November 12, 2006 Sermon
Pastor Chad Langdon

Guiding Principles

1 Kings 17:8-16

Mark 12:38-44

            Never talk to strangers. Has anyone ever heard that before?  When I was about 4 years old, I attended a program called Safety Town.  It was in a gymnasium that was made up like a little town, complete with streets, crosswalks, buildings, etc., and instead of cars, we rode around on Big Wheels.  The entire point of Safety Town was to teach us some important rules – how to read a stop light, how to look both ways when crossing the street, how to trust a police officer…you know, safety things.  Well, I still remember my first day because I was wandering around Safety Town just trying to figure it all out when a really nice lady came up with a plate of cookies and offered me one.  I said sure and reached for the cookies.  All the sudden a whistle blew, a police man came running up to me, people started yelling, lights started flashing – it felt like I had just hit the self destruct button or pulled a fire alarm or something.  All these people surrounded me and started yelling, “Never talk to strangers!  Never talk to strangers!  Never talk to strangers!”  I started crying cause all I did was reach for a cookie.  Needless to say, I never talked to another stranger, especially at Safety Town.  As traumatic as that experience was for me, I learned a very important lesson that day and it became one of those rules that I never broke as a child.  It influenced how I made decisions, and I think it even influenced my personality.  To this day, I still get anxious when I’m around people I don’t know.  “Never talk to strangers” became one of the most important values in my life.

            If you listened to our first lesson this morning, you heard a story about Elijah and the widow.  It’s pretty clear that the widow didn’t hold the same values as me.  She’s out gathering sticks and a total stranger walks up to her and asks her for a cup of water.  She said, “Sure” and runs off to get it for him. No lights flashing, no policeman blowing his whistles, nobody yelling.  As it turns out, she was operating by a completely different set of values, some that are more universal.  While “Never talk to strangers” is indeed an important rule for children, it isn’t something that holds up when you become an adult.  You won’t get very far in life if you refuse to talk to strangers as an adult.  “Never talk to strangers” is a core value that you want to instill in your children, but it is a value that changes over time. 

            The widow in our first lesson was operating under a different assumption, a more powerful rule, one that doesn’t change over time.  The rule that she used to make her decision was more along the lines of “Everyone has something to offer.”  When Elijah came up to her and asked for some water, she went to get it for him because she believed that she indeed had something to offer.  This timeless, changeless rule is known as a guiding principle and it overruled personal values of “Never talk to strangers.”  Guiding principles are statements that don’t shift or change.  They are non-negotiable and hold true for everyone. They help us make decisions and directly impact our actions.  Think about it, if she didn’t believe that she had something to offer, she wouldn’t have run off to get Elijah some water.  Guiding principles overrule our individual personal values (like Don’t talk to strangers) because Guiding Principles come from God and hold true for everyone. 

            “Everyone has something to offer” is timeless and universal. Our gospel lesson tells of a different widow, living hundreds of years later, yet she recognized that same universal guiding principle.  She was very poor, had very little to live on, yet she believed so strongly that “Everyone has something to offer” that she put in her last two coins, even if they weren’t worth more than a penny.  Jesus commended her for her actions and for recognizing that timeless truth that she still had something to offer.  Years later, St. Paul also wrote about this guiding principle when he said in 1 Corinthians, “To each person is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  There is no way to get around it – in God’s world, everyone has something to offer.  Using a universal guiding principle like this is a way for us to figure out how God wants us to act and what he wants us to base our decisions upon.  If someone comes to me and says, “Pastor Chad, I just don’t feel like I belong because I feel useless,” I know that’s not true and we just have to keep searching for that gift because we know that “Everyone has something to offer.” 

            Another example of a guiding principle found in these two passages is that God will provide everything that is needed to accomplish his will.  In Elijah’s story, the widow never ran out of food, even though she used the last bit of her food every single day.  In Jesus’ story, the widow gave her last two cents, yet she knew that God would continue to provide for her, even if she had nothing left. In both cases, God provided exactly what was needed.

            These are two guiding principles from our lessons today, yet there are many other guiding principles found throughout scripture and in God’s world.  As the Transformational Ministry Team learned at our training last spring, the two most important things that a congregation can do in order to help accomplish God’s mission to love, bless, and save the world is to 1) discern our mission statement and what God is calling us to do in the world and 2) discern what Guiding Principles God wants us to hold as most important in making our decisions and carrying out that mission.  When major decisions are made, the congregation’s purpose and guiding principles can be used to weigh options, keep the ministry on track, and make healthy decisions according to God’s will.  After over six months of praying, studying scripture, and listening to God and to all of you, we think we have a handle on the first part – our mission statement.  It’s located on the front of your bulletin and the entire congregation will vote on it in January.  Our purpose as a congregation can be stated like this, “We Care, Share, and Prepare so that all experience the love of Jesus Christ.”  Now its time to start working on the guiding principles – those things that will hold us accountable as we work out this mission statement. 

            But first, a warning: the guiding principles we adopt may conflict with our present behavior and current practices.  For example, if we adopt “Everyone has something to offer” as one of our guiding principles, that means that we will have to work hard to get every single person involved in some way, shape or form, otherwise we are letting them down and we are letting God down.  One of our biggest problems, at least since I’ve been here, is retaining new members.  People will come, join our church, stay for about 6 months, and then gradually fade away.  This is primarily because we have not engaged them, not taken the time to find out what it is they have to offer, and they then go somewhere where they do have something to offer and feel more valuable.  If “everyone has something to offer” becomes one of our guiding principles, we will have to be more intentional about engaging new members and figuring out what it is they have to offer.

            In short, guiding principles are those standards that we hold ourselves to that will impact our decisions and help us achieve the purpose that God has for us as a congregation.

            Hopefully, everyone received a stack of post-it notes as you came in this morning.  Go ahead and take those out now, and you’ll also need a pen or pencil.  If you need post-its or something to write with, please raise your hand and the ushers will hook you up.  Everyone, even the youth, need these.  To help us figure out these guiding principles, I’m going to run us through a series of questions and you’re going to write your answers on the post-it notes.  If you’re visiting today, I encourage you to participate also because you will bring your own unique gifts and perspectives to this exercise.  God will be speaking through you to us today and I thank-you for your courage in participating.  A couple of rules about this exercise:

1)      Only write one idea or phrase per note.  Take as many notes per question as

you need, but only one idea or phrase per note please.

2)      Put the number of the question in the lower right hand corner of each note.  This will help us know which answers go with which questions.  If you have 6 answers to question #1, make sure they all have a #1 in the corner – Do not number them 1 through 6.

Hopefully, you won’t run out, but if you do, just raise your hand and we’ll get you some more.  We’d like everyone to participate in this exercise and to be honest.  At the end, we’ll collect your post-its and we’ll categorize them in the next couple weeks.  Eventually, the Transformational Ministry Team will use these to help us determine which Guiding Principles God is calling us to use in our decision making.

Any questions?  There will be 7 questions for you to answer.  Alright, here we go…

1-     What are some behaviors & values that make Christians different than everyone else?

2-     What biblical values do you think are most important?

3-     What is important to you about being Lutheran?

4-     What are some behaviors that God expects out of us?

5-     What are some behaviors that you would like to see at Hope, but don’t always?

6-     What are some principles that are vital to carrying out the purpose God has given to us?

7-     What are your own guiding principles?