A Final Word About Authentic Christian Faith

I am so blessed to be pastor of a church in which so many of you are growing in authentic faith expressions. When I came here as your pastor, Thanksgiving Day was not a very important day in the life of this church. There was a small worship service attended by 50 to 100 people. Anne and I really felt the call to make that an important time of faith-sharing. As you know, for many years now, the sanctuary has been filled, often to overflowing, with men, women and children coming to give thanks to God, listen to the wonderful choir of our church sing some hymns, to hear a meditation and to share personal blessings.

It has been a great thrill to see that happen. It is one of the most genuine, authentic worship experiences of our year.

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Parallel with that, it has been an extraordinary thrill to see how emerging from genuine worship has come genuine service. For the last several Thanksgiving Days, Dierenfield Hall has been beautifully decorated, and scores of you have participated in preparing for, cooking, serving and cleaning up after a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner for the less fortunate in our community. I watched as covenant groups, parents and children, men's fellowship and the Presbyterian Women, along with others from our congregation, welcomed over 400 of the less fortunate of our community to this Thanksgiving dinner. Many of these people live in motels, on the streets, and in the crowded conditions of the Shalimar apartments and/or are teenagers who have signed into Teen Challenge to get help with their alcohol or drug problems. Let me read to you a card I just received on Thursday:

Dear friends in Christ:

Thanksgiving 2002 will always be one of those landmark events in a family's history. Our son entered Teen Challenge just two weeks earlier, and the prospect of facing the holidays without him broke our hearts.

Because of your kindness, generosity, hospitality and hard work, our day with our son (and daughter) was filled with love, laughter, thanksgiving, and wonderful food.

Thank you so much for incarnating our Savior's love before us and for welcoming a worn Pilgrim family into a place of peace and fellowship.

That makes me want to cry tears of joy.

Yesterday I flew up to Medford, Oregon, to attend a memorial service of a dear friend, John Dellenback. John's obituary was prominent this week in the New York Times, L.A. Times and other notable journals. A successful lawyer, he was elected to the Congress of the United States. He then became the Director of the Peace Corps, then President of the Coalition of Christian Colleges. His final years of major contribution were as my predecessor as the Chairman of the Board of World Vision U.S., serving also on the Board of World Vision International. It is these and other accomplishments that caused him to receive public recognition, both in his life and in his death. But what I appreciated about John Dellenback through the years was the way that he has been a "gentle giant" of Christian grace, love and sensitivity. He was never a pushover. There were times in which he pointed out things in my own life that he thought needed change. He loved me enough to confront me. He also made numerous gestures that showed how much he cared about those of us with whom he was called to serve. There was nothing hypocritical about John. His "yea was yea" and his "nay was nay." He was a man of his word. Within the rarified political world that is so often marked by hypocrisy, he stood as a man of integrity.