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Every person who has ever lived has wrestled with the question, Who am I? What is my identity? Congregations wrestle with these questions too. Today Im completing a two week series called, Identity. In this series were looking at questions like Who are we? Who is God calling us to be? What unites us as a congregation? Its a new year Were celebrating our Annual Meeting today, so I think its appropriate to look at the identity of our congregation, Chain of Lakes Church. Im going to get into this by sharing who I think we could becomewhat is our vision. It might be easy to think that this is a series and even todays sermon is only meant for the people who regularly come to Chain of Lakes. Actually thats not the case. If you are a visitor or relatively new to our congregation I think youll enjoy this series and hopefully todays sermon as youll get a sense of who we are and what we are about. With that introduction Id like to encourage you to get out this brochure that is in the bulletin. This week I wrote a devotion for you on the word blessing. If you use the devotion youll receive a Bible study on the word blessing. On that back is a place of prayer requests. Please use this list in your daily prayers. In the middle is a place to take notes. I believe that God might say something to you that youll want to write down. About five years ago I came to a meeting at the Rice Lake Professional Building. It was a cold February day. It was my first day of work as the Organizing Pastor at Chain of Lakes Church. Our daughter, Hannah, was in 3rd grade, and my wife, Amy, and I decided that we wouldnt move to the Cities until she was done with school. I drove up from Rochester with a pickup load of my stuff.

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I dropped off my stuff at the parish house at Presbyterian Church of the Way in Shoreview. Thats where I lived until we moved to Blaine. I had lunch with John Ivers. Then that night seven families came to the office for a meeting. It wasnt the first meeting of Chain of Lakes Church, and I wasnt the first pastor. It was the first time I had the opportunity to meet this group of people. SLIDE Heres a picture of the group. At the meeting each of us shared some of our lives with each other. We talked about our dreams about being part of a new church. At the end of the meeting we prayed together. We closed with the Lords Prayer. One woman said that she so appreciated praying the Lords Prayer with the word debts in it. She hadnt done that for a long time. Starting a new church is like a roller coaster ride. If you like roller coaster rides, youll love Chain of Lakes Church. Riding on the Wild Thing at Valley Fair is tame compared to starting a new faith community. There are a lot of ups and downs. The pace is fast. Sometimes it feels like were going to fall off. Not everyone stays for the ride. Not everyone who came to that first meeting is still with us. It happens. Its normal for people to leave. Sometimes it feels like were going to die. Sometimes the ride is absolutely glorious and all we can do is put our arms out and say, Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee. This is so much fun. Were on a roller coaster ride. We have made so much progress in five years. We have a Purpose Statement. Our Purpose Statement answers the question, why do we exist? SLIDE We are called to be an authentic, Christian community where: Strangers become friends Friends become disciples Disciples impact the world.

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We have eight Core Values. These Core Values are principles, qualities, beliefs, and or/attitudes that are foundational to our community. They are: SLIDE Hospitality, Gods Church, Relevance, Acceptance, Outward Focus, Investing in Future Generations, Healthy Disagreement, and Joyful Love. The last piece of our Identity is a Vision. A vision is what happens as a result of living out our Purpose Statement and Core Values. Its the result of our ministry. We havent decided on a vision, but Im been proposing that our vision is two words. SLIDE Extraordinary blessing. Let me coach you a bit about this. The word blessing is spread like seeds throughout the soil of the Bible. The word occurs almost 500 times in the Scriptures500 times. If someone asked you, what is the Bible? We could answer by saying it is a book of blessing. The word is all over the place. The word is part of the very first story. Right after God created humans on the sixth day, God blessed us. From the very start of existence God was interested in blessing humans. A few chapters after the creation story the writer of Genesis was summarizing what God did in creation. This was in Genesis 5. I hadnt read this verse for a long time. When I read it this week I was touched. This one verse was like a newspaper account of the Creation story. If you want a wrap-up of creation here it is: SLIDE When God created humankind, God made them in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and God blessed them and named them Humankind when they were created. Genesis 5:2

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Isnt that cool. We are created in the likeness of God. So you and I look like God. Which means we should always comb our hair in the morning. We want to look good like God looks good. Even if we dont have much hair, like me, we still want to comb it. We carry Gods blessing with us. What is a blessing? The word is translated from the Hebrew root brk. SLIDE A blessing is when we share sometime significant with another person. Goodness or favor, or peace or a gift. In a blessing something significant is transferred to another person. You cant see always see a blessingits not tangible. When God blessed humans in the creation story something significant was transferred to humans. Its almost like some divine qualities were given to humanity. When we say a meal prayer we say a blessing. We want to transfer something significant to the meal and the time were spending together. When I leave people I usually say God Bless. When I say that I want people to be blessed to experience the fullness of Gods blessing. Blessings endure. Sometimes people never forget a blessing. I came across this video that shares what it means to be blessed and then to share a blessing. This video was part of a commercial in Thailand. Its about three minutes. Take a listen VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO end at 2:56

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Giving is the best communication. Blessing is the best communication WE have some misunderstandings about blessing. Sometimes we think that to be blessed means that were protected from bad thingsthat being being blessed is like an insurance policy.

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Theres a tradition of faith called the health and wealth gospel. Health and wealth teaches that if you do the right things that you will be blessedreceive health and wealth. The video shows us that this isnt the case. Sometimes were more open to being blessed when we suffer. God doesnt exist to be our insurance policy against the terrible things that can happen to us. Ive often heard people say, things are going terrible for me right now. God must have it out for me. Actually its the opposite. God doesnt cause our pain, but God can use our pain so that we can experience blessings in a profound way. The shopkeeper in the video. Did he experience pain? He was blessed.

The young boy at the start of the videodid he experience pain. His family was terribly poorso poor that he was stealing to feed them. He was blessed by the shopkeeper. The greatest blessing in the world was the death of Jesus. God turned the murder of Jesus into a blessing for us. Often pain, struggle, poverty can open us for blessings. Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes we are only open to God when we realize that we cant do this by ourselves. Today we heard a story of God calling Abram to ministry. This story in Genesis 12 is a foundational story of the Bible. It easily would make a top ten list of stories. The powerful verse is the second one. Its worth reading and worth memorizing SLIDE I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. Genesis 12:2 I will bless you so that you will be a blessing. That could be the purpose statement of each of our lives.

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Were blessed and then called to share that blessing. A blessing isnt something that we keep to ourselves. We go out of our ways to share that blessing with extravagant generosity. As followers of Jesus Christ we have been blessed in so many different ways. God doesnt want us to keep those blessings to ourselves. Were called to go out of our way to share that blessing. Ive heard people share with me, I dont feel qualified to share a blessing. Some think that only priests or clergy or really holy people can share a blessing. Thats not true. Anyone can share a blessing. Why? All of us have been blessed. Just by definition God blesses all of us so that we can bless others. How do we bless others? We can bless people through a ministry. All churches have ministries that bless people. Right now we have a group at Chain of Lakes who is investigating the start of a heartburst ministry. Weve started conversations with Robin Burge-____ who is a social worker at Blaine High School. Shes identified 30 teens at Blaine High School who are homeless. She actually believes there are more. This is hard to get our head around. At least 30 teens at Blaine High School didnt sleep in their own beds last night. They dont have a bed. They might not have slept outside last night, but they probably are couch hopping. When it gets warmer some will sleep outdoors. Sometimes they sleep inside porta potties. Some stay at People Serving people in Minneapolis. Some live at hotels. Were still in the investigation stage. We havent shared much of this ministry with the congregation. If we really got serious about this ministry we would want the ministry to be a blessing. We want to give them food; we want to help their families find a place to stay; we want to bring resources to them; we want to raise awareness. We want to transfer something significant to them.

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We would want to help people in the wider community to bless these homeless teens. Our congregation could be blessed tooin a lot of different ways. People in the community could get to know us as the faith community who helps homeless teens. They could say, Id like to be part of you. Weve been doing this ministry that we call Chain of Lakes Church for five years and I have seen so many examples of you blessing people. I so love being your pastor because I so love seeing you bless people. When you talk to people about being part of Chain of Lakes, I wouldnt encourage you to talk about coming to church. Talk about the movement of blessing that is taking place here. Our group of people they are so generous and so willing to bless people. You should come be a part of this movement. I totally believe that when people see others going out of their way in blessing others I think they want to be part of that. Do you want to be part of a movement of people who really want to bless others? A group who are willing to do it in an extraordinary way? When we first started we had a family who was struggling financially. They didnt have money to buy food. I found out about it and sent out an E-mail asking if folks would chip in so that the family could have some gift cards to Cub Food. I think I asked each person for $25 and everyone chipped in $50. I think we ended up with about $250 of gift cards at Cub Food for this family. I didnt drop off the gift cards with the family. Someone else from our congregation did. The person who dropped off the gift cards shared with me that shen the gift cards were shared the person started crying. All of thisfor mefor my family. Its all for you. Its all for you.

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Thats the vision. Extraordinary blessing. Its not about a building, its not about a piece of property, its not about a denomination. Its about sharing this blessing that God first shared with us. Im ready to sign up for another five years. I hope you are too.