Hanging from the ceiling of the sanctuary at Clifton Lutheran is a large model of a colonial era sailing ship. Having a ship in the church is an old custom in several European countries, for from very early times Christ’s church has been symbolized by a ship. Indeed, the main seating area of the sanctuary is often called the nave – from the Latin word navis, meaning ship – partly due to the keel shaped design of the vaulting or ceiling.
And as I thought of that ship symbol it occurred to me that it was apt for illustrating the experience we face at Clifton as we continue our voyage of faith. We are very much like the crew of a sailing ship on an immense sea of time and circumstance. And the crew of a sailing ship we must constantly deal with the wind – favoring winds and adverse winds.
A favoring, or what is sometimes called a running wind, is one that moves us ahead toward our goal, an adverse or head wind is one that hinders us or slows us down. We at Clifton have both favoring and adverse winds.
Our most reliable favoring wind is, of course, the word of God as we encounter it in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and are made new and refreshed by it by the power of the Spirit in worship and in the sacraments. This everlasting Gospel, elucidated in the ancient creeds and in the historic creeds and confessions, is the driving force of our life together. It is the energy which moves us as a community through calm and tumultuous seas. It is eternal and will never fail us wherever we may be.
Our next favoring wind is the faith and commitment of our people, those whom the Holy Spirit has called, gathered, enlightened and sanctified as the people of God gathered into the community of Christ called Clifton Lutheran. It is my firm belief that all of you have answered the silent call of the Holy Spirit in your own way and each of you has greatly enriched the life and ministry of Clifton Lutheran. We are especially blessed with leaders, from council to worship to music, of all different ages that are devoted, talented, wise and resourceful. None of us claims perfection; we are all works and saints in progress and, as the Apostle Paul so aptly put it “we have this treasure (the Gospel) in clay pots.” You and I may be clay pots, but we are God’s clay pots and God has seen fit to entrust his ministry to our humble care.
Another running wind that aids us in our mission journey is our location and facility. It has served past generations well and continues to do so in our generation. It is truly a house of the Lord - centered on and declaring in its style and symbols the faith which gives us life. The recent renovation has made it far more welcoming and increased its utility enormously. It is a sacred space, a border between the eternal and the temporal, an oasis where our souls are refreshed.
Yet there are also adverse winds, winds that seem to impede and limit us and call for creative and imaginative tacking strategies to keep moving ahead.
One of those adverse winds is the increasing secular wind of the time, sometimes manifesting itself as indifference to things religious or spiritual, sometimes as a kind of bland blending of all things spiritual and disregard for what is dismissively called ‘organized religion”, and sometimes as outright antipathy to any hint of the supernatural or non-rational, to whit the recent upsurge in militant atheism. A glance around might reveal that many if not most of our neighbors are not involved in a faith community and, in fact, a recent survey featured on Yahoo identified Massachusetts as the fourth least religious state in the union, bested only by New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. We are truly living in the mission territory of a post- Christian age.
Another head wind to our numerical growth is the fact that Marblehead and most of the surrounding communities are not increasing in population but are, by and large, built up. The high cost of living has made us lose a number of young families. The driver of membership increase in many churches is the demographic of population growth – they are located in areas that are expanding, where new dwellings are being constructed, etc. and new people and families are moving in. That is not the case on the North Shore. We are also located very close to other churches, such as St. Andrews, St. Michaels and St. Stephens which have similar beliefs and liturgical styles to us, resulting in all of us appealing to the same pool of likely church members. Additionally we are situated in an environment with a substantial Jewish population and carry the name, Lutheran, which is not a well-recognized “brand” in New England.
Another wind, sometimes favoring and sometime adverse, relates to finances, a wind that demands the attention of most local congregations of every faith. As mentioned before, Clifton has been blessed with generous givers and wise leaders who have so far managed to balance the available resources with the need to keep the life and the ministry of the congregation current and moving forward. But it has not been easy, and it calls continually for a skillful mix of revenue sources and some very skillful tacking.
I have sometimes thought of our financing as a three legged stool; one leg is the annual pledges and unscheduled giving, another leg is sources such as the Sprint rent and, lately, things like Got Books income, while a third leg is other income, mostly rent from the parsonage and also transfers from savings and endowment. If there is a serious decline in any of those three areas, then the headwinds increase and our creativity must increase.
Yet we sail on, carrying the precious cargo of the Gospel that our forbears did. We sail on and can rest in the fact that the Apostle Paul, if he came to worship with us today, would hear the same Gospel he preached two-thousand years ago – and see it embodied in the same Baptism and Lord’s Supper. It is a Gospel that always creates faith and gives life wherever it is proclaimed in word and deed. Our strategy of sailing might have to change but still, by the grace of God, we sail on in the faithful knowledge that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” The voyage is filled with adventure and peril, but God is faithful and his favoring wind will bring us safe into his harbor.