I have a confession to make. I’ve been preaching every Easter Sunday since the early 90’s and I think I’ve been missing the main point for most of that time. What has been there all along has moved from the background and recently has become glaringly, shockingly obvious.

I think that I have nearly always preached about the implications of Jesus’ resurrection for the individuals sitting before me; it has been some variation on the theme of the implications of Jesus’ resurrection for our own lives. Or, should I say it more precisely, the implications of Jesus’ resurrection for each individual who is sitting in that sanctuary on that Easter Sunday. Occasionally, I’ve highlighted the evangelistic element inherent in the resurrection stories, but even then, I think it has been couched as a call to each person to be one who goes and tells.

What has struck me this time around — and got some mention in my Easter sermon this year — is the unmistakable communal underpinnings of the resurrection accounts. With the exception of John, every evangelist tells of the women going to the tomb together. They went to do their work together. And when they were sent, they were sent to the gathering of disciples, not to individuals. When Jesus walked along the Emmaus road, it was with two disciples. When they recognized Jesus, they immediately returned to Jerusalem to the place where the 11 were gathered, in other words, to the community of Jesus’ followers. Even in John, if you grant that Mary Magdalene went the tomb alone, she didn’t stay alone. She went to tell Peter, and when she finally recognized Jesus, she was given the instruction to go tell the community.

According to John, Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus first appeared to the disciples. Regardless of where Thomas might have been, he doesn’t first encounter Jesus alone, but in community, with the others who had encountered the risen Lord. And as far as I can tell every one of the post-resurrection appearances was to a gathering of disciples.

So, here’s what I think I’ve been allowing to fade into the background all these years. Jesus’ resurrection was just one more piece of the large work he came to do of bringing in God’s reign, of establishing a people for the sake of drawing the world into God’s loving embrace. While there is such a thing as individual salvation, the individual salvation is always the means to the end of fashioning a people. So, when he was raised, Jesus went right back to the work he had been doing, of gathering a people, of building a community, this time a community that could laugh in the face of death, knowing now that even death will not stand in the way of God’s work of redemption and reconciliation.

I have been mired in the grossly individualistic nature of American Christianity for so long that I can’t even see how it affects the way I understanding things and the way I preach. I have been unwittingly supporting an application of the resurrection stories that is not false, but misses the point.

If the big thing that Jesus came to do was to fashion a more inclusive, more universal people of God for the sake of accomplishing God’s intentions for the world, that big thing came to some kind of climax in his resurrection. And the point, it seems to me, was resurrection community, not individual salvation. Individual salvation is not excluded; it’s just not the point.

Listen to how Bernard Lohfink says it:  Baptism. . .obligates us to a new life in the world. Whoever has died with Christ in baptism is born into the new society of the church. . .The Easter expectation in Christian communities means expecting that at every hour the Spirit of Christ will show the community new paths, expecting new doors to open at any moment, counting on it that at any hour the Spirit can transform evil into good, hoping that at every hour the impossible will become possible.” (Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was)

For the sake of the world.

A congregation faces a challenge. Someone at the table suggests that others have probably faced the same challenge. The questions go flying. What have they done? What has worked? What is available to us? And someone will probably say nearly these exact words, Let’s contact them. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

The metaphor of reinventing the wheel is a misleading image to rely on for moving forward on the challenges of congregational ministry. The wheel is a great gift. I am a bicyclist. I love what I can do and where I can go on two wheels. And I’m thankful nearly every day that the wheel doesn’t need to be reinvented on a regular basis. I’m thankful that I can use the technology of the wheel and let the creativity of the technicians be spent on making my bicycle lighter, more durable, and more comfortable.

But all of those things are technical problems. If a wheel is not durable, then the experts can apply current technology to make it more durable. If the wheel is too small, make it larger. If the hard metal of a wheel makes for a rough ride on the stone of city streets, then find technology that will make it softer.

The problem is that those of us who are working in the church (or any other social institution, for that matter) are not working in a setting where our greatest challenges can be solved by technology. To use the metaphor, it’s not a matter of making the wheel more durable or larger or more comfortable for riding.

We work in places with history. With people. With local and institutional cultures. With present anxieties and past dysfunctions. We work in places that are nothing if not unique. So, technical answers to our deep challenges will not work.

To invoke the no need to reinvent the wheel implies that what worked somewhere else will work here. Maybe. But more likely not. What worked somewhere else worked as a function of the unique people involved, the unique gifts and skills, the unique moment in time, and a whole host of other factors. When it comes to trying to answer the challenges of congregational ministry in our time and our place, the truth is we probably do need to reinvent the wheel in each setting. Meeting the challenges of ministry is so deeply and so profoundly contextual. In each case we do ourselves a disservice to begin by asking the question of what has worked somewhere else.

When I suggest that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel I perpetuate the myth so prominent in North American culture that here are experts and they have the knowledge and I don’t.

I disagree. While I covet the knowledge of experts when it comes to technical problems — like the weight of my bicycle — there is no one who is more expert in your setting than the people who are in that setting. What’s real is that no one knows your context better than you do. You know the people, you know the community, you know the challenges, you know the culture. No one, not even the so called experts know what you know.

And you have people who know your context just as clearly as you do. They are the committed leaders of your congregation. They are the folks who volunteer their time and offer their talents to make sure the congregation is true to its mission. If you’re in the plains of Nebraska, these people are far wiser about the culture and the community of the plains of Nebraska than the experts at the seminary in California. The seminary folks are likely experts at what works in a seminary community. Or in the congregation they served before they landed at the seminary. But you are expert where you are. What’s more, if you consistently invoke the wisdom of the so-called expert, it’s likely to shut down the conversation of the folks who know the context better than any of the academics in the hallowed seminary hallways.

Here might be the most significant down side of invoking the no need to reinvent the wheel mantra. It short circuits, even shuts down, the creativity and imaginations of the folks who know the context best. When leaders can bring people together and challenge them to take responsibility for the ministry and to be accountable to one another for what happens here, people rise to the occasion. When their gifts and their expertise are acknowledged, the solutions emerge. When people are asked what are the possibilities and what they want to create together, avenues and opportunities and even strategies emerge that will be far more effective than some program that worked in a church light years away.

Let me offer one caveat: I’m not suggesting that we don’t tell the stories of our own successes. I think its important for me to know what worked somewhere else and for me to tell others what worked here. But we don’t tell the stories as packaged products that we have any illusions can be imported or exported wholesale. We tell the stories as the ground of hope. When I hear that someone else somewhere else took their challenges head on, imagined a future, and walked successfully into the future, then it gives me hope that we can do the same thing.

So, here’s to hope. Here’s to creativity. Here’s to engaging the people who have the wisdom. Here’s to facing our challenges head on, believing that the gifts of the Spirit are in the people.

This is Tuesday in Holy Week. We met again in a place of quiet and candlelight. In the Night Prayer service, there is this line that catches me every time we sing it: Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

Every time I hear it, I am caught by the truth that there is no place and no time when we are not within the providence of Christ. Whether we know it or not. Whether we receive it or not. Christ’s loving disposition towards us holds us.

Tonight our pastoral intern introduced each of the three lessons with a few words to help us connect this day and these lessons to what will come later in the week.

Here’s what captured me this evening.

We read a little further in John 12, past where we stopped in the reading last night. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

And then there were words about the darkness. She reminded us that there is darkness and despair that permeate the events that lie before us. She proclaimed that even in the midst of darkness, there is the promise of light and life and resurrection.

In those moments,  as I heard the wise words from this young leader, that canticle that I have sung so often came flooding to my mind even before we had a chance to sing them; Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

She ended with these words: wisdom and redemption can come from none other than the crucified and risen Christ; the light dwells among us, in the place, this very night, to lead us on a journey through the darkest time and darkest roads of life, even as we await in eager longing for the risen Lord.

The seed that is planted in the cold, dark ground will sprout. There will be life.

Dear Reader,

This may sound a bit odd, that I, as writer, would ask you, as reader to participate in this essay beyond just reading. But, I’m going to take a chance. Will you stop for a moment and call to mind a moment of transformation in your life? Think of a time when you where changed. It may be a sudden, catastrophic moment or it may be a long, gradual process that led to a moment of insight or recognition. It may be something positive or it may be an event that at the time seemed so negative that you weren’t sure you would make it through.

Got it? Think it through as if you were telling it to someone as a story. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Now, think of another one. Yep. One more. Same prompt. A time when you were changed. Sudden or long process. Positive or negative. One more time, think it through as if you were telling it to someone as a story. You might even want to take a moment with a pen and paper or your word processing program on your tablet. I’ll wait.

Could I talk you into doing it one more time? Sure. I’ll wait. I’ve got all the time in the world. And this could be important.

What I just asked you to do was one of the early exercises from a recent retreat for our church council and staff. I wish you could have been a fly on the wall watching what happened. Folks were astonishingly engaged in telling their stories and in listening to others. The positive energy that flowed from this exercise went way beyond my expectations.

Even beyond that, what I learned in the telling of these stories surprised me. I expected to hear accounts of being impacted by a parent or a favorite teacher. Maybe it would be a vocational decision made in the midst of all the growth of the college years.

Of the 30 or so stories that got told in that room in that 60 minutes, almost all told of some crisis: the death of a spouse; the death of a parent; the financial collapse of 2007 and the sudden realization of job vulnerability; the break-up of a marriage. Almost everyone spoke of moments of pain, of loss, and earth-shattering crisis.

Now, admittedly, this is not hard research. This is a very small sample and anecdotal at best. At least in this group, what they remembered as truly transformative, life-shaping experiences were at the time moments of crisis, of deep pain or struggle, the kinds of things that they would never have chosen to go through. Yet in the rearview mirror of passing time, these moments took on the character of moments of great growth that in retrospect could be seen as gifts, as times of great blessing. I’m not sure those who told of these moments even recognized them as such, except in the telling. The blessing, the growth, came in how they responded to the moments of crisis.

Something else that became crystal clear as the group stepped back and processed what they had just heard: these moments of crisis that became not only formative, but transformative were not things that anyone could plan for. Now maybe that’s obvious. Or maybe not. We put such a value on planning our lives, as if we had complete — or even mostly — control over what happens. But in the meantime, life happens. Things happen, both positive and negative, that we could never have imagined, nor would we have ever chosen. Yet these are the moments that we label transformative. I think there’s a lesson there.

I also happen to think that’s a pretty good pretty good parable for the church. Historically, we have spent so much time and effort on planning based on the premise that we kind of know what’s going to happen. We’ve done planning and visioning and strategizing, world without end, Amen. But the future usually doesn’t work like that. Not to mention that our plans for the future are often simply what we’ve done in the past gussied up a bit.

We are living in a moment of rapid, paradigm-busting change. And in times of rapid change the strategic planning model just doesn’t work very well. What we can do is get into the habit of looking around us, even in the crisis du jour, to see what God might be opening up for us. And these opportunities — our should we call them crises — just might turn out to be moments of transformation.