FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

Annual Meeting

February 4, 2007

GOOD TO GREAT!

Scripture: Matthew 20:17-28; Mark 9:30-37; Luke 22:24-27

INTRODUCTION

More than a year ago, a close friend of mine who is a leader in this city and a faithful Christian, gave me a book entitled “Good to Great,” written by a former Stanford University professor named Jim Collins. My friend encouraged me to read this volume, which was #1 on the New York Times best seller list and has sold more than two million copies. So I took his advice and this is what I discovered:

Collins and his research team spent five years reviewing Fortune 500 companies and their performance from 1965-1995. Using a grid that tracked the statistics in a wide variety of corporate categories, they eventually found eleven companies that had grown substantially from good to great. This book is about the leaders and employees who helped make that happen, and the authors identify a number of management strategies that were consistent and common denominators in all of those success stories.

We’ll come back to that before this sermon is done, including a sequel Collins wrote which describes how some of the same basic principles can work in non-profit institutions such as schools, arts centers, social services, government agencies and churches, churches like this one. And if you stay awake, that’s the final point I hope and intend to make – about how a church can grow from Good to Great!

I

But before we go there, let me confess the initial resistance I felt beginning to read this book and comparing these success strategies with the Christian faith.

In the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and especially throughout the gospels which tell the story about the life, death and resurrection of our Lord, the underlying assumption and overwhelming affirmation is that God Almighty and His only begotten Son Jesus – they are great, but that is not so with all of us.

God is holy, we are human, and we call Jesus the Savior, because without Him, we are lost in our sin. Every one of us is intelligent to some degree, including those who scored 1600 on their SATs, but none of us has the mind of God.

Moreover, some of us are described as good athletes, and others as good cooks, or good artists, or good workers or even as basically good people. But I have never known a single person who said about themselves or anyone else that they were perfect…except in describing the life and character of Jesus Christ.

Now, this concept of growing from good to great is also a matter of debate in the scriptures. The texts I have chosen from the synoptic gospels today – from Matthew 20, Mark 9 and Luke 22 – are just a few of the passages where the disciples are caught up in their delusions of grandeur, as they argue amongst themselves about which of them is the greatest.

In Matthew, they’re headed for Jerusalem as Jesus tells them that He is going to be arrested, beaten, crucified and then raised on the third day. The very next verse reports that the mother of the sons of Zebedee, James and John, ignoring the gravity of the situation, asks the Lord to give her two boys special seats next to Him in the Kingdom. When the other ten disciples get upset, Jesus calls them together and says, in so many words, “This is not about you and who’s the best.” To the contrary, “whoever would be great among you must be your servant…even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:17-28).

Round two is recorded in Mark’s gospel, chapter 9, and again, Jesus and His disciples are passing through Galilee on their way toward Jerusalem. This time, the Lord overhears their conversation and asks them what they are talking about. Mark says that they are suddenly silent, because in their embarrassment, they don’t want to tell the truth. You see, they’ve been arguing again about which one of them was the greatest.

So Jesus sits them all down and sets the record straight: If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. And He takes a child into His arms and says Whoever receives one such child in My name, receives Me (Mark 9:30-37), reminiscent of what He had told them earlier in their journey: Unless you become like a child – that is, open, humble, receptive – you cannot enter the Kingdom of God (Matthew 18:1-4).

The final round is found in Luke 22 – it’s the same scene, with a slightly different twist: A dispute arose among them about which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And Jesus said to them “The kings of the Gentiles exercise leadership over them, and those in authority are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves…for I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:24-27)

Now some things in the Bible are mysterious, complex and difficult to understand. But here, all three gospel accounts make this matter crystal clear: if anyone wants to follow Jesus and to become His disciple, instead of seeking greatness, special recognition or personal ambition, we are all called to serve others with an attitude of gratitude and humility as we work for the cause of Christ’s Kingdom.

I’ve told you before about the pastor who announced to his congregation - I think it was tongue in cheek - that he was going to preach a great sermon entitled “Humility and How I Achieved It,” and then went on to develop these five points:

1. I am humble

2. I am getting more humble all the time

3. I am proud of my humility

4. I deserve a lot of credit for my humility because I have so much of which to be proud

5. Even when it sounds like I’m bragging, I’m still humble, because I am a whole lot better than I say I am.

Preachers have to watch out for that – all of us in the gray robes. So do you, sitting there in the pews, because at the end of the day it’s not about us. It’s all about the Lord Jesus and what He has called us to be and to do.

That’s what Dr. Roland Walker discovered. He was the Professor of Bible and Religion at Ohio Wesleyan University with a great future ahead of him, or so everyone said.

But early in his career, as a proud young intellectual, he began to burn himself out, until one night, he went into his study, took a pen in hand and wrote the following note:

“To the Governing General of the Universe:

Dear Sir,

I hereby resign my self-appointed position as directing superintendent of my own life and of the world. I cannot level all the mountains of injustice, or fill in all the valleys of selfishness, for there is too much of that in me. So I hereby turn over to you, for your disposition and use, my life, my money, my time and my talents, to be at your disposal.

Your Obedient Servant,

Roland Walker”

From that moment on, said Walker, God blessed his teaching and his ministry with the students and helped him become the Christian leader that he was called to be.

And that same opportunity is available to you and to me and to all those who seek to follow the Lord wherever He may lead us. It’s not about being the greatest, Jesus said. Instead, it’s about being willing to serve others and to give God the glory.

II

And surely that is also true in the Christian Church today, or at least it ought to be. But sometimes we make the ecclesiastical mistake of competing with other congregations and denominations, trying to determine who’s at the top of the heap – which churches among us are the greatest.

We can blame it on human nature or what C.S. Lewis once called the source of our sin – pride, false pride in being better than all the rest. (From “Mere Christianity,” chapter 8, “The Great Sin”)

One example can be found in the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Book of Lists, which I just received in the mail. Public and private companies, educational institutions, hospital and health care systems, and a wide variety of other organizations are listed here in order of size, financial statistics, numbers of employees or members, and on and on it goes.

So which page do you think that most pastors and many parishioners across this city try to find first? It’s included with the non-profit organizations, and I found it on Friday – page 184: “Atlanta’s 25 largest places of worship.” At the top is a congregation of 36,230 members and at the bottom is a church of 4,450 members. In most cases they list the statistics for worship attendance, seating capacity, total operating budget and all the way over on the right are the name of the spiritual leader and the year the congregation was established.

Now in case you’re wondering, First Presbyterian Church is not on the list. I’ve been checking this list for a number of years, and our congregation has never appeared on the page, with is alright with me. But I always look and wonder – with all respect to these larger and dynamic congregations – I wonder what the list for all of our churches would look like if we really wanted to reflect what matters the most.

It’s not about who’s the largest or the richest, or about pushing up the statistics for worship on Sunday; it’s not about the size of the sanctuary, the number of staff members or impressing people with the total amount of money that’s raised.

According to the Bible, to the tradition of the Christian Church, and to Jesus Christ our Savior – what matters the most in all of our congregations, including this one, are the lives that are changed, the broken relationships which are healed, the sin and guilt which are forgiven and washed away, the faith that is alive deep down in our hearts, the children and young people who are filled with joy, the wonderful worship and music which glorifies God, the community ministries which help and offer hope to the homeless and poor, the international mission partnerships with our brothers and sisters who share our love for the Lord. That’s what matters the most, and thanks be to God, that is what’s happening here at the corner of 16^th and Peachtree in the heart of the city of Atlanta.

CONCLUSION

And that is why, from time to time, I look out from this pulpit at all of you and say “This is a great church” – not the greatest, nor the largest, nor the richest, nor any of those categories that matter far too much to some folks. Instead, we’re talking about great in the spiritual sense of that word – being faithful, and loving, and inclusive, and compassionate…being good stewards of the gifts God has given to us…discovering and celebrating unity in the midst of our growing diversity…and seeking to become all that the Lord has called us to be.

Strangely enough, in this book “Good to Great,” Jim Collins and his research team discovered at least two things that helped Fortune 500 companies grow from good to great, two things which surprised me because they actually describe this congregation. One was a sense of humility and mutual encouragement among the leaders and employees of these companies; and the other was the clear and compelling commitment to core values which pulled everyone together and were non-negotiable.

As I finished reading this book, it occurred to me that we have that same thing here; a shared sense of encouragement and mutual affirmation, and our theme for the year – in fact, the core of what we believe which holds us all together: Christ at the Center! Christ at the Center!

My friend who gave me this book “Good to Great” believes that too, and in closing, let me tell what he wrote as the inscription:

“Thoughts from the business world. Of course, we all know that good to great is when you come to know Jesus.”

And that, my friends, is what matters the most and what binds us together in this great church as the body of Christ!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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