Last week’s article asked, “Is it possible for this servant-survivor church to be used by God in the way He employed those servant survivors in Isaiah?” The servant of the Lord image is prominent throughout the oracles of Isaiah. We aspire to be servants of the Lord. It is a noble endeavor. An overlooked image in Isaiah is survivors. It appears in the first oracle. If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors we should have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah (Is. 1:9). And it is in the last oracle of the prophet: The time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations … and they shall bring your brothers from all the nations to my holy mountain (Is.66:18-20). A “survivor mentality” is not what we aspire to be. It is an ignoble goal even when we admit that is what we are: survivors.

Last week’s scripture reading and sermon text ended with these words, The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, “I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered” (Isaiah 56:8). Those who are to be gathered to God’s holy mountain will include foreigners and eunuchs. They are to be joined with the joyful SERVANTS in God’s house of prayer (56:6-7. In addition to Rick’s excellent sermon on God who tears down walls that separate people, my thoughts jumped to the ending of Isaiah’s message where we see a parade of peoples who fulfill God’s promise. All nations and tongues are brought to God’s holy mountain (Isaiah 66:18-20). I was struck by the fact that God sent SURVIVORS to declare his glory and bring nations to Jerusalem in one of the weirdest parades in scripture.

By all accounts last Sunday’s celebration of our fifty years was wonderful. We had forty-eight in attendance, plus four online. We shared memories and hopes galore. So what do we do now? What is our future?

There are birthdays and there are BIRTHDAYS. There is THE BIRTHDAY of the church. There is the BIRTHDAY of a local church. And there is one’s personal BIRTHDAY in Christ to become a member of his church. On the first Sunday in October, 1973, fifty years ago, a community of believers in Christ and their children, 22 in all, assembled in a rented school room to form the Storrs Road Church of Christ. Today, we celebrate that birthday with affirmations of faith and remembrances of those years.

The following is the epilogue by Dr. Jack Lewis to his book, Basic Beliefs, published shortly before his death. The thirty-nine chapters of this book range from “Belief in God” to “Heaven.” His words speak to us and to all generations until the Lord Jesus comes. I recommend it for our study. “WARNING: This book will pull you into God’s Word and challenge you to think.”

The first song I remember singing in church was 80+ years ago in Jefferson City, MO — We’re Marching to Zion. I was excited to be in a real church and hear all those singing voices. The second stanza said, “Let those refuse to sing who never knew our Lord.” Standing in the pew beside my mother I said in a voice too loud, “Why isn’t that lady singing?”

Today I begin a series of studies on the tradition of acapella singing in Christian worship. I say “the” tradition not just “our” tradition in Churches of Christ. Historically the practice of unaccompanied singing in Christian worship continued for many centuries in the church. Witness the word “acapella” which means “in the manner of the church.” For now, permit this old codger to have his say, rather than argue the issue.

What do we mean when we speak of saving our souls or saving the souls of others? We may sing, “A charge to keep have I … a never dying soul to save and fit it for the skies” but to what do we pledge? Is our life a private endeavor to save ourselves?

In 2000 Thomas Olbricht was an editor of a study of Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address (D&A) entitled above. I cite from two of the several studies in that book including their own citations from the D&A. Don Haymes describes the occasion of that document.

Many times throughout its 2000 years history, churches have been called to become more like the church in its beginning. In our own restoration heritage, Thomas Campbell issued such a call in a document entitled Declaration and Address.

What is the relationship of the Kingdom and the Church? Is it Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom but the church came instead. Thus, “give me Jesus not the church.” Or is I kingdom of God and the Church, two different realities. Now we live in a totally mundane realm called the Church, but there is coming a wonderful heavenly Kingdom. Or is it the reverse?

Paul, we have read your letters to churches which you evangelized and where you were personally known. As we read your letter to the Colossians, we noticed that you had never been there and did not know them personally, nor the church in Laodicea, yet you wrote them letters. Since you have a wide and deep concern for churches everywhere (Col. 2:1), we ask you to write to us here in eastern Connecticut. We promise to read it when we assemble at our meetinghouse (Col 4:16).

We first see the word church in Colossians when Paul declares that Christ is “the head of the body, the church” (1:18). Paul’s ministry is for the sake of “his body, that is, the church” (1:24). He concludes with greetings to “Nympha and the church in her house” and instructions that his letter be read “in the church of the Laodiceans” (4:15-16). Our search is for that mysterious church but for Paul the great mystery is Christ in his relationship to the church, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:26-27). All this written 30 years after Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.

Paul commends speaking to everyone gracious words seasoned with salt (Col. 4:6). The metaphor of “salty speech” suggests healthy words that grab the imagination of listeners and capture their lives as well. Paul follows his own advice in his gracious words to the church in Colossae as he counters the empty speech of false teachers who were trying to capture them with “sound bites” of their philosophy.

Paul believed that something happens when churches read his letters or hear them read aloud. Something happens to the readers. More than transmitting information, there is a transformation of the readers/hearers both then and now. For example, we are not told what the letter from Laodicea is. Nor are we told what prison Paul is in when he writes. That information is known to those “insiders” but not to us “outsiders.”

Are you into a good mystery? Read Paul’s letter to the Colossians; all of it; all of us in church (4:16). There is a mystery in this exchange of letters between neighboring congregations What churches? Which letters? It looks like there is a lot of inter-church communication going on. There is a mystery of names, all eleven of them (4:7-17). It looks like there is a lot of inter-personal ministry going on.