The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on March 29, 1987. The title of Mr. Howe's sermon is, Here Am I, Send Me. 

Both this Sunday and next, we are substituting special readings for those assigned in the lectionary, because we want to focus on the theme of outreach. Next weekend is our outreach festival. We'll have two special guest speakers on Friday evening, and next Sunday morning will be a very different kind of a service.

We'll have banners and slides and dramatic presentations, and representatives from many of the ministries that we support will be here to meet with you in the Undercroft after the service. You might ask, why? Why are we doing all that?

Well, partly because God has done a remarkable thing in this church, and we want to celebrate it. One of the very key elements in the whole life of this parish is our commitment to outreach. Some of you know this story as well as I do because you lived through it with me.

Many of you have come in more recent days and may not be that familiar with the way in which God has moved among us in terms of calling us to an outreach commitment, a global commitment for Jesus Christ. He gave us a very specific word just about 11 years ago. It was a financial word.

He called us to get to the point of giving away in ministry beyond the parish as much as we're spending on ourselves. In other words, 50-50 outreach. That seemed almost an impossible vision at the time.

I remember Bishop David Lewis saying to me, you know, the Diocese of Virginia has talked about exactly that for at least 20 years. 50-50 outreach. We've talked about it, but we've never come close.

He said only one parish once got to 50-50 outreach, and they did it for only one year and it almost killed them. That time you may remember in the mid-70s we had double-digit inflation. This church had a large mortgage at that time.

We had a staff that was fairly poorly paid and we needed to hire more people because the parish was growing. Buildings that weren't even paid for needed renovation. and at that point we were giving away about 14% of our income.

How do you get from 14% to 50% under all of those conditions? Well, we came up with a plan. We'd do it by increments.

We'd go up by 5% increments and it would take seven years. There was a lot of skepticism. Every year stewardship time came around and people would say, you bled the stone last year.

You don't really think we're going to be able to get more this year. I remember one woman in particular, every single stewardship Sunday, she'd say to me, You will never make it. And I'd say, Karen, God enabled us to make it in five years, not seven.

in spite of my note about applause right what we discovered in the process we should have known all along every preacher preaches it at least once a year on stewardship Sunday but we learned it as a parish that you can't out give God that's true for you in your own personal life for your family it's true for the parish as a whole the more we've tried to do in the way of outreach the more the lord has enabled us to do right here within the parish it's been exciting we want to celebrate that we want to remind ourselves of it and we want to include some of you who are relative newcomers in precisely that story and get to know the whole business of what God has done in terms of outreach. That's the first thing. But secondly, I need to say that giving away money, even very large amounts of money, is a very easy thing to talk about and a relatively easy thing to do.

And in a very real sense, it's the least important part. On those rare occasions when I am seated in the pews and the offering plate comes by, I usually quip to whomever I'm seated with, I gave it the office. Which is true.

I've arranged with Billy Hutchison to have it taken right off the top as a deduction from my salary before I even see the check. That is extremely painless. I never even see the money.

I don't consider it mine. It's God's. I don't count on it for myself. I don't live with it and then have to regret its loss.

It's God's. It's given off the top. Those of you who are tithers or even just serious pledgers know what I'm talking about. Whether you have it taken out of your check or whether you write the check as soon as you get your salary.

You don't count on that for you. It's given to God and you don't miss it, right? It's very painless.

But let me tell you this, if the Great Commission to go out into all the world and preach the good news of Jesus to every creature under heaven, to be His witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth, if the Great Commission doesn't have our guts, it's missing something very important no matter how much money we give away. Jesus said I have a baptism to be baptized with and how I am constrained until it is accomplished his baptism of course was to put himself in my place and take my sins upon him that I might be forgiven and have eternal life and he said how I am constrained until it is accomplished are you constrained that folks would know what He has accomplished? He said, my meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work.

Is that your meat? What you eat and drink is the joy of sharing that good news with others? Are you involved in it or do you just give some money to it?

Do you see what I'm saying? He turned around and He said, as the Father sent me, so I send you. That's what we're about.

That's not an option for some of us. That's the calling for all of us to be involved in taking that good news to whomever, wherever, as God allows. St. Paul said, woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.

Jeremiah said, if I say I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I'm weary with holding it in, and I can't. Is there a fire in your bones? You find you can't hold it in, you've got to tell folks about it. Peter and John, forbidden to preach the gospel under threat of punishment and imprisonment, answered the officials, Whether it's right in the sight of God to listen to you, you must judge.

But we cannot but speak of what we've seen and heard. Charles Wesley wrote, Happy if with my latest breath I might gasp His name. Preach him to all in life and cry in death, Behold the Lamb.

We're not all called to be Billy Grahams. We're not even all called to be Joe Kitzes. We're not all called to be ordained.

We're not all called to be missionaries. But we are all called, every single one of us, to discover and develop our ministries as Jesus Christ gives them to us, and to reach out beyond ourselves in His name to a world that's going to hell. It's one thing to give money.

That's a good thing. That's an important thing. And some of us really haven't even come to grips adequately with that one.

But it's one thing to give money, and it's something very different to really get involved in ministry. Whether we're talking about the local parish or the inner city or Timbuktu, the pattern is all should pray, all should give, some should go, and all the rest of us should very much support with intelligent, concerted prayer, as well as our giving, those who do go. And so that's the second reason for an outreach festival, so that we might learn more about what it is God is already doing, so that we can intelligently pray for it, and it may well be God will call some of us to get involved in it in some way.

Last month, Gary Johnson ran an outreach quiz in the Truro Family News. Did you see it? was just to help each of us see how much we do know and how much we don't know about the ministries that we're committed to supporting as a parish.

There were just ten questions, and Gary promised a free book on missions to the first person who would complete all of those ten questions correctly. We have about 3,300 members. How many would you guess got all ten questions right?

What? Fifty? Twenty-five?

Somebody said nobody responded. Not one. We're giving away a million and a half dollars nearly.

how much do you know about where it's going who's involved and why we're committed to that ministry some of you are saying well I didn't take the time to do the quiz I could have well I'll see you right after the service I've got some additional copies and we're holding our outreach festival next weekend number one to celebrate the truly exciting things that God is doing and has done over the last few years. Number two, to inform each one of us much more fully as to what those ministries are all about. And number three, it's our hope and our prayer and indeed our expectation that in the midst of all that, God is going to grab a hold of some of us in a new way, to get involved, to give us a heart for outreach, fire in our bones for ministry.

And he's going to call some of us, perhaps into the ordained ministry, perhaps onto the mission field, perhaps simply into volunteer support in some way for some of the ministries here at hand. And that he's going to call all of us to a much deeper level of commitment to support and pray for and remain informed about the ministries that we support. That's why we're having an outreach festival.

I'm asking you to come next Friday evening, even if you don't usually come to prayer and praise, please come next Friday evening. Come next Sunday morning with a real openness to hearing the Spirit of God speak to you personally and to us corporately about the ministry of outreach. Jesus said two fascinating things back to back in the reading we had for our gospel today.

He said, number one, I will build my church. I will build it. It's mine.

You will not build my church. I will build my church. but then he turned right around and he said but I give to you the keys to the kingdom in other words he has entrusted to us the awesome responsibility and privilege of unlocking the door and inviting folks into that church which he's building.

And we can do that. Or we can leave the door locked and people outside. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?

Then I said, Here am I. Send me. Let's bow our heads together. Father God, let that be the prayer of our hearts.

That we're available to you. Whether you want us to pray or give or volunteer or support or go halfway around the world we're available. If Jesus Christ did all this for me then no sacrifice I can make for Him is too great.

use this outreach festival Lord to move among us in a new way for his name's sake Amen