Lead Courageously | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

2:12 been to church why not give it a try this weekend visit a church in your neighborhood or join us at Resurrection, a United Methodist Church with nine locations in the Kansas City area. Go to cor.org for more information. Today we conclude our series of sermons and a month celebrating our 35th anniversary as a church. We've been wearing these 35th anniversary t-shirts and our sermon series outline is really on the back of the shirt. This is the new vision statement of the United Methodist Church that we are making disciples who do these things. They love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously. And this month we've talked about loving boldly, serving joyfully. Today, we're going to conclude by talking about leading courageously. Now, I want to begin with this idea of what leadership is. If you did a Google search online, you're going to find hundreds of different ways of defining leadership and what it means to lead. But they all sort of boil down in my mind to two things, influence and action, influence and action.

3:04 So in leadership, you are influencing other people and you are moving them to action to do something in response to that influence. And I want to give you one example of that from this last week. So I received this picture of a few of our kids here at Resurrection who, one of them, I don't know the exact story, one or two of them got their friends involved in packing birthday kits for our food pantry in Overland Park. I want you to see this picture. And as you look at this picture, these kids, they knew that there were children whose parents didn't have money to buy gifts. And at our food pantry, they go and they get their groceries from the food pantry at our Overland Park location. and these birthday kits are a way of just blessing these kids whose parents might not have money to buy gifts for them otherwise. And so, you know, one or two of our own kids here at Resurrection got their friends involved, they influenced them, and they moved them to action. Here's the point I want you to know.

3:56 Every one of you is a leader. We are all called to lead. I know people think, I'm not a leader. Yes, you are. You are a leader. If you are a human, you are a leader. And if you are a Christian, Jesus calls you to lead, to influence people, and to move them to action. So today we're going to talk about this. We're going to really ask three questions. Who are you following? So if you're a leader, you're following somebody too. Who are you following? What makes for an effective leader? And what does it look like to lead courageously? All right, so as we do that, I want to begin with a song from 1979. Bob Dylan, I love Bob Dylan. And in 1979, he wrote a song. This is after he'd come to faith in Christ. And it was a gospel song. And the song says this, you got to serve somebody. Actually, that's the name of the song. Before we get to that, it starts off like this. You may be an ambassador to England or France. You may like to gamble. You may like to dance. You may be the heavyweight champion of the world. You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls.

4:51 And then comes the refrain. And this was the Grammy award-winning song for Dylan in 1980. And here he is performing it at the Grammys. You got to serve somebody. So if you're a leader, you're also a follower. And when we talk about following or serving somebody, you know, you might be following, you might be led by a boss, a supervisor, a coach, your parents. So yes, we have leaders like that. But ultimately, in an ultimate sense, there is something or someone that really drives you. It's at the center of your life. What is it or who is it that drives you?

5:43 You gotta serve somebody, Dylan says. May not be the devil, may be the Lord, but you're gonna serve somebody. And in our lives, we're gonna serve, we might serve another person. Maybe there's somebody who's like our heroic figure and we're gonna serve them. They're our key leader in our lives. And we might serve ourselves, ego and narcissism. And so it's all about me and what I want and the whole world sort of revolves around me. We might serve and make our key leader in our lives the thing that drives us money or sex or power or possessions or popularity or pride. I mean, all of these are things that could be the thing that drives us or leads us. But when we look in scripture, what we find is that scripture calls us to be led by God. Before we lead anybody else, we're called to be led by God. So throughout the Hebrew Bible, 79 times the Israelites were said to follow God. They were led by God in the wilderness.

6:36 They were led out of slavery in Egypt. They were led by God. Or individual Jewish people were said, or Israelites were said to be led by God. So I love that passage of scripture. You know it undoubtedly by heart. Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherds. In fact, why don't you read this with me? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not one. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. There's the word leadeth. He restoreth my soul. he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. I want you to notice that. The psalmist in this beautiful passage saying, God, you are leading me. You're leading me like a shepherd and I am your sheep. You know, I'm one of your lambs. Lead me. This is the prayer of a Christian. We invite Christ to lead us. So to be Lord, which is what we call Jesus, is a central title for Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus is Lord. Lord means master, sovereign, ruler, leader. And so at the very heart of our lives, the very essence of who we are, we seek to be led by Jesus, who incarnated, who put flesh on God. And so we're people, if we're a follower, if we're a Christian, we're people who've said, Jesus, I will follow you. You remember Jesus' invitation to his disciples when he began preaching and ministering, he said to his disciples, he'd come to them and say, come follow me. That's the central invitation he gave, come follow me. And so he invites us today to follow him. If you're a Christian, you've said, I'm following Jesus. He's the Lord. He's master, sovereign, ruler.

8:01 He's the one I'm going to serve. Jesus is Lord. All right. So that's the most important thing as we set up this idea of what leadership looks like is every leader is a follower. And who are you following? Who's driving you? Because here's the thing, whoever you're following is shaping the kind of leader you're going to be. So if you're following somebody who's a narcissist, if you're following somebody who's like, when I was a kid, I remember as a young teenager, I had friends who I so desperately wanted to like me. And these kids were involved in drugs and alcohol. And so I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be like them. I began to follow them. And then that shaped the kind of person I was and how I was leading other people who were my friends and influencing them to action. It's just that the action was deadly that I was influencing them towards. But when Christ is at the center of your life, when you are a disciple of Jesus, you're following him. Every day you're following him. And then you're influencing other people to follow him as well. Jesus called us to do that. Again, if you're a Christian, you're a leader.

8:54 He called us to let our light shine before others. He called us to be salt in the world. He called us to bear much fruit. He called us to make disciples. He called us to do all of these things as a way of influencing other people so that there might be actions that would lead them into the kingdom of God. All right, so given that we're all leaders, let's consider what makes for a great leader. And, you know, when I got out of seminary, I hadn't had very many classes on leadership and I felt like, boy, I need to learn more about this. So for the first 10 years of my ministry, I subscribed to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company. I bought every great book on leadership that I could find. And I still buy leadership books from time to time. But so many of them today I find are recirculating old ideas. One of the best books on leadership in almost everybody's list of the best books on leadership in the modern era is a book many of you maybe haven't read yet. It came out in 19, I think it was 1987. It's been revised since then. It was called The Leadership Challenge. It was written by James Kuzis and Barry Posner.

9:49 And in it, they had studied, starting in 1983, they had surveyed leaders at all different levels, and they'd asked them certain questions about leadership. Ultimately, they surveyed 75,000 leaders and had several thousand personal interviews with leaders. And they asked questions like, when you're at your best, what are the things that you're doing? Or when you see other people are in leadership, what are the things that make for an effective leader? And they ended up coming up with a list called the five practices of exemplary leaders. Now, it's worth us looking at this because we're all called to be leaders, right? So let's just take a look. The five practices of exemplary leaders. The first, they model the way. They lead by example. The second is they inspire a shared vision. So they move people in the heart towards a preferred picture of the future, towards what could be and not what is. They challenge the process. Number three, they challenge the process. They challenge the status quo. What's happening now? And look to see what needs to change.

10:42 So they lead change in that. They enable other people to act. So they enable their employees or their team or their family. They enable other people. They empower other people to act. And then finally, they encourage the heart, right? They speak to people's hearts. And when I looked at that list, it's a pretty great list of how effective leaders lead. When I looked at that list, it struck me something I don't think they say anywhere in their book, but this looks like Jesus. Like these are the very things that Jesus did. He modeled the way. He led by example. He did the very things that he was inviting his disciples to do. He inspired a shared vision. That shared vision he called the kingdom of God, the world, what it would look like if God's reign, if we recognize God's reign and we did God's will, if his will was done on earth as it is in heaven, that was the kingdom of God. And that was his inspiring shared vision. He challenged the process, right? He challenged the religious authorities. He challenged their interpretation of scripture. He challenged their sense that they needed to stay separate from the sinful people. He challenged their conceptions of what God was like.

11:43 He enabled other people to act, his disciples. He empowered them to go do the things that he was doing. After the 12, it was the 72. And from that time on, you know, as he was leaving the earth, he was saying, now go and you all do the things that I've been doing and make disciples and teach other people. And then finally, he encouraged the heart. He cared for people's hearts. He let them know that they were loved. He demonstrated that to them. When I thought about Jesus, I also thought about the apostle Paul. And if you read Paul, you find he did the exact same things. It was just a pattern for leadership that was demonstrated in the Bible. And for Paul, his vision was that Gentiles could be a part of the kingdom of God. And so he devoted his entire life to reaching out to people who are non-Jews and helping them come to know the good news of Jesus Christ. As a congregation, I think the success of our congregation has largely been about doing these five things. So we have done this same thing. We have modeled the way for the community. We have tried to lead by example in the community. We've inspired a shared vision. For us, it's building a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians and seeing us be used by God to reach people to know Christ and to strengthen other churches and then to transform the world. Those are our inspiring visions. And we challenge the process of how you do church and challenge the status quo in our society and our communities.

13:01 We've enabled other people to act so that this church isn't just one pastor or a group of pastors. This is 23,000 people who are all working together. You're out there leading and living the gospel. And then finally, we've encouraged the heart. We've cared for people's hearts here. All right. These again are seen in Jesus. They're seen in Paul, in every great Christian leader. And four of the five could be summarized with this word, integrity. Integrity, that again, you are, you know, you're authentically who you say you are. You're not just talking the talk, but walking the walk. And those are qualities of people that leader, or these are qualities of leaders that people admire. Now, I want to mention, just pausing here for a moment, when we think about leadership in the church, all of us are leaders. So we've already learned that. But God calls some people to be leaders. In the New Testament church, we find this, we find it today. God calls certain people to be in leadership within the church.

13:52 Some of those are volunteer lay leadership positions. Right now we're in the process of nominating our leaders for next year. You can go on our website and you can find out more about that process of becoming a leader in our administrative teams. It's, you know, we need leaders who are Sunday school teachers and team leaders and usher team leaders and all kinds of things. We need those kinds of leaders. but the church also can't get by without having, you know, full-time and part-time leaders who are on staff. And here at Resurrection, we've got a ton of opportunities always, you know, a ton of positions always with tech arts and IT and HR and, you know, I mean, all of these various positions that most churches don't have, we have them at a church this size. And so that's awesome. And we have full-time employees in those areas, but I want to speak specifically to those who might go into pastoral ministry, youth ministry, associate pastor ministry, shepherding, pastoral care, or even, you know, location pastors or senior pastors of other congregations. And God is calling some of you to be a part of that as well. I believe that. Some of you, I'm looking right in the camera and thinking about some of you watching at our various locations.

14:54 And you might be, you already have a career, but you've always felt like maybe there was something else God was calling you to. Maybe you're in high school or you're in college or middle school, and God's calling you already. I was 16 years old when somebody came to me and said, Adam, you've got a calling on your life. You could be a great pastor. And I'm like, I don't wanna be a pastor. I have a lot of other dreams and aspirations, but enough people said that to me, I began thinking about it. And then finally, my pastor allowed me to preach on a Sunday night in a youth service and youth Sunday at our regular Sunday night worship services. And when I was finished, I knew this is what God made me for. And how grateful I am, I said yes to that call because the greatest joy in my life after my wife, my kids, my granddaughter, is getting to be your pastor. It's an awesome, awesome opportunity to serve God by serving his people in the church. And I wanna mention this because there are some of you have the gifts for this, you've just not thought about it. And I'm hoping you might consider that form of leadership. And I remember when I preached on this a few years, a number of years ago, there was a young couple in our congregation and Alan was a lawyer, just finished law school, started his law practice.

15:55 And while I was saying, some of you are being called to ordained ministry, she elbowed her husband and said, you know, that's you, don't you? you went to law school, but you really are called to be a pastor. He went back to seminary. I went to Southern Methodist University where I went to seminary and then came out and served churches here in the Kansas City area. He died of cancer a number of years ago. His parents are still a part of our congregation, but he answered the call. At first, he didn't think that was what God was calling him to. So I just want to say, consider the possibility that God might be calling you to ordain ministry. If that might be a possibility, you have two things you could do. we have a pastor on staff, part-time, Steve Langhofer, and he meets with people who are trying to discern, is this, you know, is it really possible that God's calling me? I mean, the future of United Methodism and of really, and our church as well, is contingent upon people answering the call of God on their lives to full-time Christian ministry. And so Steve can help you in the discernment process. And we have a seminary right here at Church of the Resurrection's Leighwood location. St. Paul School of Theology is one of 13 United Methodist seminaries across the country accredited. And you could take classes right here at your own, you know, in your own Bleywood location. And so if you go to core.org slash next, there's a place where you can find out more about Steve Langhofer and get connected with him, or you can find out more about St. Paul School of Theology. But I want to encourage you to listen to see if God might be calling you into full-time Christian ministry. All right, that leads me to the last point and really the focus of today's sermon, and that is on leading courageously. Leading courageously.

17:27 So what does it mean to lead courageously? And there's three dimensions of this, I think. One is to make bold decisions when you face challenges. So there have been times throughout the 35 years that we've been around as a church, there were critical moments where we made key decisions, and those decisions weren't always popular with everyone, or there were people who were telling us, this is why this is never going to work. Even in 1990, when I was assigned to start the church. I remember there were other pastors saying, Adam, this is going to fail. You're going to fall on your face. It's underfunded. There's no way this is going to work. And yet inside, I just knew God is calling me to do this. But I remember the night before our very first worship service, all I could think of is I'm going to fail. This is going to be a disaster. And those pastors were, you know, their voices were in my head saying it's never going to work. And they told me, you know, if this fails, they're going to send you out to, you know, a three or four point charge somewhere in the country, somewhere in South or Central Missouri. Well, a three or four point church is three or four tiny little churches that one pastor travels between to serve. And yet in my mind, I thought, okay, if that's what happens, that's what's going to happen.

18:26 But I'm at least going to give this a try. I think God is calling us to do this. And I've got dozens of examples across the last 35 years of when resurrection chose to do something that some people didn't like. Some people were, you know, complained about or unhappy about. But we chose to make the decision that was bold or, you know, courageous. And it made all the difference. all the difference in who this church became. All right, so that's one type of leadership is making the strategic, bold decisions, taking risks in leadership. There's another type of courage in leadership. And this courage in leadership is when you're terrified, it's how you go ahead and lead anyway. It's how you live in the face of being really scared. This week, I went to see one of our members in the ICU. She is a longtime congregational care minister here at Resurrection. I think she's also been involved in ushering and greeting just a delightful and wonderful woman. And I got note that she was having some serious battles in the hospital, that she was really physically compromised.

19:25 And I wanted to go by and see her just to encourage her and be the presence of Christ for her. I walked in the ICU. And actually, I waited out in the hall for about 20 minutes while the doctors were working on her and with her. And then I had a chance to go in the ICU. And one of the things I'd heard was that the nurses there talked about her as their favorite patient. and how she was trying to bless, even in a compromised, with compromised physical health, she was still trying to bless people in the hospital room. She was still leading, influencing and moving people while she was seriously ill. And so I got in and we had a wonderful visit and I had a chance to anoint her head with oil and the sign of the cross. And I prayed for her and gave her to Jesus and asked for God to use the doctors, the medication and his direct touch to bring healing to her and give her his peace that passes understanding And when I was finished with the prayer, she said, Pastor Adam, would it be okay if I prayed for you? No, I've made well over a thousand hospital calls over the years.

20:24 And I've had people in the regular hospital room who've said on occasion, maybe three or four times, they'd said, can I pray with you? But I've never been with somebody who was so physically compromised and yet still had the presence of mind to say, could I pray for you right now? She said, I pray for you every day. Every morning I pray for you. And then she recounted the prayer that she prays every day. And, you know, first offering her life to Christ and asking for God to use her. And then praying for her family. And then she said, every day, I come to a certain point, I pray for you. You have no idea what that meant to me. You know, and standing there with her in the ICU. And then she prayed for me. And I thought, here's a woman who is a courageous leader. She is, you know, facing something frightening. But in the face of that fear, it's not that the, you know, courageous leadership doesn't limit. It doesn't mean there's no fear. But it means you power through that fear. you continue to lead despite that fear, which is what she was doing with the nurses who came in the room and what she did to her pastor or for her pastor that day when she prayed for me. Like we still lead and we still trust in God, even when we're afraid.

21:22 Doesn't mean we're not fearful. Just means that we continue to live courageously in the face of that fear. Now, finally, there's another type of courage I want us to focus on. This is where I want to end, is just to recognize that there is a courage that's a moral courage or spiritual courage. It's a courage that is about doing the thing you know is right, even if it means there's going to be a cost to you. Even if it means that some people won't like you anymore, or some people are going to criticize you, or maybe you could lose your job, or there might be some other cost to courage, but you're going to do it anyway. And I think about in Scripture how often in the Hebrew Bible, the prophets, God through the prophets, calls people to be concerned in particular for the marginalized, to be concerned for the poor, the powerless, to be concerned for the widows and the orphans, to, you know, to make sure that they were practicing justice. 250 times, I think it is, in the Hebrew Bible, the word justice appears, which has to do with a concern for people who are without power, right? People who are on the margins, people who are poor, struggling, again, widows and orphans and others, and to ensure that there is justice, that there is fairness for these people, right?

22:30 To be concerned for them and their well-being. This is a calling throughout the Hebrew Bible, and we find it again in the New Testament. And so when you're going to do that, when you're gonna speak up for the folks who are on the edges, or when you're gonna do that, you're gonna challenge the status quo. You're gonna challenge sometimes people in power or authority. You're gonna challenge all the people who are doing pretty well under the settings or under the circumstances. And they may not like that very much. So you find the prophets are often beaten or abused when they're speaking out, right? There's a lot of people who are not gonna like those prophets. I'm gonna pause here for a moment and mentioned this last week, one of our young clergy who came out of resurrection serving in Nebraska now, came up to me and she'd gotten a few tattoos and she said, okay, I gotta ask Adam, do you have any tattoos yet? And I'm like, no, I don't have a single tattoo on my body. She said, well, don't you think you'll ever get one? I'm like, I don't know. You know, I've thought about it every once in a while. I've thought what matters so much to me that I would ink it on my body.

23:26 It'd have to be something really, really important, like a scripture passage. Well, certainly the names of my wife and my daughters, my granddaughter, but I have no, I thought maybe I could get it like those little grains of rice where you have, you know, you can fit a name on a grain of rice. Can they make tattoos that small? I might do that kind. But anyway, she said, well, what scripture would you put on your body? And I began thinking about that. I had to think for a while and I thought, what would I put and where would I put it? I put it right over my heart. And I thought of the scripture that I would want to have here as a way of reminding me, you know, to do this and that this should be in the center of my heart. And it's a scripture that has really been important to me. It has shaped how I understand what ministry looks like and what it means to be a leader. And here are the words. It's from Proverbs 31. It says, speak out on behalf of the voiceless and for the rights of all who are vulnerable. Speak out in order to judge with righteousness and to defend the needy and the poor. The reason why the Proverbs, the writer of Proverbs has to say to do this is because by nature we're afraid sometimes to do it. Like in our hearts, we might know, we might feel empathy and empathy is so important that leaders have empathy.

24:32 We, compassion, you can call it compassion if you want, that we're supposed to have that, but sometimes we become afraid to say or do anything because what's the cost gonna be? What are people gonna say? The people who are in power, the people who benefit from the structures as they are. But the biblical authors are calling us to do this. God is calling us to do this. As a congregation, we've sought to do this throughout the years. Over the last 35 years, this week I just went through 35 years of ministry history and preaching and the things that we did here at the church. And we've tried to do this. And I can guarantee you, we've not done it as often or as much as we should have. But we have tried to be that kind of congregation who speaks up for the powerless, the vulnerable, who cares for the poor and the needy. And I will tell you, when we've done this and we've spoken for justice, inevitably there are people who get upset. So there are people who, maybe they understand the issue differently.

25:26 And, you know, we're a congregation with a broad, you know, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, and conservatives. And so you try to speak into these things, and some people will say, well, you're getting too political now. When you're talking about speaking up for the marginalized or the vulnerable or the poor or the needy, that may sound like politics to some, and it sounds like biblical justice to others. And there have been times over those 35 years where I've preached into something, we've done some things as a congregation, and people left the church. Can I tell you the one thing? I'm going to retire in five years, The one thing I will not miss when I retire is people leaving the church because of something I said or something we did. That's like the most painful thing, partly because pastors want to be liked and partly because, you know, you've led somebody to faith in Christ and then to watch them walk away. It just hurts. And I won't miss that. But, you know, the counter to that is, you might just never choose to do this thing that the Bible calls you to do so that nobody ever leaves.

26:24 And then you never are the church. You aren't the people that God called you to be. I think about Jesus. He knew what this was like. He was a courageous leader. And there were people who turned away from him. And if you go to Mark's gospel, starting in chapter two, all the things that he said and did, starting in Mark chapter two, the leaders looked for a way to destroy him. in almost every chapter, the people are trying to find a way to destroy him until they finally crucify him, right? In John's gospel, John chapter six, verse 66, 666, I've mentioned this to you before, is a verse where Jesus has fed the multitudes. Then he says, I'm the bread of life. Those who come to me will never go hungry. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood shall have life. And all of a sudden, that was just too much for too many people. And 666 says that many of his followers turned away from him at that time. That's Jesus. and people turned away. And then he turns to his disciples and there's such pathos in this. He says, will you leave me also?

27:19 I mean, you know, sometimes practicing courageous leadership means, you know, that there are going to be people will be upset, not like what you did. Maybe turn away from you. This week I spoke with Irv Hockaday. I met Irv when he was CEO at Hallmark Cards. Before that, he was CEO and president at Kansas City Southern Railways. then for 13 years at Hallmark Cards. Got to know him there, and he was one of those figures I looked to as a mentor, and just a really great guy. I really love him. And so we were talking this last week, and I said, Irv, I remember a story about you when you just graduated from law school that represented this kind of idea of leading courageously. And can you just remind me of this story? And he, of course, doesn't want to brag on himself. But I said, just tell me this story. I'd really love to share it with our congregation. And a very humble guy, And he said, well, I just graduated from University of Michigan Law School, came to Kansas City. This was his home.

28:13 Gone to Princeton, University of Michigan, really bright guy. And he's immediately accepted into one of the social clubs in Kansas City, the University Club. It eventually was folded into the Kansas City Club, but the University Club. And this was like, this was a place for up-and-comers, like really bright young professionals to mingle with people who are established leaders in Kansas City. It was quite a deal to be a part of the University Club. And so he's a part of the club, and then he became a junior director of the club. And then came the time when he said, I'd like to nominate my friend, Martin Sossland, to be a member of the university club. And Martin Sossland was Jewish. And this was a time when Jews were not allowed to join the social clubs or the country clubs in Kansas City, only the specifically Jewish clubs. Martin Sossland was a big deal in Kansas City and, you know, an up-and-comer as well. And so the board immediately said, well, okay, yeah, we'll vote to approve him. But then we have to have the members approve him.

29:14 And when it came time for the members to approve him, they rejected his friend Martin Sossland. And so Irv went to the membership of the university club and said, if you're not going to be a club that will welcome my friend Martin Sossland because he's Jewish, I don't want to be a part of this club. now that one decision that one statement could have ruined his career I mean that you know there were a whole lot of movers and shakers in Kansas City who were sitting there when he said that but Irv Hockaday knew it was the right thing to do he demonstrated courageous leadership in that moment and I guess I'd ask you this question you know if that was you a young person coming up through the ranks and you had you know this was a really important thing for for your future career, would you have been willing to go, if you're going to exclude this person, I don't want to be a part of you anymore.

30:07 Would you have led courageously? I hope so. Now, we've been a church that's tried to do this over the years. So again, there have been times that we didn't speak up as much as we could have or should have, but I really think we've tried to do this. And in an interesting congregation where you have Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, and liberals, part of my task as a leader is to try to listen, to try to say, okay, in addressing this issue, how would you address this? How would you address this? And to try to speak in a way, I've often taught this to other pastors, your job when you're preaching on difficult issues is not merely to irritate people, that's easy. It's to influence them. Remember what leadership is? Influencing and action, right? And so your task is to influence people. So it's easy to get them to leave and never come back. It's harder to say, how can I help people here? the concern that I think God has for this particular group of people? And then what are we gonna do about it?

31:01 And when you do this, you know you're gonna have people who are gonna be angry or upset or leave the church, but hopefully you can say this in a way that most people will go, okay, I may or may not agree with Pastor Adam, but I think this is, at least I understand where he's coming from. And many people might say, you know what, I think maybe that's right. So just to remind you, early on we became a church and said we're gonna stand up and be with people with special needs. We've stood over and over again with the Jewish community against anti-Semitism. I have stood at the mosque down the road from our church and said when they were experiencing Islamophobic activity and things spray painted on their signs, I went to their Friday services to say, as a congregation, we stand with you and we care about you, right? And I think about when African-Americans in our country during the Black Lives Movement leading up to Black Lives Matter, you know, when there were terrible injustices that were happening, right? And most of us thought, yeah, things are pretty good, you know, in our country.

31:53 And yet they weren't pretty good for, everybody. And so, you know, to stand, you know, on the plaza or to stand on truce and hold our signs and say, you know what, we want justice for everybody, right? And that made some people mad, you know? And so, you know, we struggle sometimes with how do we say these things or, you know, exactly what the approach needs to be. But to be a people who say, we stand against prejudice and hate and injustice and bigotry, and we stand for people. I think about the way that resurrection over the years has stood for and with gay and lesbian people when many churches are not willing to treat them as full members or fully include them. But as a congregation, we said, no, we're gonna be a place that welcomes and loves our gay and lesbian friends, neighbors, children. You know, this is important to us. And to work really hard to see our denomination remove language that was hurtful to people. And that didn't happen until just last year, 2024.

32:47 It took years of our being advocates for that, along with thousands of other congregations across America. And there were people who left our church. Hundreds of people have left our church over that. And it hurt to see them go. You have friends maybe who left over that. And yet as a congregation, we say, okay, but we know who we are. And this is going to be a place that's safe for people to come. And I think about so many other things, you know, when we look at, you know, issues in our, whether it's the environment or whether it's, you know, how women are treated or whether women are considered subordinate or, or instead full, you know, full leaders in the church, which is really important to us as a congregation. And today, when I think about, you know, what's happening in our world, you know, you look around and you can see that there are people in places that are once more powerless and they're being treated inhumanely or they're, you know, they're being seen as the enemy. And I mean, I'm all in favor of laws and making sure we have good laws and then enforcing those laws. But even then we do that and treat people humanely and not inhumanely.

33:41 I think about immigration today. When you look at Jesus and what Jesus had to say, you know, he talked about in Matthew chapter 25, being concerned for the immigrant and welcoming the immigrant. And when we do that for, you know, however we welcome and care for the immigrant or the poor, you know, the hungry or thirsty or naked or the prisoners, he takes it personally as to how, you know, how he receives us. It's how we receive other people in his name. Last week, there were a group of folks I saw from Resurrection who were at the No Kings protest. So I was driving down the road in my convertible going between our various service projects and somebody shouted, hey, Pastor Adam. and I looked over and I waved and I was so proud to see them over there. Now, you may not agree with the no kings protest, but the ability to go, you know, these folks, they had a reason. They felt afraid for our democracy or concerned or whatever. And I wish somebody would just go out and say, you know, from our government would be able to go out and say, okay, tell us why you're feeling this way.

34:35 What can we do to address the concerns that you're having as opposed to mocking them or, you know, saying this is Hamas or Antifa. These were people from Tallgrass Creek, Tallgrass, you know, Senior Living Center or walked across the street. These are grandparents and people who I know from our congregation. I was just proud that they were willing to make their voices heard. Even if you, whether you agree or disagree, I want you to be people who make your voices heard and try to speak up for the vulnerable and the marginalized and are concerned, you know, that righteousness and justice is done in our world. We can disagree on what that looks like, but I want you to be people who lead courageously. All right, I want to end with this. I watched a documentary this week. It was a documentary called Unbroken. I mentioned it in my pastor's e-note. And in the documentary, it's a story. This woman is telling the story of her grandmother. And her grandmother and all of her aunts and uncles, there were seven children who lived in Nazi Germany.

35:27 This is during the Holocaust. 1943, they live in Berlin. Here's a picture of these seven children. And they survived. Two years they survived on their own. Well, not really on their own, but they managed to survive in Germany during the height of the Holocaust. And so her grandmother was one of those. and she wanted to retrace that story. And what she found, how did they survive? Their mother was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, probably murdered at Auschwitz. The Nazis said she died of a heart attack, 1943. And so these children are left without their mother and there were orders for them to be arrested and taken to Auschwitz. But instead, a man who ran a fruit stand outside or as a part of their building where they lived said, I have to do something. And he said to the kids, I want you to get in my fruit truck, in the back of the pickup truck. And he covered them up with a tarp. He said, you stay there quiet. And he took them to his hometown of Wurland, Germany, not far away, I think 30 or 40 miles from Berlin. And he takes them there. And for two years, he and his wife protect them from the Nazis. They managed to keep them from being arrested and being harmed until the war was over with. Here's a picture of Arthur and his wife.

36:40 And as you look at these two, these are just ordinary people, right? They don't look heroic. They're just ordinary people who run an orchard, but they save the lives of these kids, risking their own lives to do that. And in the film, the filmmaker, Beth Lane, she goes back to this town in Germany. She tells a story to a group of young people. And then she asked this question that I want to ask you today. She said, if this were happening today, would you do this to save people like my grandmother and her brothers and sisters? I want to ask you this question. Are you the kind of people who would risk your life to care for the vulnerable, the marginalized, the powerless, the poor, and the needy? here's my invitation for us. We just finished 35 years. We got 35 years. The next 35 years, we start now. And my hope and prayer is that we might be the kind of people who lead courageously.

37:34 We're willing to take risks. We're willing to live faithfully when we're afraid. And we're willing to lead courageously in speaking up for the people that others might not speak up for. I hope that's the kind of church we will continue to be in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's pray. God, forgive us for the times when we have lacked courage. Forgive me as a pastor for the times I have given into fear. And help us to find courage to live for you, to love you, to boldly serve you, and to speak up for the poor and the needy, the vulnerable and the powerless.