Last Sunday our family, including my in-laws, visited the Watershed Row in town. It’s the big gray building across from the post office downtown. It seems to be a project that was built with a vision in mind.  The website says, “The project takes radical responsibility for the material, energy and water it uses to honor our shared home.”  It is obvious from the solar panels to the natural light and rainwater collection system that this project had a vision in mind of a sustainable place to have venues in our town.  It was great to be somewhere in town with a vision for the future.  It was obviously a building designed with maintaining the environment in Klamath Falls and being an example for other businesses.  It was built with intention and purpose.

What was Jesus’ purpose?  We know that he came to show a new way of life, to be the savior or the messiah.  But what was his purpose?  In the bible, the chapter 10 of the book of John tells parables about Jesus being the great shepherd.  It spells out what are the things that we need to let go of that do not help us reach our goal.  Finally, Jesus says something that makes all of this and many of his other parables make lot of sense.  Jesus states his purpose for being here on earth.  He says, “I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”  All of Christ’s shepherding of us, protecting of us, encouraging us, even guiding us, is so that we may have a life of abundance.  This is not the misthinking of some prosperity gospel ministers that we are to focus on having more and more stuff and wealth.  It has been proven that what makes people truly satisfied is not wealth, it is serving a purpose in life.

So you know Jesus’ purpose – that we can have life and have it abundantly—what kind of spiritual life would be our purpose?  How do we live in abundance spiritually?

That word we translate as abundantly in Greek for John 10 is used only a few times in the bible.  It is used in Matthew 5:37 as extraordinary — Jesus came that you might have an extraordinary life; or Matthew 5:47 where it means far beyond.  Jesus came that you might have a life beyond your imagination.  Romans 3:1 starts out with telling you that with Christ you have an advantage — same word – that you might have life at an advantage and finally 2 Corinthians 9:10 uses this word for superfluous.  Imagine Jesus came that you may have life that is just so spiritually enriching that it is in excess spiritually .  Extra.  Just plain extra – “she is so extra!”  I have heard that.  But can you imagine that if that is Jesus’ dream for you what your dream should be? 

As parents we imagine our children happy and healthy.  We want them to thrive and be good people.  Don’t you think Jesus imagines your life the same way?  How about this church? Imagine us here in this little congregation all having lives that are spiritually extra.  Who would we attract?  What would our community be about?

That’s Jesus’ purpose in life.  What is your purpose in life?  What is this church’s purpose in life?  Now I’m not saying a plan.  Can you imagine Martin Luther King Jr having a plan?  The “I have a plan” speech would not be able to be lived out on a spiritual level – it would be about thinking our way out of troubling human behaviors, which has never been successful. But dreams are visions from your souls and as such we should honor our dreams and give them time and credence. What is your dream for you, for this church, for your family in relation to this church?  How do you let that dream have life?

I watched a TED talk as I was preparing for this message and found one that talked about the importance of answering the questions of “What motivates you?” And “Why do we exist?”  It even covered “What would we be willing to put in blood sweat and tears for?” None of the answers gave an example of a good church dream, but we can discern this together.

The TED talk  mostly had to do with an example of two people who had a dream and one person who had a plan all for the same thing, to build and fly the first plane.  The two men who had a dream were the Wright Brothers, simple bicycle mechanics.  They had very little money, less than $1,000,  to spend on the project of building the first plane.  They put themselves in harms way over and over because they didn’t have students or mentees to put in the cockpit of their machine.  There was no plan per se except to learn from the mistakes and keep trying until something flew.  Their focus was to get in the air and stay there as a glider would. Why they wanted to build a plane was to be a wing in the air.  They just wanted to fly. That was their vision and their purpose.

“The other guy” working to invent the first plane was Samuel Pierpont Langley. Same years of work. He was an American aviation pioneer, astronomer and physicist who had already had successful inventions.  He was the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and as such, had full financial backing from the Smithsonian.  He was a professor of astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was the director of the Allegheny Observatory.  He had much money, plenty of backing, all the “right” plans, and never let his model crash until right before he quit the project.  Langley had a plan.  His plan included getting rich and furthering his career as a professor and scientist.  The world was betting on Langley and gave him plenty of news coverage. But ultimately, the Wright brothers’ hands-on approach and focus on flight control won out over Langley’s heavily funded scientific theory.

Days after Langley’s second failed attempt, the Wright Brothers soared into the air. News coverage of the Wright brothers’ first flights was sparse and largely inaccurate. There were no reporters covering the news. Because the brothers were fiercely secretive and didn’t invite reporters to Kitty Hawk, most major city papers ignored the event. When the story finally broke, widespread skepticism led to severe underreporting.

How did it work out though?  Whose plane flew in 1903?

Do we have a plan or a dream here as a church? When we were going through Listening Circles and a Circle of Friends we pondered our dream of who we are and what we want to be to this town.  One question was what would we as a church look like in five years?  It was decided that we should “live in hope” and continue to spend the funds in the bank account as if we will be a functioning church still in five years.   Our emphasis, instead of on numbers, was to make this meeting a viable place where spiritual growth takes place.  We talked about reaching out in the community and not letting these financial situations dictate our decisions.  We aspired to focus on building community because that is what most people are looking for: a safe place to grow spiritually and the community in which to do it.  Our mission statement is the backbone of a dream rather than a plan: “We are Christ-centered Friends who equip and encourage all people to respond to God’s love and transforming Spirit.”

To discern a dream to go along with mission statement there are questions we need to ask ourselves.  Why are we here?  If we are here because this is the community in which we grow spiritually, and we want that for others, is that our dream?  If that is our dream, is there anything keeping us from reaching that dream right now? Right now, why do you come here every Sunday and show up and participate in things?  This is an active church that gives a lot of its time and energy to others in the community.  How does this affect you?  How do we want to continue this outward focus?  It is a healthy focus.  Churches that do for others and are community-focused rarely die out completely.  So how do we as members and attendees of this congregation help to take this community we are creating here out into the world?

The Wright Brothers had passion for their vision, a purpose in what they were doing.  They were persistent and didn’t let failure dictate their attempts at success.  Unlike Langley who quit on the second crash, Orville and Wilbur crashed often and hundreds of times. The Wright brothers experienced countless failed attempts.  Their successful process followed the steps: trial, crash, and redesign. While the exact number of failed individual flights is unrecorded, historians count hundreds of glider tests, two specific prominent powered attempts, and several major crashes.  When over 1,000 glider flights at Kitty Hawk, NC crashed, they used the data to continuously reshape their wings and refine their designs. Wilbur won a coin toss and made a brief attempt at Kill Devil Hills to fly the first plane with a motor. The plane stalled immediately after takeoff, resulting in a crash and minor damage.  During early test flights at Huffman Prairie in Dayton, OH, the Wright Flyer II experienced major crash due to instability and wind. While performing demonstration flights in Virginia, a propeller shattered, causing a crash that seriously injured Orville and killed his passenger, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge.  How much are willing to try and fail without losing our vision?  How passionate are we to build a place where spiritual souls can thrive in a communal setting?  But have you asked yourself why?  What is your answer to the question, “What makes you envision us alive as a community that nurtures spiritual souls?”  That answer is very important, and we have to be willing to try and fail and get back up again until we get this going in the right direction.  They are still improving airplanes, so the Wright Brother’s vision has never stopped.  It has lived longer than they lived, leaving a legacy. How are we persistent?  What gives us purpose? Can we stick with it?

How good are we at identifying problem behaviors or attitudes and trying to help them to go away so that it does not deter from reaching our dream?  It is said, if it is not progressing your mission, let it go.  This is one way to help serve a purpose.  Answering the question at every turn and decision, “Is this helping us achieve our purpose to be a spiritual community where spiritual growth happens?” 

Think about those two different things we identified in our purpose: spiritual growth and building community.  What are parts of both of these things?  Listening is definitely one shared value.  To grow spiritually we must be open to hearing hard truths that help us.  We have to be willing to let go of behaviors and habits that might stand in the way of progress.  We have to be willing to make large or hard changes when called to in order to ultimately serve the purpose. We do this by listening to God, listening to ourselves, and listening to each other. But we do all of this editing our own lives so that they are a productive part of a loving and kind community of Friends. How do you see yourself as part of this mission?

Queries:

• Do you have a dream?
• Do we have a purpose?
• How do we live in a way that focuses us in a heartfelt way towards  fulfilling that purpose?