Amos 3:1-8

Psalm 139:1-11

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

MATTHEW 4:12-23

“The State of the Parish” and Jesus’ Call to Discipleship

The Sunday the Annual Meeting of the Parish is scheduled – or re-scheduled! – is an appropriate time for a sermon on “the state of the parish”, with reflections on one or more of the assigned scriptures for the day. How appropriate it is that today’s Gospel is the call of the disciples, when Jesus says to Peter and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

Responding to that call is a big part of the story of this church. Our church was founded as a missionary endeavor, the evangelization of the rural area between Princeton and New Brunswick in the early 1870’s. When the population of South Brunswick was 2,000, our forebears built a church which seated 125 – truly a testimony to their faith and optimism. We had a missionary priest. The Rev. William Bolmer, from 1875-1880, during whose tenure a single year record for baptisms was set which still stands today! And many of those baptized were adults, brought to Christian faith from, apparently, no previous official religious commitment.

There’s another interesting feature of our early history which can be gleaned from our first Parish Register, the book which contains the records of all baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals. A number of our 19^th Century burials were in what was called “the Colored Cemetery”. That odious term does tell us two significant facts: the cemeteries of the time were segregated – but this church, at some level, was not. (This latter fact would have been remarkable in the 19^th Century.) So diversity and evangelism are part of the earliest history of this congregation – part of our DNA, if you will.

There have been lots of ups and downs since then, including two closures of the church (during the Great Depression and in 1949), but St. Barnabas just refused to stay down. (If Barnabas is our Patron Saint, perhaps Lazarus should be nominated for “Best Supporting Actor”!) And we’ve had our times of spirited conflict, notably The Great Schism of ’65 when a majority of the congregation and the priest moved from the original church building and worshiped in Greenbrook Elementary School after a legendary church fight – followed by some controversies over the construction of what is now the old part of this building in 1969-70, followed by the unsolved arson fire which destroyed the original church!

Yes, we have a colorful history, and in some ways a painful one in part. The gifts and dedication of existing leaders were not always appreciated by new clergy coming in. Rapid cultural change – as South Brunswick experienced rapid growth and as the Episcopal Church nationally changed in the wake of the approval of women’s ordination,

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the 1979 edition of The Book of Common Prayer, the change to contemporary language in worship and to Eucharist every Sunday – was sometimes hard for this congregation to digest.

In the last 20 years, however, I believe we have found our true selves under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Today’s passage from 1 Corinthians, in which St. Paul appeals for unity and against factionalism in the church in that Greek city, has been taken to heart during these last two decades. During periods of change locally and nationally no less dramatic than the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, we, the people of St. Barnabas, have kept solid unity on the essentials of the received Christian faith embodied in the Gospels, the Creeds and the Ten Commandments while explicitly establishing a “comfort zone” for widely diverse opinions on issues such as the invasion of Iraq and the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

We have made room for prophetic ministry, which has been part of biblical faith since before the time of Amos (from whom we heard this morning), with the caveat that none of us in pulpit or in pew can speak with Amos’ rock-solid assurance “thus says the Lord.”

And we have lived out the Commission to be “fishers of people”, remembering that Jesus’ final words to his disciples in Matthew’s Gospel were “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them all that I have commanded you.”

“All nations.” Let’s be honest: some churches really, really “don’t get” that part. We at St. Barnabas may not have “all nations” here, but we do include people who were born in over 20 countries on five continents. (Anyone know any Australians or New Zealanders they can invite here?) So, we can truthfully say, “We get it.”

2004 was in some ways a year in which our church “caught its breath” after 20 years of invigorating and sometimes exhausting growth and activity. We had our first declines in Sunday attendance and in pledge and envelope giving in two decades. I went on sabbatical for two months. But most people would read our 69 page Annual Report and say, “This was an off year?”

We can and should catch our breaths and take a look at the “mountain” we’ve climbed. Even with last year’s drop, Average Sunday Attendance has tripled in 20 years, giving is up enormously, we’ve had two capital fund-raising campaigns and vastly expanded the scope of our ministries and impact on peoples’ lives, both within and beyond our congregation.

And as we stand on this “mountaintop” and look back, we can also see that we are now on much more solid ground financially than we were a year ago. We finished 2004

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with a balanced budget and have approved a balanced budget for 2005, using 2004 Building Fund pledge income to provide only about 3% of our operating income for each year. This means that all gifts to the Building Fund in 2005 will go to capital improvements, not to mortgage payments. We re-financed both of our loans, bringing our mortgage costs down to much more manageable (though still substantial) levels and paid for the most substantial clergy sabbatical in the history of the congregation. We fully integrated two gifted clergy into our parish life while enhancing, not diminishing, lay ministry. We bought a new, versatile and dependable organ thanks to designated gifts and as a result had several applicants for our Minister of Music position instead of just one.

And we really lived out the imagery we used in this fall’s Stewardship Campaign of the church as being “a launch pad for ministry”. Having a good quality “launch pad” is essential -- which in our terms means the money we spend on mortgages, property costs (like heat and snow-plowing!) and administration. But the reason NASA builds launch pads is to send up rockets, and the “rockets” churches send up are pastoral care, worship, fellowship, education and outreach.

St. Barnabas was featured on Page One of The South Brunswick Post at least twice in 2004. Once was in December in a wonderful, uplifting article about our service at Elijah’s Promise Soup Kitchen in New Brunswick, copies of which are available on the table in the Welcoming Area. And another time was in June, after Terry Webb and Noel Ilogu came back from their first (but not last!) healing mission trip to Kenya. There, they trained local leaders in understanding the dynamics of addiction to and recovery from addiction to alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, thereby also working to reduce the spread of H.I.V./A.I.D.S. by promiscuous sex by people who are drunk and/or “stoned”.

We are indeed “sending up rockets”, and some of the media at least do like good news. Who knew a year ago that this launch pad could help send up a rocket which could travel 8,000 miles!

So we are on a mountaintop, but not the mountaintop. The ultimate “high” is the Kingdom of God, or as Matthew calls it, the Kingdom of Heaven, which “drew near” in the person of Jesus Christ.

As a Life Member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, I’ve climbed enough mountains to know that once you’ve climbed one, you sometimes go into a little valley before going up the next one.

We have gone through a little valley, and had a rest, and one thing that emerged this past year of rest and reflection was that right now our most growing ministries are

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adult spiritual growth activities and outreach. That is terrific! Those are “rockets” to be proud of – and to get on board – and to invite others to get on board!

We now have a building in which we can truly say, “There’s plenty of room”. We now have a building which is equally accommodating to someone in a wheelchair, someone needing a hearing assistance device, or someone with a very young child, as well as and able-bodied person between 6 and 65. Three years ago, we couldn’t honestly say that.

We now have a congregation which truly offers year-round spiritual growth opportunities for all ages, both here and beyond these walls. A few years ago we could not say that. We now have year-round adult Bible Study, an overnight women’s retreat at another location this coming May, and teens experiencing spiritual “peak experiences” in “Happening” weekends in New Jersey and national gatherings in North Carolina. Wow.

So, let’s all be “fishers of people.” The ministry of invitation is wonderful and crucial, as I mentioned two Sundays ago, and so is welcoming people. If you see someone you don’t yet know, introduce yourself and get acquainted. It’s all part of building the community of faith, a joyful enterprise indeed. And when we answer the call of Jesus, we, like Peter, Andrew, James and John, will see marvels beyond our expectations.

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, N.J.

Preached January 30, 2005

(originally scheduled for Jan.23,

when services were cancelled due to

the blizzard.)