Take, for example, our Lutheran history in America. Northern Europeans immigrating to America, speaking hardly any English, Lutheran settlers needed little cultural islands where they could feel comfortable and reassured about like. Churches became those island of safety, serving not only a faith function by a socialization function. We built churches, called pastors to lead them because we saw our mission as "taking care of our own." For the time and place and situation, that was a good and mostly healthy and necessary mission.

The way I was raised to be a Lutheran Christian gave me hardly any understanding at all of the urgency of our mission to people outside our cultural understanding. The thinking I inherited by birthright (certainly not by my baptism!) and absorbed from upper Midwestern church life and seminary training basically saw mission this way: the Church exists for us, and people like us. And to be a pastor was to serve settled congregations, and guide and maintain the regular programs and care for the needs of the parishioners and that was it. (My church did hold regular mission festivals when I was a kid, but that was always about foreign missions; missionaries were never people who worked here in America, but those who went to strange lands and came back every few years with a slide show and a request for money).

The design of the churches themselves expressed this settled vision of mission. Our church sat on the corner, a massive, perhaps even smug, brick hulk. We were known as the Norwegian Lutheran Church, and the most mission-minded we ever got was, "Well, people know where the church is if they want to come." The "they" represented backslider members and more especially, the few folks around town who never attended. They knew the church was here. Let 'em come.

Switch to California now. In the booming post-WW II years Lutherans leaders saw the mission of the church as building churches in booming suburban neighborhoods, because, with the huge influx of Lutherans from back in the Midwest, "we needed to take care of our own". There was still a remarkable lack of any idea of mission to the people who were already here, to people who were not like us, or who were-God forbid!-not even Christian!

This quick review is not a criticism of past history. In our developing presence in America, "taking care of our own" as a mission mandate made some sense. But it doesn't make sense anymore. We need to find out what God wants to being now, in our current situation.

In the movie The Ruling Class a mental patient claims to be God. The psychiatrist asks him when he first found out he was God. He answers, "I was praying and praying for years, then one day I woke and discovered I was only talking to myself!" Christ calls to be engage in compassionate missions to others, just as he has taught and healed us. But maybe we've haven't heard his voice, because as Lutherans we've been just listening to ourselves talk about what we want and need, and not to the real God who has a plan for us to reach the world.

For what's happened our Lutheran presence in America in the last decades? This is the sad tale of many Lutheran congregations, including many here in California, indeed, in the Sacramento area: declining membership, sagging enthusiasm, disinterest in mission. Members end up just waiting for rigor mortis to set in - that is, hoping that the church will be around long enough to bury the current older membership. Self-worship with the accompanying "survival mode" leads to spiritual decline, whereas true worship - honoring God and doing what Christ wants, leads to a joyous life of mission and service to others. That's what I am hearing God telling us in the struggles we are having in trying to keep the Lutheran Church alive in California. We are in a struggle to accept our renewed mission from Christ

In our changed setting, I'd say that one sign of real mission outreach is the number of adult baptisms. If a congregation is baptizing adults, you know for sure that some kind of intentional outreach is happening. Adult baptisms are a sign of formerly unchurched people being led to Christ and coming to faith, where as in the older models of church growth, we simply looked for Lutheran having babies to fill our pews and thus the emphasis was always on infant baptisms. If adult baptisms truly are a sign of a church intentional about mission to the world, and not just maintenance ministry with lapsed Lutherans, then we've got quite a work ahead of us. I did some checking. At this church we baptized but three adults at the Easter Vigil. Same number in 1999. That same year, for the other 20 congregations of the Sacramento Conference, the grand total of adult baptism was 36. That works out to a growth rate of about one half of one per cent. I think we need to listen better to God. We have a quite a challenge, that's for sure. Unlike the Midwest, where in the populated areas it's more likely that if you throw up at building that looks like a church and hang a sign that says, "Lutheran" on it you'll soon have a large congregation, out here, things don't come easy. Not only does hardly anyone know or care what a Lutheran is, most don't know what Christianity is. But that's no excuse not to work together to figure out how to be a church that lives the life of Christ's compassion for the lost and lonely and sick and fallen ones all around us. This came in on my email a while ago, with the title, "And they call these people retarded" (I hope this is a true story!)

A few years ago, at the Seattle Special Olympics, nine contestants, all physically or mentally disabled, assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash. At the gun, they all started out, not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to run the race to the finish and win. All, that is, except one little boy who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times, and began to cry. The other eight heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back. Then they all turned around and went back. Every one of them. One girl with Down's Syndrome bent down and kissed him and said: "This will make it better." Then all nine linked arms and walked together to the Finish Line. Everyone in the stadium stood, and the cheering went on for several minutes. People who were there are still telling the story.

It's possible we can think we're so smart we don't need to listen to what God wants. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and blessings for our churches will follow. It's simple. Remembering the awesome moment when Jesus reached down to help us up, we reach out to others who do not yet know the love of Christ and help them up from where they've fallen, link arms, and walk together to the Finish Line. And then the cheering in heaven goes on forever. Amen.