In the hallowed walls called Glide Memorial Church, in this sanctuary built of brick and mortar, in this room bathed in kaleidoscopic beams of stained glass, the Church on the corner of Taylor and Ellis, in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, has long stood as a refuge, a soul’s respite. The Church has long kneeled into being a house of prayer for all peoples. It has stood as the place where the pilgrimage and the sojourn is welcomed. Even if we only count Sundays, the Church is open for Celebration—Twice on Sundays. Yet, the questions arise so easy, perhaps too easy, “Why do we have two Celebrations?” There is among some, a need to cut down the number of Sunday Celebration services, because it seems like the faces in the pews grow fewer.

In your body made of flesh and bone, in your inner light woven from both divine and earthly elements, in your mind—an ever-changing collection of thoughts and feelings—in your soul, that intimate chamber of dreams and desires, you have long served yourself as your own safehouse. You have been a prayer body, and a meditation body, welcoming the divine in all its diverse manifestations. You have stood as a place where your life comes home to—all of it, your trials, joys, and sorrows—finds both harbor and affirmation. You have celebrations of you. Yet, the questions arise so easy, perhaps too easy, “Why don’t you withhold along with everyone else who has made themselves small? Why are you still trying so hard when no one is there?” There is among some, a need to cut you down because they can’t see you about to bloom.

How tempting it is to shut down when you look out, and the lines of people that once lined up around the block to get into Glide, are not there? How tempting it is to believe that those lines formed overnight and not across the span of 60 years. And how tempting it can be to pull back, to reduce the offerings of your inner light, when it feels like that no one is understanding, getting, acknowledging, partaking in, accepting or sharing in the love that you are bringing into the world. Because your proof, is the emptiness.

One read is that the congregation within the sanctuary, and the congregation—the dreams, the hopes, the energies—within us, seem to grow fewer. But I’m here to tell you another read—that everything that’s empty is not over. Everything that’s empty is not devoid of meaning or value. This is not, and we are not the gaping abyss. No, everything that’s empty is not desolate. A room not yet full, is not a room that is empty. A fallow field today, is ripe for planting tomorrow. A blank canvas is not a failure of the imagination, it is a story awaiting new life. When something takes your breath away, that ain’t dead. Its making room for the next breath.

I wish you could see what I can see. I don’t see who’s not here. I see you who are here. I don’t see what you haven’t done with your life. I see your life. I don’t see your failures. I see your resiliency. I can’t count on, or count, who’s not here. I can however, and I do, count, and count on you, as faithful, as beloved, as come home, as members, as believers in god and believers in movement, who are here. You are here and real and I thank you for showing up, expecting your miracle. I love how you might be sitting to yourself, but you know there’s room around you that you don’t have to climb over anyone to get the answers to the prayers that are coming to you. I love how you might go home alone, or feel like you’re going at the life alone, but I’m here to tell you, don’t worry about what hasn’t manifested yet, celebrate what has manifested so far. Count your blessings and know that you can’t count as high, as the numbers of blessings still coming your way.

What I am inviting you to do is to reconceptualize this choice trying to travel back in time, and measuring today by some nostalgic idea about who we once were as a church. Notice how nobody ever gets in the time machine and go to the future? Notice how nobody gets in the time machine and looks ahead at who the church will be? I’m inviting you to look at the emptiness you see through a different lens—what if a dwindling congregation is not a problem to be solved, but a divine question, that asks us if we think we deserve more or less? What if this is just another opportunity for us to lean into abundance rather than scarcity? I understand the economies of the spirit, and the currency of faith and resilience. And I understand what it means to continue laboring at the same pace, employing the same open-heartedness and creativity, even when the dividends are shrinking, the applause dimming, the spiritual ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ less frequent? But I also remember the wisdom of Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Your life takes on a different dimension when you trust the vision you’ve been given about the future, over the history that people are trying to get back to. Your rewards are not calculated in immediate affirmation, but in the transgenerational impact, the seeds we sow, that may bloom long after we have left the soil. But I want to give you your flowers now. When the world says, “Contract, conserve, reduce,” what does it mean for a Church—a living body, mind—you—to respond, “Expand, explore, evolve”? Can scarcity and abundance coexist not as contradictions but as complex theopoetic expressions of the Divine? There is not a flashing red neon Vacancy arrow sign pointing at your emptiness—that’s an invitation, calling you towards an audacious vision of abundance. What if I told you that maintaining your commitment, irrespective of decreasing returns on your return on inspiration, is a form of spiritual defiance, a prophetic act?

Oh, what a scandalous thing—to press on when the world expects you to shrink, to not keep the doors wide open because it looks like nobody is coming in. In staying open, and expanding even, you’re not just defying earthly metrics; you’re echoing the voice of ancestors and cloud of witnesses, shouting through you, “We’ve been here before; keep going!” In every decade, a crucible. In every decade, Jan and Cecil lost and regained a church. If emptiness is your trial, remember, you are not just a custodian of your personal journey but a steward of collective dreams. Like John Lewis, who urged us to make “good trouble,” your steadfastness makes room for future pilgrims who may enter the space you’ve kept open, the ground you’ve tilled, the melody you’ve sustained—suddenly finding themselves amidst an unexpected harvest, a room filled with sacred echoes, a concert of resounding amens.

And you can say, “But this is spiritual talk. What about the real world?” And I will say, Netflix, and I will say, Apple, and I will say Airbnb all defied the contractionist ethos during economic downturns, and don’t forget, in the financial rubble of 2008, when Hyundai dared to offer an “Assurance Program,” allowing people to return cars if they lost their jobs. They expanded their compassion, and what happened? Their market share grew. The theology of more—an audacious calculus—requires us to be salt and light, not less sodium and dimmer bulbs. It pushes us to consider success not in quantitative metrics but in qualitative impacts that ripple through the soul of the community. The Challenge: Expand Your Dreams. I leave you with this challenge: resist the urge to contract your dreams, your hopes, and even your understanding of God because the world around you lacks the imagination or the faith to expand theirs.

Ephesians 3:20 declares, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to God’s power that is at work within us.” Who would be if we only open the doors to the church for an hour and half on a Sunday? Who would we be if we did not meet people were they were by having a range of hours for our local and global congregations to attend Glide? Who would we be if we did more and not less in a world of consolidated dreams and wishes? Who would we be if we just thought that the Church was merely a building or a scheduled event, instead a living body—a cosmic, transhistorical organism, an extension of the Divine itself. The question, then, is not whether the body should breathe less often because it’s less visible, but how can it inhale and exhale more expansively, embracing all the air in the room, even when that room seems emptier?

In theology, we often talk about the “already and not yet” of God’s Kingdom. Let the sparseness serve as a reminder of the “not yet”—a call to expand, to reach out with wider arms and deeper roots, knowing that what is missing is yet another opportunity to enact God’s love. You see, the emptiness is also a space, a glorious invitation. It is, in its own way, an outstretched hand, asking to be filled not merely with bodies but with the fulsome energies of community, love, justice, and hope. How audacious it would be to expand services at a time when logic tells us to retrench. Such an act is inherently prophetic. Prophets do not merely tell the future; they enact the future in the present, bringing tomorrow’s vision into today’s practice. In a world constrained by pragmatism and bottom lines, the Church must be the locus where the impossible is made plausible, not by magic but by faith—a faith manifested in defiant acts of hope.

To expand when the world expects contraction is to declare that the Church has a different metric of success, not quantified by attendance but by impact. Just as Christ fed multitudes with a mere five loaves and two fish, a smaller congregation can have an exponential impact when each member is ignited by the Spirit. It allows for the creation of services more experimental, more intimate, more tailored to the unique spiritualities and social needs of the community. Reducing services is a form of spiritual rationing, a turning inward that ill serves the Church’s mission to be “salt and light” in the world. The Church is not a business. It is a lifeline, thrown out into the turbulent waters of the world, and we cannot afford to reel it in, even an inch.

Let us then, in this prophetic endeavor, find our mythic parallel in the Sankofa bird, a symbol from the Akan people of Ghana. The Sankofa looks backward to move forward, reminding us that our heritage—our ancient rituals, hymns, sermons, and sacraments—can be the very wind beneath our wings as we venture into new horizons. To reduce is to retreat; to expand is to evolve. In a culture entranced by the logic of less, let us be radical in embodying the theology of more—more love, more services, more community, more God. In this audacious calculus, the empty pews are not signs of diminishment but echoes of a divine invitation: “Come, for all things are now ready.” The path less traveled? Indeed. But oh, what vistas it holds for you and me, when we are brave enough to pilgrim and sojourn it together. To hold one another accountable to expand ourselves even in the decrease times. Stay open.

Amen?

Amen.