We in the church might as well face it: People have practically given up on us! Church membership and attendance have fallen. Superstar preachers with an overabundance of personality still pack people in, but overall, people in the United States simply shrug their shoulders at us. They don’t consider us worth the bother. When surveyors knock on their door, offering the choices — Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Disciples, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian or none of the above — guess which one more and more people check off. “None of the above” has begun moving up the polls. Offering praise to God, celebrating the Resurrection, supporting one another through crises, digging more deeply into scripture, receiving the body and blood of Christ and finding hope in despair have fallen out of favor. “None of the above” beats those things out.

Connecting the dots

            Before we hang our heads in resignation, perhaps we can play a game of “connect the dots.” Unlike in the original game, we already have the picture in front of us. For now, at least, we represent the last dot. If we trace back, we pass through the history of our individual congregation, our denomination, and all the way through to early councils and creeds, the martyrs, the earliest missionaries. We might think of our passage of scripture this morning as the first dot, the starting place for the church. Even though the church has deep roots in Judaism, the synagogue and Israel’s history all the way back to Abraham, we often consider Pentecost as the

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