The Next Step

Sermon Title: The Next Step
Text: Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

By: Rev. Terry Carty
Date: 05-27-2012
Place: Kingston Springs United Methodist Church Season: Pentecost; Confirmation

Main Point: Discipleship is a journey. We are called forward as we are prepared for the next step by the Holy Spirit.

The next step…

This week I waded into Turnbull Creek to try to catch some fish on a fly rod. As I worked my way along the river I was primarily watching for the places that I thought fish might be looking for their next meal so I could float a fly past them and entice them to bite it.

And I was watching for bushes and limbs to make sure I would not hang my line in them.
I was in water just above my knees when I stepped on a large, slightly sloped rock and my foot slipped out from under me. I did an off-balance dance splashing around in the river and luckily my feet found the gravel bed in time to save me from a swim.

I was reminded of the importance of the next step. I spent the rest of my fishing day calculating the safe places to step next.

Next steps are important.

  • Soon after babies start pulling up and holding on to furniture to move around a room they learn to calculate their next step in order to get to that thing we don’t want them to touch.
  • Old war movies portray soldiers carefully crossing minefields – calculating their next step – one at a time – to make it safely to the other side.
  • College students learn, sometimes too late, that they must take required courses in sequence if they want to graduate without extra semesters. Their next steps in scheduling their courses are very important.

Pentecost for us represents much more than it did for the Hebrew people before Jesus came. For them it was an annual celebration of the fullness of harvest and the giving of the Torah – the foundational scriptures for God’s people. For us it represents, the next step in God’s work of redemption – the sending of the Holy Spirit to lead us in our next steps of faith.

It is appropriate that we have chosen Pentecost Sunday as Confirmation Sunday. In a few moments our confirmands will take the next step to accept for themselves the vows that were made on their behalf at the time of their baptism.

They have been preparing for this next step by meeting with the pastor, the youth leader, their parents, and their mentors to discuss matters of God, Jesus, creation, sin, evil, salvation and discipleship. Today they will vow to reject the powers of evil, confirm their faith in Christ, become professing members of the United Methodist Church, and commit to participation in this congregation.

That by itself is a huge step. But they will also be asked to take a step beyond that one. They will be asked to commit to an intentional program of discipleship and coming back to a series of classes when they are in the ninth grade. Their intention includes yet another step of coming back to a series of classes when they are in the twelfth grade as well. Today they are serious about this step they are taking and they expect the church to give them assistance so they have a reasonable hope of remaining disciples throughout their lifetime.

Some of us who have taken the step of faith and become members of Christ’s Holy Church may have forgotten the importance of keeping our footing. Like my fly fishing experience, we may have our focus on the fishing and bushes of our lives and not paid attention of the fundamentals of our walk with God. We may be in need of calculating our next step.

That is the importance of the Church. On that day of Pentecost the disciples understood that the Holy Spirit had been sent to guide their next steps – those were steps into living like Jesus taught. Indeed, steps toward becoming like Christ by living in The Way He lived. And on that day the disciples understood that the people had become the body of Christ to each other.

That same Holy Spirit guides us in our lives today. We experience it in the internal urging we feel when we know we are on slippery rocks in our lives. We experience it when fellow brothers and sisters reach out to us in assistance, in fellowship, and in intentional discussions about faith and discipleship.

If we are to expect our confirmands to follow through with their intentions of life-long discipleship, we need to consider our own next steps in our discipleship. God may be constant, the Word may be enduring, but our lives are continually changing.

Consider what may be your next step in discipleship. Is it to start praying when you wake up each morning? Is it to dust off that Bible and start reading it each day? Is it to commit to spending time with other committed Christians for the assurance and encouragement it gives you in your walk? Is it to help somebody?

The Church was born to help disciples find The Way of salvation. Today, take seriously your call to be a disciple AND to be the Church of The Way.