Three Notch’d District Conference
November 23, 2025
Good Shepherd United Methodist Church
John 1:35-46

Before I pray and before I preach, I believe it is important for me to say a few things that need to be said. I believe that, in so many ways, the church writ large and the United Methodist Church in particular are at a crossroads unlike any we have ever previously encountered. As such, it is important that, in all that is to come, we truly get it right. This wounded and broken world is watching us; watching and waiting to see whether we will truly rise to the present moment, whether we will trade our birthright for the weak and stale broth of political power, or if we will rise to our calling to be salt and light for the world, true agents of change, as Christ calls and equips us to be.

But first, allow me to name a few things about how we arrived at this present moment. I believe that it is true that the things we do not talk about will never improve. Failure to name and discuss where we have been is both an engine of the status quo and a guarantor of generational trauma.

If you began your ministry anytime in the last thirty years or so, or if you were a layperson in leadership in a local church during that time, you likely participated in some gathering at the district, the conference, or the denominational level that spoke to you in great length about techniques. This is particularly true of the clergy, but not solely limited to us. For example, if you were ever told to read books written by the likes of Patrick Lencioni, Marty Linksey, Ronald Heifetz, Jim Collins, or Stephen Covey, you are likely one of the people I am talking about. If your church has a three word slogan, I can almost promise you that at some point, your church’s leadership read a book titled Simple Church. 

For a while, all you had to do was go to the airport and purchase books at Hudson News.

The central conceit of this movement was for the church to look to the business world, and to believe that the only things standing between Christian leaders and wildly successful congregations was better leadership and strategic planning, and who better to teach us the techniques to accomplish than the world of business and business books. “Just learn the proper techniques,” we seemed to say, “and you will be a success. You will be well-known, highly-respected, even sought-after. From the caterpillar that is Steve Jobs, you stand to emerge from the cocoon of techniques as the next Adam Hamilton.”

The problem is that it didn’t work.

As such, our clergy, as well as the lay leadership of local churches like yours were let down by these well-intentioned directives, ones that failed to prepare us for the rapid acceleration of secularism, political division and political violence, a global pandemic, the abject misery and grief of denominational schism, and the ways in which so many Christian leaders find ourselves as front-line foot soldiers in today’s culture wars, often torn between service to our own conscience, our denominational hierarchy, and the very people with whom we live and serve each day.

The people who told you to fixate on techniques are not bad people, and they did not lie to you. The charge of lying presumes that they knew they were leading you astray. They didn’t. I should know. I was one of them. Instead, we told you what we thought was best, what had been delivered to us be people we trusted.

But the fact remains, so much of what you have been told was wrong, somewhere on the spectrum between unhelpful and dangerous. No wonder so many of our best clergy and laity are ready to hang up their mantle and go do something else.

You see, I know myself well enough to know that if I had been one of the original twelve disciples, I would have spent the evening of the first Good Friday and all day of the first Holy Saturday stomping around the campfire and muttering to anyone who would listen a stream of invective that sounded something like this: “Who on earth did we think we were? I mean, who did we think we were? We thought the twelve of us would take on the Roman Empire? Rome always, always gets its way. How are we? We are watermen, and we thought we would unseat Caesar? And how were we going to do it? With love and mercy? What hubris! Rome wins again. The empire always wins, and if you all don’t believe me, why don’t you walk back to Golgotha and look at the crosses. Who did we ever think we were, that we could change anything? I cannot believe I fell for this notion that I could make a difference.”

Does any of this feel familiar?

But here is the thing: the Roman Empire is dead. In fact, it has been dead for 565,840 days, relegated to the pages of textbooks and what is left of crumbling ruins, a mere tourist attraction.

The church, on the other hand, is still very much alive, in need of repair, restoration, and reformation, yes, but alive, so today, let’s you and I begin there.

Would you pray with me?

Gracious God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

C.S. Lewis’ book The Silver Chair is the fourth in the Chronicles of Narnia series. The best known of these books is titled The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Narnia books are a fantasy series interwoven with Christian theology. One of the central characters is a mighty lion named Aslan, who represents Christ. 

Early in The Silver Chair, a girl named Jill is transported to the land of Narnia. She is separated from her only companion and she is dying of thirst when she sees and hears a stream of flowing water. However, between Jill and the stream is the lion Aslan, who she yet does not know or trust. 

The following is a passage from chapter two.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion. 
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill. 
“Then drink,” said the Lion. 
“May I—could I—would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill. 
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. 
And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. 
“Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill. 
I make no promise,” said the Lion. 
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. 
“Do you eat girls?” she said. 
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it. 
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill. 
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion. 
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. 
“I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.” 
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion. (1)

In today’s text, Jesus has begun calling his disciples, which in John’s gospel Jesus initially does by taking them away from John the Baptist. In this discourse, some variation of “Come and see” appears twice, first when Jesus says it to Andrew and his brother Simon Peter, and mirrored when Phillip says it to a skeptical Nathaniel who is unsure of anything good coming from a local from Nazareth. It is remarkable how this all unfolds in the Fourth Gospel. Disciples are calling others to be disciples as much or more than they are called to discipleship directly by Jesus himself. Andrew follows because of what he hears from John the Baptist. Likewise, Nathaniel comes because of what he hears from Phillip, and so on.

It’s remarkable how little has actually happened at this point in John’s gospel. There has been no miraculous healing. No one has been raised from the dead. There has been no feeding of the 5,000 plus with mere morsels of food. No demons have been exorcised. Jesus has not put the scribes and Pharisees in their place. There have been no parables, no reinterpretation of things like the Sabbath, no miraculous catch of fish. None of it. Only an invitation to mystery and to the possibility of something better, invitations to possibilities and hope.

If we are being honest, it can be difficult for us to share our faith. We are afraid we don’t know how, that perhaps our ability to articulate theology is better left to the clergy-types. It is easy for each of us, clergy and laity, to fear our biblical knowledge might be insufficient, perhaps fearing a question about any one of the bibles many inconsistencies. Or, we fear that we will come across as a creep or a religious nut, or that (God forbid) someone will make us knock on doors. I can tell you than when I am on a plane and my seat mate asks what I do and I tell them, they either talk to me the entire flight or, more often, they never make eye contact with me again.

We fear that we will misrepresent the faith, reasoning that we might say something wrong and turn the listener away from Christ, so we play it safe, we bury the talent we were given to invest, and we say nothing.

Which brings me back to today’s text. Andrew, Peter, Phillip, and Nathaniel didn’t nerf their defense of Christian theology and they certainly didn’t misquote any scriptures in the New Testament. It was pretty easy for them, mainly because, at this point, there was no Christian theology, and the New Testament did not yet exist.

In fact, they didn’t even speak the language in which the New Testament would eventually be written.

They simply said to people who trusted them “Come and see,” or as the NRDF (New Revised Doug Forrester Translation) of the Bible puts is “You have gotta come and check this out.”

In other words, “Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.”

The problem comes when the gospel becomes a mere product instead of good news and truth. The problem lies when the church begins to regard its neighbors transactionally, as means to pay the bills and get the church’s work done instead of regarding them as fellow children of God for us to love, serve, and welcome into this beloved community on earth of abundant life, abundant because Christ has chosen to uniquely locate himself here, in his church who he loves dearly enough to call it his bride. 

The problem comes when the world is too much with us, when our churches are alternatives to nothing, when we settle for being mere echoes of the yelling, diatribe and division of this world. The problem comes when our acquiescence to worldly power allows us to be satisfied with being chaplains for the empire instead of prophets for the Kingdom. The problem comes when we allow ourselves to be used as the marionettes of politicians who live like celebrities when we elected them to be servants, servants of the common good.

When Jesus, John the Baptist Andrew, Simon Peter, Phillip, and Nathaniel either invited someone to “come and see” or responded to an invitation to learn what Christ was all about, it was not an invitation to more of the same. Instead, it was an invitation to new and better, an alternative, something beautiful, hopeful, and transformative. In other words, it was an invitation to something for which it just might be worth leaving things behind; something to which it was worth to dedicating your very life to.

I did the math. Prior to coming to Richmond to serve as Assistant to the Bishop and COO for the conference, I spent 62% of my life on what is now the Three Notch’s District. I was born and raised in Richmond, and I served nine years at Crozet UMC and six years at Reveille UMC. 

For longer than I have been alive, Reveille has had a preschool, a rather large preschool. About seven or eight years ago, we gathered all of the children at school that day in the chapel for a little worship service. There were probably forty or so children present with their teachers, the church’s director of children’s ministry, and me.

It was Holy Week, and using a children’s’ Bible, I shared with these little ones, all seated on the floor with me, the story of Easter, in all of its glory – replete with a large rolled stone and an empty tomb.

As soon as I was finished, a little brown-haired boy in a blue plaid shirt rose to his knees, looked me in the eyes, and said in a steady voice, with courage and conviction “He is not alive. It is just a story.”

As soon as I was finished, a little brown-haired boy in a blue plaid shirt rose to his knees, looked me in the eyes, and said in a steady voice, with courage and conviction “He is not alive. It is just a story.”

I have never been able to forget that boy, a child clearly inoculated by those who love him against become like the very people with whom he shared his days.

But the other reason I cannot forget him is because of the challenge he lay before me, that church, the 143 congregations I superintended over the last five years, the United Methodist Church, and the church writ large.

My dream for that boy and for a world that increasingly thinks just as he did on that day is for our churches, all of them, to become such havens of blessing, peace, and transformation, to be such a beautiful alternative to what the world has to offer that he cannot help but believe, because were the Christ not alive and uniquely located in churches like yours, how else could he explain the things he sees and hears?

Being able to share your faith with another person is as simple, as the author of 1 Peter writes, as “giving a reason for the hope that is within you.” Just say what you know to be true. 

At the same time, if you want to make the most compelling case for Christ, give them something to talk about by inviting them to come and see God’s better way. Give them something to talk about by inviting them to come and see what a steadfast community of love and forgiveness looks like. Give them something to talk about by inviting them to come and see a church, your church, as day after day, it transforms its own corner of the world to resemble nothing less than the Kingdom of God.

Come and see a place where last year year, over 1,000 people volunteered 14,000 hours at the Belmont Community Resource Services in south Richmond for people in need, a ministry designed by people who love Christ and hear his commandment to love those who society so easily and frequently overlooks. 

Come and see how churches like those found in the RVA cluster such as Providence and Ramsey Memorial have come together in collaboration instead of competition to provide live-giving events to local youth. Same goes for the Albemarle cluster.

Come and see the Central Virginia Mission Hub. Look into the trailers filled with cleaning buckets bound for hurricane relief efforts in western North Carolina.

Come and see Madison and Rose Park UMCs stand against the epidemic of loneliness amongst our senior citizens with regular lunches.

Come and see how in Fluvanna Cunningham UMC leads the charge in providing assistance with helping the sick and their caretakers obtain medical equipment. 

Come and see how Scottsville UMC ministers to prisoners.

Come and see how campus ministries like the Pace Center at VCU, the Wesley Foundation at UVA, and the campus ministry at Randolph Macon College bless and empower young adults by forming them into leaders who speak and act on behalf of the marginalized in their communities.

Come and see how Discovery UMC partners to provide a safe space for people from Ukraine, thousands of miles from their war-torn homeland.

Come and see how just thirty-three years ago, United Methodists built a university in Zimbabwe called Africa University that now boasts over 12,000 alumni.

Come and how people from churches like yours built the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) one of the most effective and well-respected disaster relief organizations on earth, one that remains in local communities with people in need for years after the disaster stopped being covered by the news.

And this is hardly and exhaustive list.

It is my dream that little boy will grow up in a world visibly transformed by the love in action of Holy Spirit-empowered people like you in churches like yours, a kind of love is so powerful, so persuasive, and makes so evident that the presence of the living God in our midst that this little boy and the people who think like him can look around and say “It has to be true. It has to be true. He must be alive. He has got to be alive, because it is the only way. Because if Christ were not alive and he were not living within these people giving them a joy that the world didn’t give and the world cannot take away then how can you ever explain all of this?”

And then, while I am dreaming, I can imagine a world where they look at the person next to them say “You have got to come and check this out.”

And friends, the beauty, and the joy of ministry and Christian community is that you and I, as we live and serve I this beloved community get to birth into being whatever “all of this is.” And I am convinced that a great and compelling case can be made with the people in this very room right now.

I believe that this is still something worth giving your life to, something cosmic and eternal, something better than what is peddled by this world, something transformative, something good.

When we all return to our respective local churches, and together through this beautiful United Methodist connection, let’s give them something to talk about, something worth giving their lives to as well. 

The church’s future resides in our willingness to both follow and partner with God in Jesus Christ to build and offer God’s better way. It is light to the nations and it is hope for the world, leading God’s children to the water of life that saves us, that keeps us from ever thirsting again.

It is the only way. There is no other stream.

(1) Lewis, C.S.. The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia Book 6) (pp. 19-20).