Do you have a dream job?   Is there some occupation that for you would make your life perfect?

As I have shared with you a few times, when I was a kid my dream job was to be an astronaut.  Unfortunately, the realities of my grades in math caught up with me and by high school I had other plans.  As I have gone through life, however, that old dream dies hard.  A few years back there was a series on HBO called, “From the Earth to the Moon.”  It retold the story of the Apollo program and America’s mission to land a man on the moon by 1970. 

I remember a conversation I had with other men my age, during the time it aired.  We were at a church dinner discussing that week’s episode.  It wasn’t an episode about the triumphant landing of Apollo 11 or the life and death drama of Apollo 13.  It was the episode about the seemingly innocuous mission of Apollo 9 and the years long effort to design the lunar lander.  Rather than focus on the astronauts, the show instead dwelled on the common every day engineers at the Grumman Aerospace company. 

Imagine how cool it must have been, we asked ourselves, to have been part of our fathers’ generation and worked for a company on that project.  How inspiring it was to go to work every day knowing that what you were doing was going to make history.  Every night you stay late, every long business trip you traveled, all the time away from your family must have been difficult.  It was hard work.  But at least you knew that it was all contributing to something that would change the world as we knew it.  The pictures of earth, taken from the moon, fundamentally changed forever how we earthlings saw ourselves. 

That was so unlike our careers at the time.  Our jobs consisted of things like working nights and weekends, making our numbers every quarter, sitting through meetings that went nowhere, and spending hours a day commuting.  Although we did it for a noble cause, to support our families, somehow it did not have the same sense of adventure and grandeur as going to the moon.

What if we could work toward something larger than ourselves ­ something that would change history and make the world a different place?

We are here today to invite you to just such a mission.  It is a challenging mission that is even bigger and more important than landing on man on the moon.  It is a dream and a mission that was announced two thousand years ago and remains unaccomplished.  But when this mission is fulfilled we will look back and say it began with one man, Jesus of Nazareth, and his simple pronouncement that “the kingdom of God is at hand.”

If I were to ask you what was Jesus’ primary message, you might say something like “Love you neighbor” or “be a Christian.”  Maybe you are somewhat familiar with the idea that Jesus told stories called parables.  You may even have learned a few them in Sunday School or CCD.  I first heard them, not in my church, but in a 5^th grade public school production of Godspell in which I played Jesus.  I don’t even want to get into all the irony of that last sentence.

Jesus told parables not to merely entertain or draw direct analogies. They are not allegories from which we can map a one-to-one relationship between the characters or situations and some past, present or future real life people.  Instead they are doorways to a new reality and a new way of life.  Many of the parables begin by comparing themselves to this new reality.  Jesus calls it the Kingdom of Heaven.

By Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus is not describing a place where we go to after we die.  He talks about that in other places.   In other parts of the Gospels, he reassures us that there is life beyond death.  However, the parables we heard today scarcely make sense as descriptions of the afterlife.  The afterlife is like a mustard seed that starts out small and grows large?  The afterlife is like a little bit of yeast that woman mixes in with a huge amount of dough?  Jesus is obviously talking about something different here.

Perhaps you have noticed something is wrong with the world.  This simply cannot be the way the world is supposed to be.  I have heard it said, and have even said myself, why doesn’t God do something to fix this?  For many people, that unanswered question keeps them from believing in God to begin with.  Why doesn’t God do something to set the world right.

When Jesus preached that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand he was announcing that God was and still is doing something about it.  But there are some unexpected things about it.  Jesus said look at how God works.  Take a look at a mustard seed.  God doesn’t just plop down a mustard bush out of the sky.  It starts out small and seemingly insignificant but it grows like a weed.  It grows to so large a size that even the birds of the air (an image from the Hebrew Bible used to signify all the people of the world) can all come rest in its branches. 

This is how the Kingdom of Heaven  works, by growing and replicating.  Tiny mustard seeds grow to become large bushes.  The Kingdom of Heaven transforms from within.  Like a small amount of yeast that is mixed into a huge amount of dough, this Kingdom is kneaded into the world and causes it to rise.

Put aside all our preconceptions about Jesus for a moment.  Put aside any baggage about churches and Christians you may have walked in here with this morning.  Focus instead on this simple truth.  In Jesus, God was inaugurating the process by which God is transforming the world into the way it was meant to be.

Jesus was the starting point, what the New Testament writers called the Age to Come is the ending point.  In between is the church.  You and I.  This church.  Our mission is to bring about the transformation of the world from what it is now, to what God wants it to be ­ a world of justice, peace, compassion and love.

Have you ever thought of church as being that mission? Jesus did.  Church was not meant to be an institution that protects dogma but a force that projects God’s love.  It is not a place where one comes to, but a place from which we are sent out.  Not a club that preserves the status quo but a center from which we serve with radical discipleship.  It is not a place that one attends, fills a seat or is affiliated with.  It is a movement designed to transform the world into God’s dream.

It is a movement that begins with our personal transformation.  But it does not end there.  Sure we can all get together here every Sunday, forty or fifty adults, be fed and filled by God.  There is nothing wrong with that.  In fact that is the part of what it means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus.

But that is not the whole story.  When Jesus spoke of the Kingdom, of the movement he was starting, he always used images of growth.  Living, breathing organisms that get larger, replicate and spread.  Seeds, plants, vines, flames, and lights.  God designed churches to grow.  The only things that do not grow are things that are dead and our God is the God of the living not the God of the dead.  God has designed churches to grow.  So if a church is not growing, it is because something is preventing it.

If you do not want this church to grow, one of us is in the wrong church.  If you think it’s me, I suggest you contact our bishop and ask him to appoint another pastor here.  Trust me, we have plenty of Methodist pastors who apparently specialize in not growing churches.  So later today, we are going to talk about our plans for growth here at Vision and why that is so important.  If this church growing scares you or makes you worry that it will become big and impersonal, we will even review ways that we can become bigger and smaller at the same time.

Our mission here at Vision is simple.  It is on the program every week, “We exist to welcome all people to experience God and be transformed by the Spirit into disciples of Jesus Christ.”  In short, we make disciples, students or followers of Jesus.  If it does not have to do with that mission, we don’t do it.  We do not have the time or resources to waste on things that do not accomplish that mission.  I’m like most of you.  I’m a busy guy.  I don’t have time to play church and I assume you don’t either.

So if your life has changed because of this church, if God has brought some wholeness to your life through this place, that is terrific.  We want to celebrate that. But you are not done yet.  The life of discipleship is one of service.  Serving God in the church, so that we can grow so that others can have the same great experience of God that you have had here. 

Beyond that we are called to serve God in the world, not on our own ­ not in our own name, but in the name of Christ.  We go out into the world not as lone rangers but through this particular local church.  That is process Jesus inaugurated and that we continue here at Vision.  That enables this church to grow in strength and resources so that we can connect even more people with Christ.  This church growing means more transformed people and more transformed people means a more transformed world.

That is even bigger than landing on the moon isn’t it?  What could be more important than that mission?  That is something worth getting up for on a Sunday morning.  Transforming the world is the kind of thing one makes a priority in their life.  In the other parables we heard earlier, Jesus says this Kingdom is like a treasure or a pearl.  It is the kind of thing for which one gives up everything else to be a part of. 

That discussion about the moon landing I began with, took place at a church dinner.  Like my job at the time, the church I was attending was an OK place.  Nothing wrong with it.  It was the least objectionable of other churches I had looked at.  It did not really demand too much of me.  In the words of American Idol judge Randy Jackson, “Dawg, it was aw-ite.”  But just aw-ite.

Somehow, I wanted and still want my life to be more than just aw-ite.  I believe you all feel the same way. But I know that for many of you, even on your best days, life is just aw-ite.  Some of you would give anything for life to just get up to the level of aw-ite.

Our deepest desire is to be a part of something larger than ourselves.  We want to participate in a mission that matters and gives our life meaning.  This morning, I am here to offer that offer that to all of you.  This church can be your chance to make your life more than just aw-ite.  This church can help you find your God-dream, your place in this incredible mission of transforming the world.  I believe there is a place for you here and that there is some unique gift that you bring here that you can use for God. 

God has a dream for you as an individual and God has a dream for us as a church.

Allow me to paint a picture of the dream God has for us and the church we envision.  We envision a church of hundreds of people or more.  People who have never felt welcome in church before, or left church a long time ago, or were hurt by a church.  The unchurched, dechurched and mischurched.  We envision a home as diverse as God’s creation ­ people who are ethnically, economically and generationally diverse.  A place where people are connecting with God and becoming deeper and deeper followers of Jesus Christ.

We envision this church being in a different facility.  Now we will have to move to somewhere else in the interim so we can grow to have the resources to do this, but here is what we envision.  We envision a building located somewhere that would allow people from all over region to get there easily.  It would have a front porch, a place that says welcome, come be a part of our community even if you aren’t sure what you believe yet.  It would be a place where one entered and would be greeted with the same atmosphere as a ski-lodge or a coffeehouse.  Maybe there would be a fireplace. 

There would be a worship space that would be large but still feel intimate.  During worship there will be areas with couches and chairs, tables and lamps.  It will feel like home.  That main space would not be just for Sundays either.  It would be a center in the region for cultural events and the arts.

Can any of you picture it?  Can you all see it?

Everything would be designed to enable people to connect with God.  Once they have connected, there would be ministries that would deepen their commitment.  There will be a staff of people, mostly lay people who would specialize in areas like counseling or spiritual formation.  That staff is there mainly to equip people.  Most of the ministry would be done by everyday people serving out of their talents. 

What would we all be doing?  The mission.  Transforming the world for God.  Reaching out to the surrounding community in compassion and doing it all through this church in the name of Christ.

Now can any of you picture it?  Can you all see it?  More importantly, can you see yourself in it?  What would you be doing?

We envision a church where other churches and ministries will come and learn.  It would be a place that is known for always being on the cutting edge of God is doing.  Maybe someday we could even take the risk that our parent church took with us and send out people to start a new community of faith somewhere.

Always growing always changing.  Always a part of what God is doing in the world.  That is the kind of church God is building here.  That is a big dream.  Dream so big only God can do it.  And that is why I know it comes from God.