local community and the worldwide community.  I explained to him that my definition of church included more of an outreach philosophy than one of new steeples and resurfaced parking lots.  Dixie was waiting for me in the car, and she got so tired of waiting, she started blowing the horn.  But the ten per cent item was not cut from the budget.

Now, a word about Week of Compassion that this church so graciously supports every year.  Again, through contacts I made through this church, I became a member of the Week of Compassion board.  I served four years, and this last year I served as chair of the board.  This board is made up of four regional ministers, four congregational members, and four lay people.  It has the responsibility of distributing funds given each year by Disciples congregations like this one.  What a daunting task it is!

This past year alone, over $3.2 million was given to the Week of Compassion and then distributed to agencies throughout the world in response to humanitarian needs.  Remember John 6:9 says, “There is a boy who has five loaves and two fish, but what are they among so many people?”  That’s the theme of the Week of Compassion committee.  This is exactly how we feel every time we need to consider requests for all sorts of human needs.  The requests for help came for victims of flooding in Florida, and you know last year we had three or four in a row, church fires in Mississippi, tornadoes in Oklahoma, forest fires in southern California, and believe it or not, flooding in the Divinity School at Texas Christian University.  I got personally involved in that one.  There were droughts in Africa, refugees in Afghanistan, tsunamis in Southeast Asia, unemployed coffee workers in Nicaragua, and homeless children in Iraq.  The human needs around the world are endless.

Through church partners like Church World Service, Action by Churches Together, Food Resource Bank, Interchurch Medical Assistance, Ecumenical Church Loan Funds, many of these needs are being met by hundreds of denominations like ours through Week of Compassion.  Week of Compassion is the funding agency, and then our partners such as Church World Service and Food Resource Bank and others do the work.

My work with Week of Compassion has led me to meet a man named Javod.  Javod is from Bosnia.  Javod lost his home and his business during the Balkan War.  He said that our money from Week of Compassion is “blessed money.”  He said, “I know governments fly in shipments of food, but when the money comes from people like your church people, it comes from the heart, and that money is ‘blessed money,’ because that money stays with us for a long time.  We invest that money.  We use it to raise crops.  We use those crops to feed the hungry.  We teach people how to live their lives again.”  He calls that “blessed money.”

Javod’s son, Ognon, is now a student at T.C.U.  I am helping to sponsor him to employ him on our campus.  It’s been a wonderful experience meeting these people who experience those things.

In closing, let me tell you two Week of Compassion stories.  During one of our board meetings in Tucson, I was able to participate in a program called Humane Borders, which Week of Compassion sponsors to some degree.  Humane Borders is a program from the First Christian Church in Tucson.  It’s an emergency water project in the Arizona desert.  Water stations are set up throughout the desert for migrant workers who come across the border looking for work.  And, yes, U.S. businesses are there welcoming them.  That is why they are tempted to come across the border.  Without this water, they risk their lives walking through that desert waiting for American businesses to pick them up.

This humanitarian program is designed to help these people by keeping them from dying in the Arizona, southern Texas, and southern California desert.  I helped clean and refill those water stations.  It was quite an experience.  After coming back to Fort Worth, I got University Christian Church to purchase a trailer to be pulled behind one of the water trucks, so that more water could be delivered more economically on those long trips throughout the desert.

A final story.  One outstanding program supported by Week of Compassion is called the Growing Project.  It is sponsored by Food Resource Bank.  Food Resource Bank has a regional office right here in Mexico, Missouri.  We at University Christian Church made a $1,000 contribution from our outreach budget that was matched by Week of Compassion.  That $2,000 was given to the Mount Pisgah Mennonite Church in Novelty, Missouri.  They took that money and bought fuel, seed, and fertilizer, and planted soybeans on land donated by church members.  Here is a church that didn’t have money, but they had land and the ability to farm it.  That soybean crop was sold at market for $13,000.  The Agency of International Development (AID) then matched it dollar for dollar, so $26,000 went to the Food Resource Bank. 

We at University Christian Church think that our $1,000 donation multiplied into $26,000 for Food Resource Bank.  University Christian Church is going to provide another donation this year.  We are going to do it again, and on a selfish note, I would like to ask this congregation to consider doing the same.  It is such an amazing way to watch the loaves and fishes multiply.

I need not convince you of the needs in our communities, be it in Columbia, the state of Missouri, the United States, or the world.  You know what those needs are.  I don’t need to convince you to actively participate, because you are active participants.  As Albert Schweitzer said, “The only people who are really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve others.”  I’m only here today to celebrate what you are doing so well through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us pray…

God’s gifts to us are great and unending.  Let us commit ourselves to follow God’s example of generosity, caring, and compassion.  Go forth and serve joyfully, and may the love of God, the grace of Jesus, and the communion of the Holy Spirit go with you now and forever.  Amen.

Benediction

These are the days of the harvest.  Help us to know as we sow and we reap that all good gifts come from you and in sharing them with others we return them and offer our thanks.  Amen.