Sermon

Isaiah 6:1-8

Are You a Leader?

The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

GLORY TO THE FATHER AND TO THE SON AND TO THE HOLY SPIRIT, AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW AND WILL BE FOREVER, AMEN.

Are you a leader? Are your pastors? George Barna, sociologist of religion, interviewed more than 2400 Protestant pastors and asked that question. He discovered that 92% of them said they are leaders. Then his organization gave the ministers the definition they used of leadership and saw the proportion drop to less than two thirds. Barna writes, “When we then asked if they felt that God had given them spiritual gifts that related to leading people, such as leadership, apostleship, or even administration, the proportion plummeted to less than one in four. Finally we asked them to dictate the vision that they were leading people toward—that is, what they were really trying to accomplish in their ministry—we wound up in the single digits.”

I guess it is fair to say that less than one in ten Protestant ministers are leaders. Now many of these same pastors are very good preachers, excellent at liturgical ceremonies, good at teaching adults and young people. They may articulate clearly issues in the community and wider world, and may even be intuitive and empathetic listeners. They may not be leaders in any measurable sense. What bothered me is the apparent inability to explain a vision for ministry.

How about this for a vision—here and now for Central Lutheran Church?—to so preach and teach and witness that people will come to know the Living God. We want people to believe in and love the one true God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and by knowing God and loving God to have lives that are transformed. The goal of what we say and do here on Sunday morning: to make ancient stories from far away lands come alive and take on meaning for us in our everyday life here in Eugene, Oregon. We are about minds transformed and lives changed.

Billy Sunday, the baseball player turned evangelist, lived around the beginning of the last century. He once said, “Men fail through lack of purpose rather than lack of talent.” He was right—for both men and women. We need a clear vision and a worthwhile goal for living. Tom Landry, longtime head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, spent three decades in professional football. Before that he flew 30 combat missions for the U.S. Air Force in World War II and starred for the University of Texas football team. A man of physical strength and courage, he experienced many successes in athletics. Yet he once wrote, “I had a difficult time finding a purpose for my life. Football was my whole life—it was my religion. I slept it. I ate it, and I talked it.” During Landry’s senior year in high school, only one touchdown was scored against his team. He was selected as all-district halfback. He recalled never feeling happier. But soon this feeling wore away and he was looking toward another goal. He advanced to the pros, reaching goal after goal. He was all-pro, played in several Pro Bowl games and in 1956 was with the New York Giants when they won the world’s championship. In 1958 he returned to Dallas after playing in what is called the most exciting football game ever played, when Baltimore edged out the Giants for the championship.

A friend met Landry on the street and invited him to a Wednesday morning Bible study. Tom was hesitant. He reasoned, “I don’t need it.” Since childhood, he had attended Sunday School and church services regularly. He felt morally sound but agreed to go because the man was a good friend. From the Bible study he learned about the challenge of following Jesus Christ. “When Jesus became real to me,” Landry recalled, “and I looked at His way, I found real happiness and the most satisfying purpose for living.”

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Deuteronomy tells us that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. Jesus adds to it that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. The vision for your life and my life should be this: to love God with everything we have, with our bodies and our intellect, our emotions and our wills…and love each other.

We have an example of one who loved God and served God, the prophet Isaiah. He was the son of Amoz and some think he may have been the son of a priest. In a certain year—perhaps 736 BC—the year King Uzziah died–likely in the Temple in Jerusalem, Isaiah had a vision of heavenly glory. The prophet emphasizes the real time and place for the vision; this is no fairy tale. Isaiah saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of God’s robe filled the temple. Seraphim were in attendance—these heavenly beings of light with six wings who sang God’s praises with a song we still sing each Sunday: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.” There is nothing so special about this man Isaiah except this—God came to him in self-revelation. He saw the majesty and power and wonder of God and then he responded with confession and faith: “Woe is me, I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips yet my eyes have seen the King; the Lord of Hosts.”

In order to love and serve and honor God, we must know in whom we believe. There are many gods vying with the Lord God—the god of money, the god of power, the god of security, the god of athletics, the god of education, the god of popularity—even false gods and idols of unbelief. If we want to fulfill our life’s destiny, we must first come to know the living God, the Almighty God, the Lord God of Sabaoth, God who is revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then we recognize our sinfulness. We are unclean in our lips and minds and hearts. We love our selves not our neighbor; we worship ourselves not the Lord God. So, like Isaiah, we confess our sins.

And receive forgiveness. For Isaiah a seraph went to the altar and took a glowing ember with a pair of tongs and touched his mouth, saying the words, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” We too receive forgiveness of our sins through the blood of Christ shed on the cross, the sacrificial victim whose blood makes us clean and acceptable and righteous before God. And then like Isaiah we hear a call to follow. The Lord said, “Whom shall I send?” and the prophet said, “Here I am, send me.”

Are you a leader? First the question must be are you a follower? If you are a follower of Jesus, then others will see your witness and you may lead them to Christ. If your children see authentic faith in you—that you believe in your heart and mind what you say you do, you may lead them to faith. If your parents see that what they taught you—or tried to teach you—has born fruit in your life, then they may be reinvigorated in their own faith. If your wife or husband sees your strength in hard times, they too might turn to Christ. If people see our congregation putting God first in whatever we do; see us reaching out to the poor, the needy, the lost, the troubled, they will see that our lives are changed and transformed by Christ.

I visited a congregation not too long ago in San Diego, All Saints’ Lutheran Church. They are a small church and struggling. Their pipe organ is only one rank and they have never been able, financially, to build their sanctuary but they knew what they are about. The small numbers of people in that congregation gather each Sunday around God’s Word and the sacraments. They find their unity not in their like-mindedness or likeability but in their worship and praise of God. In rather humble surroundings they behold and uplift the vision of God’s glory in common things—water, bread and wine, word and other people. No one would call All Saints’ Church a leadership congregation—they would fail by the standards of George Barna and other polltakers, but not in God’s eyes. They are faithful followers of the Triune God, leaders in their own way as witnesses to the power of God still to forgive and empower and change lives.

May God and those who look at us, say that of Central Lutheran Church as well. Amen.

Copyright 2006, James D. Kegel. Used by permission.