Twelve hundred men sat silently inside New Hope Community Church on Saturday morning watching Kevin Costner plunge from a helicopter into a churning sea. Playing a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, Costner fought powerful waves and a desperate, frightened man to save two lives in the clip from “The Guardian.”
Earlier Mike Silva, a Christian evangelist based in Portland, had reminded participants in the Northwest Men’s Conference of the rescue swimmers’ motto: “So others may live.”
When the clip ended, the lights came back on. The room was still quiet.
“There are people everywhere drowning,” Silva said softly. “They are so exhausted they can’t keep up the fight. The only thing that ever kept me afloat in turbulent times was the Bible.”
Brings to mind “A Modern Parable – The Lifesaving Station”.
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The tale of the lifesaving station
A modern parable
Fifty years ago, Theodore Wedel, warden of the College of Preachers in Washington, D.C., wrote this insightful parable:
On a dangerous seacoast, where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little lifesaving station.
The building was just a hut and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station.
Some of those who were saved — and others in the surrounding area — wanted to associate with the station, so they gave their time and money. New boats were purchased and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.
Eventually, some of the members of the station grew unhappy that their building was so crude and poorly equipped. So they replaced the emergency cots with beds, and put better furniture in an enlarged building.
Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members. They redecorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely.
Fewer members, however, were now interested in going on lifesaving missions, so they hired professional lifeboat crews.
About this time, a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and some were sick. The beautiful new clubhouse was considerably messed up.
So the property committee had a shower house built where victims could be cleaned up before coming inside.
At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club.
A few members, however, insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called “a lifesaving station.”
These members finally were voted down, and told that if they wanted to save lives they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.
As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes as the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded.
History continued to repeat itself, and today you will find many exclusive clubs along that shore.
Shipwrecks still are frequent in those waters. Sadly, most of the people drown.
The mission of the Church
Friends, every church and every individual believer is called to be in the lifesaving business, reaching out to people who need to know that God has acted to rescue them from sin.
Our mission is to be God’s abassadors, telling people the good news about Jesus Christ.
The fields are ripe. The harvest is there. Are you willing to be in the lifesaving business?
[T]hrough Christ [God] reconciled us to himself
and gave us the ministry of reconciliation….
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ,
God making his appeal through us.
(2 Cor. 5:18, 20)
Bishop G. Lindsey Davis
North Georgia Conference
The United Methodist Church
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The parable of the lifesaving station, condensed for this article,
first appeared in Oct. 1953 issue of The Ecumenical Review.
I’ve heard +Guernsey use the lifeboat station parable in sermons twice now.