Pastor Walker Church

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PastorJames Walker grew up as the son of a Southern Baptist pastor. The church has always been an important and influential part of his life. Happily married to Debbie Hilbish Walker, he has four adult children: Amy, Ian, Jamie, and Emma. He is a graduate of both Palm Beach Atlantic University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Pastor James has served on staff at Northway Baptist Church in Dallas, TX and Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, SC. He was the Senior Pastor of Azalea City Baptist in Valdosta, Ga, Biltmore Baptist Church in Asheville, NC, and First Baptist Church Alpharetta, GA before coming here. He has been Lead Pastor of Lake Hills and led our team since 2012.

Rev. Arelious Walker, born in small-town Atlanta, Texas, in 1931, moved to San Francisco in 1956 in search of work opportunities. The legendary community pastor opened his True Hope Church of God in Christ in the Bayview District on May 12, 1968, with the help of his wife, Hazel Walker. And although Walker has always demonstrated an immense ability to help others and be proactive in aiding impoverished communities, his church is the defining keystone of his career. It started off with only four members, but after years of hard work and expansion, they were able to move to a larger location in the Bayview on Gilman Avenue in 1978.

So let me leave you with this question: Are there any places in your own life where inordinate fear is holding you back and keeping you from the life of flourishing that God wants and has for you? Has fear grown too powerful?

One of the greatest theologians of the 20th Century and who has influenced me is someone by the name of Hans Urs von Balthasar, who is a Swiss-German Catholic figure. And he wrote way too many books. He was one of the prolific theologians in church history.

Indeed, I think the audacious claim of the book of Revelation, and of much of the Bible, is precisely this: that final judgment, final justice, final truth, is finally, based in love. A love that is stronger and more lasting than sin, and death, and suffering. To believe in that kind of love is a big deal. Yes, all of hope, all of our courage, all of our longings, depend on it, and find their end point in it.

The slain lamb who is now crowned victorious and seated on the thrown, derives his authority not only from God on high, but from the depths to which he was willing to go. From the separation, foment, and rejection that he experienced, and from the vengeance that he refused to exact.

30:10 when you obey the LORD your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

As part of our orientation into my research trip to the Center for Faithful Business, we spent about a month leading up to it having a weekly hour-long seminar in which we read and discussed several things, including a book that told the story of a particular company called Service Master.

One of the most memorable things I ever heard in seminary was from an Old Testament professor who taught the course where we read the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, including of course Deuteronomy, and he said the most common problem he sees with young pastors going out into leadership of churches after finishing their divinity degrees is that can easily start caring more about preaching, programs, and growth than they care about actually loving their people.

This lesson applies to all of us. How are we treating people? As a means or an end? You may not be trying to maximize shareholder value, but we all have different self-interested aims. How do others factor into this for you?

I was at the airport recently and noticed a couple of magazines fairly prominently displayed that had cover articles about Jesus, which I thought was a little bit surprising. But then again, this was close to Easter, and there are still millions of Christians in this country, so it makes sense from a marketing perspective at least. One was Life Magazine, and the other, National Geographic.

But then the invitation comes. Will you pick up your cross and follow me? Will you deny yourself and trust that this really is the way? Many times, like the crowd, we too choose Barrabbas a few days later.

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

And this is not the only place in the New Testament where we see this. Much the same thing is stated by Paul in Colossians, which is thought to be written several decades earlier than the Gospel of John:

O Christ, as we seek greater understanding of and guidance from the mystery of your incarnation, may your way and truth and life become increasingly evident. Guard us from error, and lead us on your everlasting path and light. In your holy name we pray, amen.

I was struck particularly by the journey that Ebeneezer Scrooge goes on in the story, led by the three Christmas Spirits of past, present and future, to show him how he had deviated slowly but surely so far from a place of being able to empathize with the needs of others and specifically the needs of the poor and their children.

Dickens wrote the story in the context of the early days of the industrial revolution in England, and this was a dark time for many working class folks. Before child labor law, before any kind of regulations on factory workplace conditions, before minimum wage, etc. People were getting sick, lower-class kids were basically slaves, and some were even starving or freezing.

But Scrooge has lost the ability to care about any of this because of his love for money in his business dealings. Over the course of the story, though, as he is forced to look back at his life and see it from the perspective of others, and to experience again some of his own difficulties

Or, there are those who, like the Greeks, and because of their worldview, do not expect a Messiah at all. The idea of a Christ is seen as either unnecessary or impossible. This is the view that is most prevalent today. An incarnate God is unnecessary, because sin is not the problem. Ignorance might be, but not sin.

Many early Christian leaders and thinkers believed that it was the incarnation itself that was the key to our salvation. That by the incarnation of the eternal logos, Christ, we are rescued from death.

The resurrection, then, is simply the natural consequence of what was already accomplished at the birth of Jesus, with God fully taking on human nature while at the same time remaining God. The truth of the two natures unified in one person but not confused, and neither one overcoming the other.

Let me pray. Oh God, may we hear your Word this morning amid these many words, and may the light of your truth and your call on us to be part of renewal for creation shine through and be made clear, our Rock and Redeemer. Amen.

What Pearcy is saying here is, yes we are called to be colaborers and coworkers with God, but because of our divine image-bearing status, we are also called to be co-creators with God, the original Creator. Co-makers. Co-cultivaters. Another way to put it is to say, we are called to be culture makers. We are called to the work of culture making.

The Faith & Art ministry at Christ Church in its monthly gathering a couple years ago actually read this book together, and I got to be part of that as I was just coming on staff at Christ Church. And this is one of the quotes that I highlighted when I first read it. Culture care, and culture making, is simply, the kind of attention we give, and the significance we assign to what we do by how we do it.

And we all know, not every culture is good or even neutral. In fact, most of the time, even the best culture is compromised and marred by sin. And some culture is downright unhealthy and even toxic.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

He asked hard questions: What good news does the Christian faith offer to people suffering as a result of the drug war? How can communities of faith in Texas love their southern neighbors with sensitivity and courage?

And while Labor Day as a holiday does primarily have to do with actual paid labor and employed work, we also acknowledge that much of our most important and meaningful work that we do in life is often not work we get paid for! From parenting and homemaking to volunteering and serving in our communities in various ways.

Secondly, we are stewards of creation! We have responsibility to care for and productively participate in the cultivation of civilization and human flourishing through our labor (in everything from gardening to carpentry!)

But sin enters the picture in Genesis 3, and this is what is coming through in much of the passage from Ecclesiastes today: the extent to which work is burdensome, tiring, tedious and even can feel meaningless!

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