Sermons

Sermon, The Rev. Brian C. Taylor, Dec. 6

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

Groundbreaking Sunday
Ministry Complex
Dec. 6, 2009
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Today, as we break ground for the Ministry Complex, it is an exciting historic moment for our parish. In the next few weeks, construction will begin on a building roughly the size of this one, which will house all the diverse activities that we can’t possibly fit in our tight little campus anymore. And so at this turning point in our life as a community, I’d like to talk about how we got here, where we’re going, and why this matters.

Almost 60 years ago, a few parishioners from the cathedral started this congregation as a mission. Back then, Montaño was a 2-lane dirt road, and we were surrounded by alfalfa fields. Two large buildings, one for worship and one for everything else, were built out of cinder block for about $30,000. Those buildings are used today as parish hall and education. It took vision, courage, generosity, and lots of volunteer labor for our forebears to make St. Michael and All Angels a successful mission. The effect of their commitment was the establishment of a lively little country church within the rural village of the North Valley.

But within a decade or two, the North Valley was growing. More and more families were showing up at the church. The presence of more kids and an opportunity to start a school pushed our predecessors to add classrooms on to the parish hall. Those rooms today are used by our preschool. They also built a rectory for the priest and his family to live in, now used as our office.

Those predecessors of ours showed more vision as they expanded beyond their original comfort as a little country church. The effect of their commitment was a growing parish that offered to its members and its neighborhood education, music, worship, and outreach programs.

13 years ago, we had grown to the point of bursting our seams, and needed more space for those who wanted to worship here. Many of you contributed to the $1m that was raised, served on design committees, and dealt with the angst of growth. We built this beautiful house of worship that allowed us to double our capacity. The effect of your vision, commitment, and generosity was a much larger congregation and staff that has brought considerably more creativity and diversity into the mix.

3 and a half years ago, we called Fr. Christopher McLaren to be our Associate Rector. We knew from the initial interview that he would help us to improve, expand, and make more consistent our education, fellowship, and spirituality programs for all ages. He has far exceeded our initial hopes. Simultaneously, Deacon Jan Bales has been doing the same thing with all of our outreach and social justice ministries.

The success of what these two have done, together with so many of you who work with them, has made it painfully obvious that we desperately need more space for the things you want to do. As any of you who are active in things that go on around here know, we function like sailors on a crowded submarine.

And so we, the current residents of this parish community, once again mustered up our forward-thinking courage, as others have before us. We purchased the house next door, to the west, so that we could house our growing Food Pantry. And in an extraordinary demonstration of faith, during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, last fall you pledged $1.4m so that we could build a Ministry Complex.

What will be the effect of your vision, generosity, and commitment? By the end of next summer, we will have:
• new administrative space, consisting of several extra offices, a small conference room, a work room, and a place for documents and technology;
• our cramped sacristies will be expanded;
• we’ll have three large activity rooms, one of them built as a free-standing pavilion about 2/3 the size of our parish hall;
• there will be a large and accessible library right off the entrance for small meetings and study groups, and for you to drop in and enjoy the excellent collection of biblical, theological, and spiritual books that are currently hiding way down a hallway;
• and as we move into our new digs, the building we now use for offices will be converted for other purposes, probably for our growing children and youth ministries.

By the end of next summer, things are going to be radically different around here.
On a Sunday morning, we will be able to simultaneously hold alternative gift sales, a lecture class for 50 adults, a youth meeting, a sermon discussion group, and 2 Godly Play sessions for children. On a weeknight, we can have an AA meeting, a concert, and an icon class all going on at once. A Saturday prayer retreat can meet undisturbed in its own place all day, while in here, others prepare flowers for worship, and elsewhere, others set up medical screening for our Food Pantry clients. And when you come to visit me in my office, you won’t hear the roar of traffic right outside my cold, single-pane windows, or the thunderous clacking of the folding machine in our little entry.

Things will be quite different around here. And in 20 years, some other priest will be telling a differently-configured congregation how you had the vision, the courage, the commitment, and the generosity to develop our campus, so that generations to come might benefit.

But why does all this matter? Why is it important that in 1950, or 1968, or 1997, or today, some Episcopalians undertook these building projects? Is it just so that we can fulfill our culture’s conviction that bigger and busier is always better?

No. Because in a world of stress, isolation, and over-consumption, we need congregations of spiritual creativity and depth. In a world of instability, isolation, and change, we need secure communities where we lovingly support one another through life. In a world of consumerism and hyper-efficiency, we need gracious villages where we can come and just be with one another, and with God. And given the unknown future that our children will inherit, we need places that are equipped to build solid soul-foundations for them now.

But most importantly, we human beings need places where we can encounter God. Where would we be without Christian cathedrals, Native American kivas, and Hindu temples? Where would we be without Hebrew schools for Jewish kids, or retreat centers and monasteries? We humans need places that are set aside and sanctified as holy ground, where we can worship, study, and ponder our existence. We humans need places where we can listen to God, pour out our hearts in devotion, and argue about how best to serve the disadvantaged.

To be sure, you can do all this in an open meadow, or in a tiny church that never grows. But God has given you and me the resources to be the kind of large parish that is dynamic, creative, and constantly evolving. With this gift comes the responsibility to make good use of it, to offer diverse opportunities of encounter with the holy to a world that is hungry for them.

So this is no small thing, to be breaking ground today, because it is no small thing to develop a place of encounter with God. None of this happens automatically, all by itself. It happens because you do it. It happens because you exercise vision, courage, and generosity. For that, on behalf of countless others in the future who will benefit from your commitment, I thank you.