In June of 1987, Central Christian Church of Kettering extended my first call as an ordained Disciples of Christ minister.  I served as your Associate Minister for three years and learned a great deal about how to be a pastor both from you and from my mentor in ministry, Rev. Ted Faulconer.  In July of 1996, I returned to Central Christian Church as the Senior Minister and have been blessed by my ministry here ever since.

For many years I have hoped to one day move closer to my parents and family in Iowa.  On January 25, 2012, I accepted the call of First Christian Church in Keokuk, Iowa to be their new Senior Minister.  The church is in the southeast corner of the state and just a short drive from my college alma mater, Culver Stockton College.

At a special board meeting on Friday, January 27, 2012, I submitted my resignation as Senior Minister of Central Christian Church in Kettering.  My last Sunday in the pulpit will be March 11, 2012.  Tammy will continue in her teaching position through the end of the school year and then join me in Keokuk this summer.

Over the fifteen years I have served as your Senior Minister I have grown and matured in my faith and also as a pastor.  With the assistance of the Christian Church in Ohio, you will now begin an interim time of reflection and study as God prepares this beloved church for a new minister.  I trust God will bless Central Christian as it moves forward in mission and ministry in new directions and under new pastoral leadership.   I will miss you more than you can know.

Sincerely,

Rev. David P. Turner

People who study trends in today’s churches have made one thing clear: the greatest indicator of a church that is alive and growing isn’t its theological positions or the size of its building or parking lot or even how well the preacher might preach. The greatest indicator of a healthy church is the level of participation; the greater the number of “ministers” with practicing ministries, the greater the health and growth.

How does a person or a church get more participatory, interactive, and experiential? The answer is something of a paradox. While it is about “doing” it is also about “waiting” and “watching.” In his book, Taste and See, Tim Dearborn tells the story of a woman in his church named Grace. For 40 years, Grace had a very successful ministry to street people in Seattle. When asked her secret, she replied, “If you want to have ministry on the streets, then walk slowly and it will happen to you. If you want to avoid it, then walk
fast.”

Jesus teaches us that if we want to develop our spiritual senses and if we want an effective ministry, we also need to walk a little more slowly. We need to learn what spiritual directors call the act and art of “noticing,” and from there begin to get involved.

It is easy to get so caught up in our own concerns and compulsions that we literally walk right past opportunities to be a part of God’s mission. We’re looking one direction when God is actually working, or could be working through us, right where we’re at. The late Jesuit priest and author, Anthony DeMello, describes folks who do this in this way: “They are like the Jews who were straining their eyes toward the future in expectation of a glorious, sensational Messiah, while all along the Messiah was beside them in the form
of a man called Jesus of Nazareth…. You wish to see God? Look at the face of the man next to you. You want to hear him? Listen to the cry of a baby, the loud laughter at a party, the wind rustling in the trees. You want to feel him? Stretch your hand out and hold
someone”

The call of Christ is one of active service to the world. It is participatory, interactive and experiential and always has been. In other words, it asks something of you. So slow down… open your heart and your eyes and prepare to be a part of something that will not only change you – but change the world at the same time.

There are so many ways to illustrate the importance of working together as the Church: parts in a machine, organs in the human body, even the ecosystem in which we live. We are learning, more and more, that if anything gets out of balance, the whole system suffers. In both the physical and spiritual realms, we are dependent upon each other for entering into the abundant life God has promised.

So how are you doing at exercising the gifts God has given you? Are you encouraging others to exercise the gifts God has given to them? How well are you operating as a part of a living body – made up of distinctly different, but completely essential parts? How you answer that question may be more important than you realize. Life – both in this world and the next – depends on it.

I found a story that is a stark reminder of this very fact. It happened in South Dakota some years ago when a little boy wandered away from his home. The parents couldn’t find him. For three days hundreds of people moved through the prairie, hoping to find the boy before he succumbed to the elements. On the morning of the fourth day, one of the searchers said, “Let us get organized in one long line. We’ll join hands and sweep up and down the prairie until we find the boy.” They formed a line a quarter of a mile long. On the third sweep they found the boy. He was lying dead, in a small ditch behind some brush. Gently the boy’s body was carried to where the mother was waiting. When they put the dead boy in his mother’s arms, there was complete silence for a moment. Then she looked up and said: “Why didn’t you join hands sooner? Why didn’t you join hands sooner?”

Why didn’t we?

Those wise men that came looking for Jesus were outsiders. They had no commitment to the Jewish way of life – and yet Jesus came to them just as much as he came to save his own people. That is the whole point of Epiphany. Christ has been revealed to the entire world so that we might all show forth his life through our lives.

It seems appropriate to me that Epiphany should fall at the beginning of the New Year. The New Year offers us a new beginning, a chance to start over fresh and perhaps do a little better. Indeed, a lot of us make New Year’s resolutions – determined to make some change for the better in our lives.

A couple of years ago, about a minute after midnight on New Year’s Eve, my brother laid claim to the New Year as “his” year. My brother’s theory was that everything was going to go his way. Of course, he also has a theory that no one ever loses weight in our family – we just pass it from one member to another. So, during his year, he claimed the rest of us would get fat while he got skinny. If I remember correctly, it didn’t quite work out that way.

But no matter how things have turned out in the past, New Years is still a good time to resolve to begin moving in healthier directions in our lives. Therefore, it is also a good time to make a rededication to God.

The ancient Hebrews understood the importance of continual rededication to God. They, too, had a New Year’s celebration. But their celebration wasn’t just an excuse to eat, drink and watch football. For them, the beginning of a New Year was a deeply religious occasion. It symbolized the end of winter and the bounty of harvest as well as the promise of new life in the spring. At this festival, all of Israel, from the King to the poorest peasant, pledged their renewed commitment to God.

In this New Year we have a new opportunity to share in Christ’s vision for the world and for our lives. Of course, finding vision is not something that can be achieved as easily as saying, “this year is going to be the year things go well for me…”, but it’s a start.

Embrace Christ’s vision of God’s kingdom, with all its mystery and wonder, and enter into the New Year resolved to draw upon that vision every day.

Note: We are also pleased to offer a Christian parenting class that will also be offered on Wednesday evenings. The facilitator and specific topic are still being identified at the time of this printing, but further details will be made  available by Sunday’s bulletin.