Davis Community Church

Davis Community Church
412 C Street, Davis, California 95616
Phone: 530-753-2894, Email:
Map to DCC (link) / Map of DCC (PDF)

Beloved of God, Let Us Love
(for more on what that means to us, see our vision and values statements)

Beloved of God, Let us Love . . . and Follow!

A sermon by The Reverend Mary Lynn Tobin on September 12, 2004, based on Mark 1:16-20; 1 John 4:7-12

Beloved of God, let us love. That is the short-hand version of our vision statement, brought to us by the mission study task force after nine months of hard work. Vision statements are supposed to be short. Short enough, they say, that anyone should be able to spit it out at gunpoint. "Beloved of God, let us love." Let's try it together. "Beloved of God, let us love." So if I ask you this question, "What is Davis Community Church all about?" you should be able to respond, "Beloved of God, let us love." Or if one of your friends asks you, "What's so special about Davis Community Church," you can say, "Beloved of God, let us love." Or if a colleague at work wonders out loud about the teachings of your church, you could say, "Well, for starters, my church teaches, 'Beloved of God, let us love.'"

Now it may seem that this statement doesn't give much information. It's very short. But that's because it is shorthand for a longer statement that goes like this: "Davis Community Church is, and seeks to become more fully, a congregation of Christians growing as a community in our identities as beloved children of God and becoming beacons of that love in the world." OK, now let's say that together . . . right. That's why we have the shorthand version! But we need to understand what that longer version means so that we can interpret the shorthand version. Which is what again? "Beloved of God, let us love." Good! I think you're getting it!!

So let's break the statement down and see if we can work on really understanding who we believe we are called by God to be.

The statement begins with the name of our church, Davis Community Church. We are a congregation that has long-valued our identity of being here for the Davis community. We are Presbyterian, yes, and we value that as well. But since we were for years and years the only protestant congregation in town, we are a church that has welcomed Lutherans and Episcopalians and Methodists and yes, even Baptists. In fact, this sanctuary was built with a baptistery behind the organ so that those whose tradition was to be fully immersed at baptism could do so. Yes, the wall behind the organ is actually a panel that moves. The baptistery itself is covered over with flooring now and we store banners there, but it's still there. So, we are a community church, and we want to continue to be open and available to all in the Davis Community.

"Davis Community Church is, and seeks to become more fully." Let's stop there. This is a classic statement of Christian hope. We understand that the kingdom of heaven is—and at the same time, is not fully here. It is what we call "the already and the not yet." We understand ourselves to be people who are already what our vision statement describes. And at the same time, we are not fully "there". God isn't finished with us yet.

And what is it we are seeking to become more fully? Well, first, "a congregation of Christians." We are a community church, yes. We are open to many differing points of view, and we certainly value what those from other religious backgrounds have to share with us, but we are definitely Christian. We are Christian – Christ followers – above all else. We are Christian before we are Presbyterian. We are Christian before we are Democrats or Republicans. We are Christian before we are musicians or engineers. We are Christian before we are teenagers or seniors. We are even Christian before we are Americans. We are Christian, number one. That is the very core of our identity, and everything else we are follows from that.

We are a congregation of Christians "growing as a community." We understand that being a Christian is not something we can do alone. Being Christian, especially these days, when the world is becoming more and more hostile to Christian lifestyles and values, is something that can only be sustained when we have one another for support. We at DCC understand how important it is to be close to others who are seeking to place their identity as Christ-followers as number one in their lives, who are asking questions about personal lifestyle choices and how our decisions affect the rest of the world. We understand that we can only sustain our Christian identities when we are living and sharing and praying with others who will help hold us accountable. That is why so many of us are choosing to be part of small groups. We know that we can only support one another when we know each other well. We are not an anonymous group of people who come together for entertaining worship each week. We are serious about our growth in Christ and in our desire to be faithful.

We are growing not only as a community, but "in our identities as beloved children of God." In our shorthand statement, which is based on our lesson from first John, we hear, "Beloved of God, let us love." We understand the scriptures to strongly and clearly affirm that we are beloved. We are beloved by God. We are beloved by God first – before we have done anything to deserve that love. And yet, that is a difficult concept to fully comprehend. This world gives us the opposite message—that we must earn love. We must earn standing. We must earn our way. How many of us awaken every morning with a fundamental knowledge and assurance, "I am a beloved child of God – and nothing I do or say can take that away from me." And yet, that is one of the most important messages of our baptism – that God loved us before we were able to do anything to earn that love. At DCC, we are seeking to grow in that basic knowledge and affirmation of God's love for us. To have our identities rooted in that love.

Finally, we are "becoming beacons of that love in the world." We know that as we understand ourselves to be beloved, we are not to keep that love, that understanding to ourselves, but are to share that love with others. Not just others within this congregation, although that is certainly important – and we continue to develop concrete ways of caring for each other through Stephen Ministry and Care Teams. But we know that the world is bereft of experiencing God's love. We can barely comprehend that love ourselves. How must it be for those who are homeless, for youth who turn to gangs for their primary identity? How must it be for children in the Sudan who are being systematically exterminated? Or even for terrorists, who have not experienced God's grace and therefore cannot extend such grace to anyone else? We want to radiate God's love to the world around us by the way we conduct ourselves as a community and also in our loving actions intended to bring healing and wholeness to Davis and to the world.

All of that is what we mean when we say, in our shorthand way, "Beloved of God, let us love." You can see that our vision statement is not trite or simplistic. It is complex, and it is going to take a lot to live up to it.

It might help us understand our vision if we think of it in two dimensions – a reaching in and a reaching out. And both of those dimensions require movement and commitment on our part.

The inward dimension includes tracking the needs of people in our church community, identifying our gifts and helping each other hear and comprehend God's individual calls to us. It includes encouraging each of us to understand church membership as a commitment to stewardship – of our talents and skills and of our finances- that the community cannot survive without generosity on the part of each and every person. If we understand our identity as Christian to be our number one identity, then our gifts of time and money will be shared with that priority in mind. The inward dimension also includes re-committing ourselves to growth as disciples of Christ – to engaging in processes of study and prayer and conversation that will inform us and will help us to understand more deeply the path on which we travel together.

The outward dimension includes reaching out to the unchurched, the many seekers in the Davis community who are looking everywhere for something to fill that God-sized hole in their hearts, and are not finding it. We have something important to share with them – and we are going to get serious about sharing our good news. Most importantly, this outward dimension involves building relationships. We are not called to become yet another social service agency like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. We are called to be in relationship with all of God's children, most especially those who are suffering. Jesus calls us to serve in partnership with those folks, and to learn how to be one community with them. We are not those who stand back, keeping our hands clean while we give money to organizations. We seek to know those who most need our love and support, and we expect to learn from them and grow in our own faith journeys through our relationships with them. We look for the light of Christ emanating from each person – a light that we trust will beam into our own places of darkness. We are the church – and the church incorporates into its body people of all stripes, of all income brackets, along the entire continuum of wellness or dis-ease. We have been a wonderful community in which to intellectually explore issues of social injustice. Now our challenge is to do more than think – to reach out to others, to act.

These two dimensions of our vision statement led the task force to recommend that we call two associate pastors to help us fulfill this call. An associate for Christian formation will help every member to more fully become a Disciples of Christ, to be transformed by God's word and by our community. This person will help coordinate our efforts so that there is a trajectory that runs from the tiniest of our children through the most senior adults so that all are being fed and are walking the narrow path of discipleship.

An associate for outreach and mission will help us understand more fully the places of injustice in our world and then will help us discover our personal roles in clearing the way for God's transformation from darkness to light. This person will discover doors and open them for us so that we can step into the lives of those we may not otherwise meet or know. This pastor will help our congregation build partnerships of mutual growth and service both here in the Davis area and in the world.

The conclusions drawn by the mission study task force and the session lead me to believe that we truly are being called by God to new directions as a congregation. This doesn't mean that everything is going to change. DCC will still fundamentally be DCC. We will still be a congregation that places a high value on inclusiveness, diversity and progressive theology. We will continue to engage both our minds and our hearts in our faith journey. We will build on our tradition of providing a clear reformed liturgy, inspiring sermons and high quality music in worship at the same time that we explore different types and times for worship services to engage new generations. We will continue to provide pastoral care to all and to reach out in love especially to our seniors.

However, God's challenge to us is clear. We have much work to do to understand ourselves as beloved and to share that love with the world. In order to be faithful to that call, we are going to have to become more single-minded in our focus as disciples. Just as the first followers of Jesus turned their skills for fishing into fishing for people, we are being challenged to follow Jesus – to allow Jesus to transform our lives. We are then called to fish for others, to help bring that transforming light into their lives as we share with them. In short, we are going deeper and wider as a congregation.

We also are being called to take our commitments seriously. That means becoming good stewards of our lives. Stewardship has to do with attending to and managing our many resources. We are going to want to live consciously, making careful decisions about how we spend our time, in which venues we choose to share our skills, and how much and where we give. The vision has presented us with a staffing challenge that will require much of us financially: we have increased our youth minister position to full time and we are hiring a second associate pastor. God would not have led us in this direction if God didn't know that we have the resources to make the vision a reality. God does know us and trusts that we will step up to the plate.

There is a video story of a woman named Linda who is saying the Lord's Prayer in an otherwise empty church, when God begins to talk to her. When she says, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..." the voice says, "Whoa, are you sure you want all of that? My kingdom coming and my will being done?"

"Well, yeah," said Linda, "we could all use a little more heaven around here."

"So what are you doing to make that happen?" asks God.

"I kind of thought you would do all that, you're the king."

"You can't have a kingdom without subjects to do thy will."

"Oh," gulps Linda, along with all the rest of us.

People will know who we are and whose we are by what we do, not what we say and even less through what we believe. Let us live out the vision that God has given us. And what is our vision again? "Beloved of God, let us love."

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