January 11, 2026
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Pursuing God’s Will Together Week 2: The Future of St. Luke’s
Acts 1:15-26
This is the second week of our new series for a new year called “Pursuing God’s Will Together.” In these first few weeks of 2026, we are really focusing on discernment—both as individual people who are on a faith journey AND as collectively as a church.
And we’ve already gotten to practice a little discernment together as we’ve been planning this series. As you heard in the announcement video, we had the opportunity arise for the author of this book, Ruth Haley Barton, to come lead a retreat at St. Luke’s on Saturday February 7 and then preach in worship on Sunday February 8. That was going to be week 2 of running two worship hours here at Midtown and the original plan was to stream her message here, to both services.
And then we realized—oh! We will be starting 30 minutes EARLIER than our friends at North Indy and our service will be wrapping up right when she gets ready to preach. So there was a moment...and then there was some praying...and some pivoting...and here’s where we landed (SLIDE):
· Feb. 1 is a 11am only Sunday with Communion
· Feb. 8 all worship services take place at North Indy
· Feb. 15 launch two services at Midtown
So mark your calendars for that, it’s going to be a great Sunday, I will be there, members from our Midtown band are going to be leading at the 11am Contemporary service there along with people from North Indy and we will have a short time of blessing over our community growing to two services.
So that’s one really concrete example of discernment that we’ve navigated through this very week. But there’s another, bigger discernment piece that we are holding as a church this year, and it’s sort of the why behind doing this series NOW.
You may have seen in our (SLIDE) Senior Pastor Rob Fuquay’s Friday email, or heard at the Winter Summit yesterday, some significant news for our church community as a whole. Pastor Rob announced that he is planning to retire July of 2027. If you want to watch his whole message on this you can find that in my Midtown Message that will come out Tuesday OR on our website.
But what I’ll tell you in the meantime is that I’m really happy for Rob and this next season he’s entering into. I’ve worked with Rob for nearly 12 years here at St. Luke’s, he was part of my ordination, we write sermons together every week and this is just a good, good thing. I’m really excited for him and his wife Susan to get to adventure and go see grandkids that live out of state and just have some rest after a decades
And so in light of this news, we will begin a process of discernment on who our new senior pastor will be. And it’s a good time to remember that even though we are here at Midtown, we’re part of this larger whole of St. Luke’s. What happens in the next 18 months impacts us all. And we can be praying for the leadership who has been charged with selecting the next leader, and for our church as a whole as we navigate this transition.
And I want to use the Scripture we read today to frame our discussion of this process. Because it’s a story of a group of Christians who were navigating their own leadership transition and the discernment that came with the process of picking a new leader.
As we heard in the reading this morning, one of the first actions of the disciples after Jesus’ death and resurrection was to select a replacement for Judas. Now, as Rob and I talked about this specific scripture, we know some of you might be like, “huh. Using the story of Judas to talk about the senior pastor’s retirement...that’s a choice.” But if we can set some of the more challenging details of Judas’ story to the side and let ourselves see the bigger picture of what’s going on with this community, there’s a helpful process that’s laid out for us. We see the need for intentionality and prayer and discernment on how to move forward.
And so Peter announces to this group that they are going to begin this process for succession. And interestingly enough, it’s not JUST the 11 disciples that are in on this. It’s actually a bigger group of people who knew and followed Jesus...120 people. And one of the first things they do here is determine qualifications for the position. The text tells us that they established clear requirements, “So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.”
William Barclay has a set of New Testament commentaries and he makes a couple observations of these requirements that are laid out here. He says, “First, it tells us that the function of an apostle was to be a witness to the resurrection. The real mark of a Christian is not that one knowsabout Jesus, but that one knows Jesus.”
Second, it tells us that the qualification of an apostle was that one had kept company with Jesus. That the mark of faith is someone who spends time with Jesus regularly. That was true then and it’s true even today.
So through these named qualifications, we see that a profile for a leader in the church was created. That’s exactly what was done when Pastor Rob came to St. Luke’s years ago. A leadership group created a Profile for the kind of Senior Pastor they were looking for. There were five criteria:
· Theological alignment with St. Luke’s as an “open community of Christians”
· Biblical preaching
· Leadership skills, particularly for developing and equipping others
· Stewardship/fund raising abilities
· And be a good representative of St. Luke’s in the community and beyond.
Similar work to create a profile will be happening in this next transition, but at the core is someone, like the apostles were looking for, who not only knows about Jesus, but knows Jesus, and who lives day by day with Jesus.
Something else to notice in this story is the fact that the apostles had a process they followed. They presented two people who met the qualifications, Justus and Matthias. It says, “Then they prayed and said, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” And they cast lots for them…”
Now this sounds strange, like the disciples were just rolling dice or something to determine who the next leader would be. But believe it or not, this was all part of a process. It wasn’t random, and it was based on faith. And even though THEY’RE process is pretty different than any kind of process WE would use in this situation, the point is that the disciples followed an agreed upon method they believed was used by God. That’s the key. They were fully convinced that God used this method of discernment to reveal the right person to them.
We have that same confidence as we begin our own process. And I want to tell you a little bit about it because for many of us we may never have witnessed this kind of process before, especially in a United Methodist Church. So come close for Pastor Mindie’s United Methodist Polity lesson, for just a few moments.
First, in the UMC, the appointment of pastors is the main responsibility and authority of someone who is known as the bishop. Our Bishop in Indiana is (SLIDE) Tracy S. Malone. Also, the District Superintendent, (SLIDE) Dr. In Suk Peebles, will represent the bishop at many of our meetings. The Bishop makes the appointment in consultation with a leadership group known as the Staff Parish Relations Committee. These matters don’t happen through congregational votes, but our congregation is represented by the people on this committee. I want to quickly introduce them to you. The chair this year is our former Lay Leader, (SLIDE) Stephen Hoskins. Other members are (SLIDES) Kathy Armington, Cheryl Pletcher, Dee Brown, Tyrone Ruff, Marsha Reynolds, Ty Smith, and Anne Clark. Executive Directors, Rev Jen Gibbs and Lisa Rockacy also report to SPRC.
We are grateful that the bishop has welcomed us to invite an organization called Church Difference Makers to assist us in this search. The founder of Church Difference Makers is (SLIDE) Rev. Jim Ozier, who served large congregations and has now been consulting for churches for a number of years. He is leading senior pastor transitions in our largest congregations. Along with him is (SLIDE) Dr. Stan Copeland, who just retired last year as the Sr. Pastor of Lovers Lane UMC in Dallas Tx where he served for 27 years. If you were at the Winter Summit yesterday, you got to hear from them. But just know that these are the folks who are going to be walking through this transition and helping guide our discernment efforts.
So let’s review what we’ve said about our story this morning. The apostles recognize that finding the right leader in the church is very important and that requires discerning God’s will. They followed a process they were convinced God would use to identify that next leader. Both of these things are happening at St. Luke’s, but there’s one more thing that’s happening in this story that I don’t want us to miss. And it’s WHY this is so important.
After they engage in this discernment, the very next thing that happens is the church gathered again in the Upper Room, praying on the Day of Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit came upon them and empowered them to carry on the ministry of Jesus. On that day alone 3,000 people came into the church. In other words, everything the disciples did, meeting together, discerning God’s will, praying and being available to the Holy Spirit to work through them, allowed God to work through them in carrying out God’s activity in the world.
Now what if the disciples had approached their leadership question somewhat differently? What if they would have asked the 120, “What do you think we should do? What would best serve you?” What if this whole process became about personal preferences and opinions? I can imagine things getting said like, “Well, I think we need someone who is going to take care of us. We want someone who is not going to change anything. I like our group right here the way it is. We need someone who keeps things just like this.”
I have a hunch that without a process of discernment, this is a group who could have easily ended up stuck or scattered. It would have been so easy to lose momentum with all that they had been through as they looked into this next chapter, both without Jesus and even without their fellow disciple, Judas. Whenever there’s significant change, it can be easy to just be overwhelmed by the challenges and unknowns, the gaps that might be very real. And it’s in those moments that we have the chance and the necessity to lean on God’s faithfulness and to remember the mission of The Church.
Because as we think about what comes next and what God is doing in the future of our specific church, it’s helpful to remember that we’re part of this bigger thing called The Church, as a whole. And when we’re in moments of transition, it’s a great time to ask ourselves: What’s the point of this body that started centuries ago, meeting in small groups in homes and now is what it looks like today? How do we stay true to who God is calling us to be in a world that is ever-changing and often pretty heartbreaking? How do we weather the change and unknown, while staying true to who God has called us to be?
I think it starts with knowing just that—knowing who we, as The Church, are called to be. Because if we know that...we can build a life of discernment on top of that belief. It makes me think about the Arizona Iced Tea brand. Zack bought one the other day, our 12 year old promptly stole it from him, and he remarked that he should have bought 2 because they’re only 99 cents and have been since 1992.
And I thought was really cheap and also really interesting. And he told me that he’d seen an interview with someone high up in that company and that they explained that this low price is very much on purpose. It reflects the company’s identity and core mission—that they are going to be a company that offers a high quality, delicious, affordable cold beverage.
This is not an Arizona Iced Tea add break. But it is a great example of a company that lets itself be driven by their mission in all the different ways that they operate. They don’t do expensive celebrity ads—they view the bright cans as the advertising itself. They make their cans a certain way to counteract rising aluminum costs. They make changes behind the scenes in their company structure to get ahead of inflation. They know who they are and what they’re about, and they are committed to living out that mission every day.
Think about how powerful it is when The Church can be that clear and committed to OUR vision. It’s easy to get distracted by all the things that happen in a church, week in and week out. We talk about things like worship and activities that happen in the building—things that are, absolutely, so important. But the mission of The Church is bigger than those things. It’s certainly bigger than any one leader or sermon or worship style or opinion on how things should be.
Archbishop William Temple once said that, “The church is the only organization that exists solely for the benefit of non-members.” That’s a pretty radical statement, because this kind of vision for what The Church should be challenges us to set down any of OUR preferences and asks us to take a wider view. It pushes us to really ask the question of how we are showing up in a world that so desperately needs the love and hope of Jesus and how we’re using our presence—both IN this building and BEYOND this building—to be that love and hope.
It reminds us that the mission of The Church is about people seeking God’s will and living that will out in the world. And while I hope and pray that we’re all experiencing some kind of personal transformation here in this place...I want us to know that this personal transformation isn’t the end goal. It’s what we DO with our transformed lives that lets us live out the mission of The Church. It’s how we discern the places God is taking us and the ways God is working that makes us reflections of Christ wherever we are.
So as we enter into a season of discernment as a whole church, and as we each grow in this spiritual practice, my prayer is that we would remember that we are part of this larger thing called The Church. That we exist to live out the mission of The Church in our everyday lives. And that we would know, as we seek to live out this mission, as we seek to follow God’s leading, that we are empowered by the work of The Holy Spirit. That we are never alone, and that God’s grace is with us as we do these things.