I’ve been on the road for the past couple of weeks, leading workshops and talking about my latest book, The Emerging Church. I had the privilege of meeting with hundreds of people from Ontario and across Canada and hearing stories about the state of their congregational life together. While there are pockets of vitality in the United Church in Ontario, it is primarily a time of wilderness. They are looking out to the West Coast for hope and direction. It seems that we looked into the abyss perhaps 20 years out here on the left coast before they did and tried to respond creatively and faithfully.

 

I thought this morning that you might be interested in what I’m talking to all these other churches about. They seem pretty interested much to my amazement. And given that I’m basically talking about you folks, I thought I better let you in on the rumours I’m spreading about you!

 

Well, to begin with I’m talking a lot about evolution. Yes, evolution. Both of my books have really been about coming to terms with the implication of an evolutionary worldview for the church and for the church’s mission. Why? With whatever prophetic powers I possess, my prediction is that the most significant development in mainline churches over the next 20 years will be focused on coming to terms with evolution. Although Darwin wrote the Origin of Species almost 150 years ago, the church has been slow to embrace an evolutionary model. I’m not just talking about biological evolution, although this in itself is huge. It turns out that somewhere around 50% of the American population believe that that God made humans about 10,000 years, as a kind of after thought and as a completely separate act of creation, just plopping them down on the earth after the rest of creation was assembled. And apparently it’s still very controversial to think otherwise. When we were in Toronto, we went to see the Darwin exhibit. The exhibit had trouble getting sponsors, because it was considered too hot to handle – in Canada! I am proud to say that the United Church Observer – our national magazine – stepped up and sponsored the exhibition.

 

It turns out everything is in the process of evolving, including humans. The most fundamental reality about the universe and human beings is that we are caught up in an irrepressible stream of creativity that is moving in a biased direction toward increased complexity and elegance. That’s who we are! We develop. In my book I talk about an experience I had while on silent retreat that enabled me to see that I wasn’t who I thought I was. I thought I was Bruce Sanguin, this discrete bundle of nerves, and skin, and bones, husband, father, ordained minister, and aging jock. I am all that, but beneath all of that I realized that I was a center of all this creative energy that is surging through me and you and all of us. And what’s more, this creative, evolutionary energy is sacred.  This is the most real thing about us. We are participants and agents in the ongoing evolution of the universe. It’s happening through us.

 

You won’t find an evolutionary worldview anywhere in Scripture, because those who wrote the Bible had no idea that the universe evolves. But you will find the beginnings of an evolutionary sensibility. One of the most important gifts of Judaism was its sense of history. History was going somewhere; there was past, present, and a future. The universe wasn’t merely circling back on itself, in an eternal seasonal repetition. God was accompanying them through history in a particular direction. The future wasn’t going to be merely a repetition of the past. As God’s people lived faithfully, this as-of-yet unrealized future would manifest. This is a distinctive feature of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

 

But accompanying this sense of history going somewhere was a belief that an omnipotent, external Being (God) was directing this process. A truly evolutionary model has to shift its image of God from an Omnipotent Controller to a Persuasive Lover, who allures all of creation towards fullness and freedom of being from within the creative process of evolution. There’s a mouthful! This Sacred Immanent Presence exercises power only as the power of love and therefore the future is indeterminate. This God does not determine the future through an exercise of willful domination, but rather leaves the future open to be determined and shaped by creation itself. Humans are that part of creation which can consciously align itself, or not, with the persuasive powers of love. When we do, our creativity, our agency, and our sense of purpose awakens.

 

When those who follow Christ do this, we experience the very power and creativity of Sacred Presence to bring a Christ-shaped future into being. Buddhists, of course, will bring a Buddha-shaped future into being, etc. Human beings, religious and secular alike, have the power to bring forth the future that is a reflection of their own value system and worldview. The violence we have suffered and enacted upon each other and earth for the last 10,000 years as a species is due to the fact that we have competing worldviews and value systems. Visions of the future may be ethnocentric, nationalistic, and imperialistic, or world centric, pluralistic, and justice-oriented. This creative capacity to shape the future is available to all.

 

What becomes crucial from a spiritual worldview is that we channel this evolutionary energy to reflect the heart of God. This will always be towards increased capacity to take the perspective of the other, to include the other, to actually love what is different from us – this is what Jesus meant by loving our neighbour. The neighbour, in Jesus’ model, is the one, human and other-than-human who is actually transformed by God’s love from stranger – the other – to neighbour, one we are no longer afraid of. Right now, we are experiencing culture wars that are leading to actual wars as value systems and worldviews compete and clash for the privilege of shaping the future in their image. A neo-imperialist American vision is competing with a fundamentalist Islamic vision, and God save us from both. And remember, no Omnipotent God is going to intervene to stop the madness. The role of the church in the midst of this madness that is destroying the earth and millions of innocent people, is to be the evolutionary force of love in the name and by the power of the Christ.

 

This force and this power is not the same as a belief system. What we believe is truly less important than having the heart and mind of Christ within us, in the words of St. Paul. This Heart and this Mind will always require us to shed our beliefs as we discover that they are too small, too parochial, too limiting to get the job done. We will find ourselves perpetually shedding yesterday’s heart and mind because we are evolving toward the All-Encompassing Big Heart and Big Mind of Christ. This is what will become the mark of discipleship for the authentic Christian – not an unchanging set of orthodox beliefs, but an ever-expanding perspective and an ever-expanding desire to love this world and to love each other, as we know ourselves to be loved.

 

The Christian of the future will be both broken-hearted and broken-minded, because our hearts and minds will regularly have been broken open by this ceaseless urge to expand our capacity for love, which we call Christ consciousness. And one day, we will be sufficiently broken by compassionate love that the walls of our ego will come tumbling down and we will know ourselves to be Christ in the world. Our little selves will give way to our Big Heart and Big Mind – (thanks here to Genpo Roshi). And then the church will understand her purpose and then we will have the necessary energy to be one stream in the river of love that is carrying us forward.

 

The word “emerging” in the title of my book is a synonym for evolutionary. It doesn’t simply mean what I see on the horizon for the church. The word describes the way in which growth happens in congregations. It emerges as the people in the congregation grow in Christ, from the inside out. This is the same dynamic by which the universe has evolved geologically and biologically. Life emerges out of the structures and systems of previous generations. The newly emergent life receives the gift of the adaptive intelligence and complexity of these earlier generations and gives it added value. If the church refuses to evolve it will go the way of all systems that cannot or choose not to evolve – it will die out. We are an emergent form of Christ and Christ’s people. We’re not here to replicate what our ancestors did. We’re not even here to replicate what Jesus did 2000 years ago. We’re here to manifest the new thing God is doing in our day and age, to take to the world the Heart and Mind of Christ as it is emerging in us.

 

So, this is what I’m talking about when you send me out to be with other congregations and to speak at workshops and conferences. And I’m talking about specific practices and principles that are associated with this evolutionary Christianity. People ask me what this emergent or evolutionary model looks like in the life of a congregation. I tell them that we ask you to take a Spirit-Given Gift Inventory, so that you can make your distinctive contribution to this community from the inside out. We don’t want you doing anything for the church or outside the church that you don’t feel passionate about. We want you offering your gifts from a place of joy, so that you are doing what lights you up. When this is happening the evolutionary flow is released within us.

 

I tell them that we operate based on a principle of Ministry Anywhere, Anytime, by Anybody. Nowhere else on this planet earth is there another Canadian Memorial United Church. If we look the same, act the same, talk and walk the same as other United Churches, something is desperately wrong. The universe loves diversity and eccentricity.

 

God wants to add your eccentricities and particularities to the mix. Our ministry doesn’t come from the Board, it doesn’t come from “the minister”, it comes from you and you and you. And when you put it all together you have an unrepeatable expression of this evolving universe. This is also why we’re trying as much as possible to get you Out of Meetings and Into Ministry. We’ve tried to streamline our governance so as to minimize bureaucracy and maximize ministry. Now, any institution needs bureaucracy if it’s going to be effective. But I spoke with people in Ontario who still have 60 people on their Board, and who feel like they’ve confused bureaucracy with ministry.

 

We are in a unique position at Canadian Memorial. We are relatively conflict-free – relatively mind you. We have an energy-dividend therefore – all the energy that is not being diverted into dealing with conflict. This energy can be used to grow in the love of Christ, for each other and for our world. We have plans in place to be more intentional about letting the wider community know that we are here and that we’d love to join with them in working for justice and peace. We are about to launch a strategic planning process to arrive at a five year vision, that will include a new roof, new lighting in the sanctuary, new staff, and help us refinance our New Ministry Fund that has made so many new ministries possible over the last 10 years. With the approval of the congregation today, we will be adding a new staff person to focus on Families, Children, and Youth. We are launching an initiative to help us be more intentional about seeing those who use our Center for Peace as partners in ministry, rather than “renters”. We want to find ways to collaborate with them and include them in the life of our congregation.

 

But by far our most important asset is you. I’ve had the opportunity to travel around the country and experience many congregations. You need to know that you are an exceptional congregation. I don’t want this to go to your collective heads, but increasingly you are being looked to as a model congregation. We all know that we don’t do things perfectly. But it’s not about doing things perfectly, is it? My yoga teacher constantly reminds us in our class that this is yoga practice, not yoga perfect. She does this just before encouraging us to go somewhere new, to go deeper into a new expression of the posture, and if we fall out, so what?

 

Church is a place where we can bring our passion to experiment with new expressions of what it means to be truly human; it’s about doing life deeply in loving community; it’s about being innovative – trying new things, failing, getting back up and trying them again, which is precisely how the universe evolves; it’s about allowing our hearts to be broken open by suffering and then when our hearts are wide open, finding the courage to celebrate all the beauty and wonder and mystery at the very same time, knowing very well that we were meant to be broken open. It’s how we grow. And we do this, knowing that we’re surrounded by friends who will patch us back up and then send us back out into the fray when we’re ready.

 

The prophet Jeremiah makes the claim that when a prophet prophecies peace and it comes to pass, then we will know that truly she has been sent from God. But this peace is not a static state; it is not merely the absence of conflict or war; it is, in the words of Martha Graham, a blessed unrest: blessed, because it is born of God, unrest because in an evolutionary universe, God is never quite finished with us. Our future together as a community of faith is so full of possibilities – as many possibilities as there are people gathered here this morning. Whole new worlds are emerging through us friends. The possibilities are unlimited. We have an incredible opportunity. Let’s take full advantage of it.