Andy's Blog: A Personal Word
July 22, 2008
Jul. 22, 2008Somewhere I ran across the story of a Russian Czar who came out one day and saw a sentry standing next to a patch of weeds. He asked the sentry why he was there and the sentry said, “Well, I don’t know. I’ve just been ordered to stand here from the captain of the guards.”
The Czar went over to the captain of the guards and asked, “Why is this sentry posted at this patch of weeds?” The guard said, “The regulations require it.” He then set about to try to find out why the regulations required that a sentry be standing next to that patch of weeds. He could find no living person on earth who could explain it. Finally, he went back to the archives, and there, he discovered the reason. Decades before, Catherine the Great had planted a rose bush in that spot and had ordered a sentry to guard it so no one would trample upon it.
So, 100 years later, men were ordered to stand guard over a spot for a reason they knew not why for a rose bush that had long since died, planted by a woman who had long since died.
People and institutions are always in danger of losing any sense of purpose other than doing what has always been done without really understanding why. When this happens, we fall into “mission drift” – straying from the purpose and intentions for which something is done or exists. When mission drift occurs, atrophy, decline and deadness set in.
As United Methodist Christians we have declared our purpose as a church is “to make disciples of Jesus Christ.” We are here because Jesus has called us into relationship to himself and given us the commission to go make disciples. At our recent General Conference in Ft. Worth, TX, that statement was amended to read that our purpose is to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”
I like this new phase. Jesus doesn’t call us to just to stand around. Jesus calls us into a relationship with himself, and he gives us work to do – the same work he did – teaching, healing, reconciling and casting out the demons of this world so that God’s kingdom can come on earth as it is in heaven. Ours is a faith that takes seriously the conditions of this world that Christ came to save. He has called us to be His transforming agents in this world.