Sermon: Parish Ministry: Sojourning with the City

Scripture Text: Jeremiah 29:4-7; 1 Peter 2:11-12

Quotes for Reflection

Oaks Parish Vision
Oaks Parish pursues gospel-centered renewal through parish ministry, walking alongside our city, region, and world. This renewal is embodied in the beauty of liturgical worship, mission rooted in people and place among the least and lost, and relational discipleship that forms us into the image of Christ.

Andrew Rumsey, Parish
The Church is primarily concerned not with ‘the world’ becoming ‘the Church’ but with the world finding its true place by virture of the Church’s action and presence. The Church has no need to extend its own territory into the world: rather, as yeast workign through a batch of dough, it seeks to effect the transformation of the whole-not, plainly, that the batch should all become yeast. In this parochial ecclesiology, where the local congregation is a transforming agent-a means not an end-the nature and condition of society is of the greatest interest.

Rodney Stark, The Cities of God
The power of Christianity lay not in its promise of otherworldly compensations for suffering in this life, as has so often been proposed. No, the crucial change that took place in the third century was the rapidly spreading awareness of a faith that delivered potent antidotes to life’s miseries here and now! The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives such as “Love one’s neighbor as oneself,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and “When you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it unto me.” These were not just slogans. Members did nurse the sick, even during epidemics; they did support orphans, widows, the elderly, and the poor; they did concern themselves with the lot of slaves. In short, Christians created “a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services.”14 It was these responses to the long-standing misery of life in antiquity, not the onset of worse conditions, that were the ‘material’ changes that inspired Christian growth. But these material benefits were entirely spiritual in origin. Support for this view comes from the continuing inability of pagan groups to meet this challenge.

Application Questions

1. How does God’s commitment to humanity and His world reshape the way you respond to the challenges of our city?

2. In what ways do you feel most at home in Portland, and in what ways do you need to remember that you are a sojourner and exile here? How might that shape the way you live in your parish?

3. How can our Parish Communities become places where people truly experience the glory of life in Christ?