I was asked to speak on May 4th 2014 at St Paul’s UMC in Carolina Beach. After considerable thought I decided to speak on Lego and our successful Lego Club ministry. I was pleased with this concept and set about to write my words. But the words were not coming. Then on a trip to Lake Junaluska (a 7 hour car trip with four middle school aged kids), Shawn, my minister, suggested, after hearing my story about how getting out of the pew changed my life, that “getting out of the pew” should be my topic. I wasn’t convinced and continued to struggle with Lego words and nothing seemed to fit together into a message.

With reluctance, on Friday (yes, the Friday just before May 4th)  I relented and started to combine the two ideas. The words came easy but allowed little time to tweak and make changes.   I was still changing text Sunday morning just before I got up to deliver the message…which is what made it uber scary when it came time to stand up and talk! Once I began speaking I settled in and just trusted God to make the words right.

I was pleased with how it turned out. Here’s the video and the text I spoke from, as well as video of my children’s message:

Jesus said we must become like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. Last year on the first Wednesday in February we here at St Paul’s began a Lego Club and I began my journey back into childhood. I was excited to be a part of what I thought was a great idea for reaching kids (a commodity I believe we can all agree that we’d like to have more of here at St Paul’s). Our first meeting netted 8 kids….I, and I think y’all too, were pleasantly surprised. In the past year, our little group has served over 50 elementary aged kids in our community. We are currently averaging 16-20 Lego builders each week!

If you have several hours, I can regale you with stories…because I have stories! Stories that will delight you and stories that will break your heart.

I will say that I oft feel like the guy in the AT&T commercial …. you know the one, there is this guy sitting at a table with a group of kids and he asks questions then seriously replies to the crazy answers….that feels like my Wednesday nights.

When the call came to find someone interested in helping with a Lego Club, my thought was hey, this will be fun….and it has been! I can tell you that there has NEVER been a Wednesday night that I have left Lego Club with anything but a song in my heart! Sure, there are Wednesdays when I don’t want to come to Lego Club….the allure of my couch is far too great. But just one second of imagining the disappointed looks on “my kids” faces is enough to get me moving to be here. What I wasn’t prepared for when I agreed to take on Lego Club were all the ways MY LIFE would change! And I don’t just mean that I now own and play with my own Lego sets or the cool Lego things that get posted on my Facebook wall! It has reminded me of a book that was popular In the mid 80’s by Robert Fulgham titled “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten”. In the book the author extols the simple virtues we learned in kindergarten. Things like share, play fair, clean up your own mess,say you’re sorry and that when you go out into the world hold hands, watch for traffic and stick together.

My experience with Lego Club has been very similar all those basic life truths come to the forefront. yet this has also been a spiritual journey. Last fall pat Litzinger, the assistant district director gave me a book, titled the Lego Principle. This book took those basic truths of life, Lego and combined them into a spiritual awakening and that is what I am here to share with you today.

You see, last January when the call came for someone to help with a Lego Club I was a happy Christian….or so I thought – I had discovered this little slice of heaven here at St Paul’s. I was attending church almost weekly and as a life long church attendee, I was content and satisfied that “me and Jesus we had a good thing going…..me and Jesus we had it all worked out”. At about the same time the call for fun with Lego came, there also was a 10 week study called Simply Christian starting that had peeked my interest. Little did I know that those two things were fixin’ to change my whole life!

Luke 10:25-28 reads like this “and a lawyer stood up and put Jesus to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  And Jesus said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?”  And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”  And Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

 Every Lego brick is built to do two things – connect upward and connect with each other.  

In our scripture today that is exactly what Jesus tells the lawyer we should do to inherit eternal life. We must build up and create a relationship with God AND we must connect with each other and build relationships with each other.

 We must love our neighbor as ourselves.

In other words, we must learn to connect with each other. If you’ve spent any time playing with Lego you know that not every brick looks the same, not every brick connects the same, not every brick has the same purpose not every brick fits with other bricks in the same way, but there are no stand alone Lego bricks.

EVERY Lego brick is built to connect with other bricks.

Some have the capacity to connect with twelve or more other bricks while others can connect with only one other brick. The secret of Lego is not that every brick connects with the same number of other pieces but that each piece has the capacity to connect. Two 8-stud Lego bricks can be combined in 24 different ways. Three 8-stud bricks can be combined in one thousand and sixty ways. Six 8-stud bricks can be combined in one hundred and two million, nine hundred eighty one thousand five hundred ways. With eight 8-studded bricks the possibilities are virtually endless.

Just like Lego bricks, if we are using love to connect ourselves to our neighbors the ways of connection are virtually endless.  There are varieties of ways that love can be expressed and each expression of love gives us even more connections and even more relationships.

In 1974 the Lego Company started making people! These figures became wildly popular… and in 1978 they switched to the current mini-figure,or as more commonly known minfig. There are at least three thousand six hundred and fifty five different minifigs produced between 1975 and 2010….and each year they are adding more. I can tell you from my Wednesday Night experience that minfigs are THE most popular and most requested item in the Lego room. There is just never enough. By 2006, Lego had reportedly produced 4 billion minifigs. To give you a frame of reference in 2006 there were 6.5 billion people in the world.

Lego capitalized on a very important principle – people LOVE people!

After all what good is building a world without people?  The same is true of our church, the degree that we value and love people will be reflected in the way we engage our community. If we truly are “loving our neighbor as ourselves”, then we have to spend the time and effort to get to know one another. Not just the people that we like or the people that are in our same socioeconomic level or the people that look the most attractive to us or even speak our own language but all our neighbors…even Carolina fans.

I ask you this – if the early Church had the same attitude about sharing the gospel as we have today, would the Church have spread? Would we even have the The opportunity to be here today? Or would the Church have dwindled away to nothing?

When I began to come every Wednesday to Lego Club I also began to become a regular attendee at Wednesday at the Well. At first it was a convenience thing….what the heck, I’m already here. Soon it became a connectional thing, I was invested, I was connected to those who also attend Wednesday at the well.

I celebrate in their joys. I weep in their sorrows. I share in their concerns. And as a group we pray, we laugh, we love.

But even more our Wednesday nights reaches out! We’ve reached out with Wednesday night meals. We reach out to kids with Lego. We reach out to the parents of Lego kids with the ‘mom’s group’ that has formed (they are now planning their own outings, supporting one another even to the point of providing child care for each other in times of need). As a church St. Paul’s reaches out…through Martha’s kitchen, the prison ministry, and the agape inn.

Lego bricks are built for connection multi-generationally. That means that an original brick made in the 1950’s will connect just as well with a brick made today in 2014. We Christians are just like Lego bricks in that

we come in a wide variety of sizes, colors, ages and shapes.

Lego bricks come from different sets and boxes just as many Christians come from different backgrounds and faith experiences. Yet, in relationship, we can all connect. Some connect in a wide variety of ways. Some connect in fewer ways but we all connect. Just like there are no stand alone Lego bricks there are no stand alone Christians! Like Lego that connects brick by brick, so do we disciples connect to each other and the world around us one person at a time as we engage, equip and empower people around us.

The first Lego brick was invented in 1949. And although this great invention was just as great then as it is today it wasn’t until 1953 with the introduction of the Lego mat that things began to change. You see without the appropriate foundation Lego bricks just couldn’t build anything worth building. In 1955 the Lego company launched the very first “Lego System of Play: The Town Plan” From that point on Lego bricks could build just about anything.  The same is true of our discipleship relationships.

We must have a strong foundation in order to build disciples.

That foundation is our relationship with God. If you were in attendance for the weeks of lent, and listened to Shawn’s sermons, you received very practical ‘how to’ information about building a strong foundational relationship with God. I won’t recap that sermon series for you – although I have no doubt if you see Shawn after the service he can hook you up 🙂

We build our relationship with God by connecting with God through things like daily prayer, meditation, fasting and bible study. Remember when I mentioned that 10-week bible study?  Well that 10 week study has become a string of studies, lead by a variety of people. It has become a group of dedicated people who meet each Sunday for study, who pray together, and who have fun together – just last week we went out to a movie together and then to dinner. It is individuals who are actively growing and maturing together as disciples.

In his book the Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonheoffer, (if you remember Bonheoffer was a minister in Germany when the nazis and hitler came to power – he bravely stood against them) in his book Bonheoffer says

“The life of discipleship can only be maintained so long as nothing is allowed to come between Christ and ourselves”.

When the confirmands, who we confirmed last week, embarked on the way of the cross journey they were told that this commitment superseded all other commitments. I am very proud of them that they readily complied. Make no mistake these are busy people…they at the time were in rehearsal for sussical the musical. But I wonder if the same constraints were put on we adults in our journey of faith if we would reach the finish? Or would the call of fish, golf, or relaxing by the ocean win? Would we be stuck at the office or busy with friends? Remember when I said I was a happy christian sitting In a pew? I wasn’t a happy christian  sitting in a pew…I was just a Christian SITTING in a pew.

I wasn’t a useful disciple. It wasn’t until I got out of the pew and into an active relationship with God that my life changed.

God calls us to be active disciples and to be in a relationship with him everyday and not just Sunday and we are called to go into the world and make other disciples.

One of the times when I believe we are closest to God is during communion. It is during this time of quiet reflection that my call of discipleship is renewed. 1 Corinthians 11: 26-29 says “for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup; you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.  Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.  But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.”

Communion is a time of remembrance for the sacrifice given for us. It is a time of celebration for the grace under which we are forgiven. It is a time of reflection on how and what we can and should change in our life to be the best disciple we can be.

The invitation to be a part for me is akin to being with Jesus just before he laid down his life for me. To being with him as he willing took the burden to extend grace to me. Here in this church we celebrate with an open table for all who wish to come and commune with God.

We invite you now to come and be a part as we share in the Lord’s Table and as you do so I hope you consider your discipleship.

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