Intro
the spirit is moving
at the church on sunday mornings and
it's a spirit of life
and a spirit of love
the buzz and the energy is palpable and
it and it's it's creating um it seeps
out into the larger community
this is holy work that we're doing and
the people people don't get dressed and
come down to church on sunday morning
because they have nothing better to do
they they are hungry they are hungry for
some living bread
not for some dry crust
there's excitement there's excitement
for what we're doing there's excitement
for what we're saying
we talk about a message that is is
freeing
a message that helps people to find
their their whole self
um and it's not just talk it's the doing
we are active in the community
it's a very secret sensitive service
which means that you can walk in and
even if there obviously is a
conversation spiritually or about the
identity of the congregation that was
going on for a while there's not a lot
of coded
word talk
that that leaves people guessing and
there's not the sense that you've walked
in on an intimate family conversation
and perhaps you're an interloper and
don't really belong there
Why Do They Come
what really at the heart of it all
draws people
to the congregation you serve
this is not meant to be a mechanical
question
this is what what is that positive core
that
draws people that attracts people that
makes people feel that there is
something vital going on here
lately those who've been joining our
church
have been people from other uu churches
so we kind of have to keep that quiet
like okay
and what they're doing is they're
hearing about our work i work around
racial diversity um i work around
same-sex marriage
we
write i do a lot of writing to the
editor
we send we submit all of our programs
into a local newspaper
they're saying they're coming they're
coming to davies because it is it sounds
exciting
when people ask me
well why is your church grown
so much
i say well you know the short answer is
it's a theoretic energy
and people say
what i mean by the erotic energy is
is it's a life force it's uh it's it's
the inline feet tall
when you come into the congregation
you notice that you feel it there's a
buzz there's a stir
it's alive
people want life people want life they
want transformation
they want redemption and those are all
words that i would use
for what happens at first church
portland
and i think that that's why people come
because they want life and there's a
large large
um
culture of deadness out there and so
they come and they they laugh and they
cry they cry during the service
often it's a place where they can be
real
and
there are not many places in this
society when you can be truly who you
are
and that's what we want
to happen
there the first reason i'm going to give
Worship Excellence
it's going to seem like bragging
but it's really coming from what my lay
leaders told me to tell you
which is is excellence in worship
consistent excellence in worship sunday
to sunday not only when i am in the
pulpit
but but when others are in the pulpit as
well i always preach the sunday after
thanksgiving and the sunday after
christmas and labor day and memorial day
and
advertise it in advance that those are
going to be the best sermons of the
entire year i also do a thing where i
train i offer a thing in the spring
called the preaching practicum where i
train four or five selected lay people
and put them through an intensive and
they have to apply in an intensive
course on preaching and then i announce
to the congregation
these are
your members who have submitted
themselves to a discipline
of of creating worship
i have heard all of them already and i
have been moved by each of them and it
will be i will be disappointed if you
miss them and attendance actually goes
up the next reason
sort of
why we're growing
um
has to do with an increasing
willingness to we're in
suburban kansas
it's it's a place where most people feel
um you know it's the whole the whole
country is purple
but everybody feels like they're
swimming in a sea of red you know it's
it's a 60 to 40 percent
republican democrat there's still people
who are at that 40 percent you know
think that they are think that they are
that one percent
and and don't know and so when they come
to our church they they find
like-mindedness um and then the next
step is to get them to say but what you
what you found here is not a bunker for
you to enter
but a but a beacon
to
to to be a part of and so i do i talk
about having a church with a beacon
mentality rather than a bunker mentality
Emotional Life
i have a
gentleman in my congregation who's a
retired baptist
minister
and he's um
he's very upset that we're not more
evangelical
because he's so excited about what he's
found so when he heard i was going to
this he said what are you going to tell
him
and i said
how come i don't know
and he said well
are you going to tell him about that
it's okay to have an emotional life here
yes i can tell him that
and he he's uh
he's really excited about it
in a way that some people sort of
are a little jarred by but and i think
it's because they have
sort of
they take it as normal what he has found
to be exceptional
in his experience so um
they and they laugh a lot and they cry a
lot but they've um
you've gotten to a place where those are
it's not trivial laughter
um or
or sort of sentimental tears but
they're really profound
emotional life and
so i think that blending of the
spiritual with the emotional
with the intellectual but with the
intellectual being very much in balance
with the other pieces
i think people really come for that
children are pretty central in the
congregation and there's really a sense
of
enjoying them
so it's true about children but i think
they sense that about
the people enjoy each other
Relevance
a few weeks ago at uh
at worship
recently there's a
mom and her
young son who've been attending
and she told me this after the service
that
we do contemporary worship and i think
we were singing and it goes girl song or
maybe it was the beatles
and uh
the son turned to his mom and he said
mom this is a real song
and
who would have thought at church
i think that does encapsulate um
part of what really draws people to uh
to wellsprings and who we are
which is you know an overused word but i
think it's something that we want to
make more than just a symbol or a
buzzword which is which is relevance to
folks lives that we want to try and draw
down that wall between you know the
sacred and the profane between what
separates life out there from what
really adds to our lives within here
and so extending that outward is a
sort of a population like i imagine a
lot of us do people who are educated
frankly overeducated and work crazy
hours and live with a sense of
you know daily have to's
have to have to have to and not a lot of
want to's
and so i think that
in sort of shifting the paradigm within
their lives or helping them to what we
try and model is that this is a place in
which and it starts with me
we do not have to be experts i'm very
open about saying there are many people
here smarter than myself
but that's not the ultimate value that
we hold for our lives here together that
we can shift that lens from being the
experts in all time in all parts of our
lives to being explorers
that actually is a wonderful opportunity
and this is in concert with how we reach
out to families as well too to talk
about
you know this has this should be a place
of of serious fun of playfulness of an
opportunity of letting drop how as
serious as life is as we know it's that
serious um it can't be approached and
actually healed with even more
seriousness it actually can only be
approached um with the sense of
of divine play of the spirit that
actually can add worth and value to all
of our lives and really just recognize
the value that's already there but
that's often we don't give ourselves
permission to recognize what is there
the grace that is there and so that's
why we place a big premium on um
you know again recognizing what's there
but even more practicing it practicing
recognizing the value that is already in
our lives and honing it and
working from that place of gratitude
first and most profoundly
Energy
the
folks who come to my church comment
especially if they're coming from
protestantism they comment most often on
the energy
um
like many of you have said we uh there's
a lot of there's a big buzz and there's
a lot of energy i never would have
called it erotic before but
we laugh we cried we sing um
we pray together
and um
and ponder together and i think that in
the end i've been thinking about this
some as as my reflection on this ad
campaign
that i'm all for seekers
uh finding is the grace of the spirit
but one thing we offer is a practice
practice of corporate worship a practice
of covenant groups a practice of
conversation a practice of various kinds
of spiritual disciplines for people to
pick and use
and and so be open to the finding that
comes after they've sought us out
i think people come in hard to be prayed
for
and and the
prayers are often very narcissistic and
are always very inclusive
and even people don't believe in praying
in part for that
we've done a number of
Community
over the years
and it's interesting to me the kind of
open-ended question about what is it
that draws you and keeps you coming
and
we find that
the word community not only comes up
more often it comes up more often than
all other responses combined
i mean it is i mean people i think come
desperate to connect
they want connection and depth
but i think
one of the things that's really changed
clearly is change in america is people
have fewer
the relationships of any depth outside
of uh
well just period they have fewer and
outside of the immediate
family
and so what i think that and the ones
that that are coming new
i really believe it's almost a brain
stem kind of thing