I am invited at this point in the service to give a short address. I currently live about 10 minutes away from here. I used to live 5000 or so miles away from here in a town called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerchwyndrobwll-llantisiliogogogoch. When you change from having to write that on an envelope, to simply writing 'Fayetteville", believe me, you know the difference between a long address and a short address.

I'm particularly honored to be delivering this sermon for I know that my new colleague also originally hails from lands, some 5000 miles over the other side of the big pond.  With a name such as Dairmuid H. O'Hara, you could hardly be from anywhere else but the fair land of Ireland.

Although I arrived in the United States at a later date than himself, I can claim to have beaten him to one thing.  I can claim to have discovered the wonders of living on the Fayette Plateau of Wild West Virginia before he has, and I can confirm for him that this land is described as 'almost heaven' because connecting with God is always a local call.

A local call is exactly what we are here to celebrate today! Both church and pastor have been part of that long drawn out process of seeking and calling and finding that brings them together. For a brief while I was personally involved, moderating session, so I don't feel a complete stranger to the situation. It's a difficult process, and according to a recent article in 'Presbyterians Today', becoming increasingly difficult for smaller churches, (which accounts for the majority of Presbyterian churches), to attract and keep pastors.

Things change. The world around us is changing. And the church has to change, not to accommodate the world but in order that she can be faithful in her commission to reach all people with the good and great gospel news about Jesus Christ.

When I think about the church, as the means for reaching the world for God, I'm sometimes tempted to question God's wisdom. "Yes Lord, great idea. Gather together whole groups of people, who have very little in common with each other, whose only tentative connection is something they call a belief, then tell them to love each other so powerfully that others will see their love and be drawn to find out more". Does that sound like a sensible plan to you?

There was a book that somebody loaned me, many moons ago in my college days. It was called, "Building with Bananas", the tile alluding to the task of building a strong and healthy congregation.

On the cover was a cartoon of a pastor attempting to build a wall, not out of bricks, but out of bananas, which as you know tend to be bent out of shape and are used to hanging around in unrelated bunches rather than being built together into solid structures.

Next time you're in Kroger's going past the fruit section, you try it. And if the assistants ask you what you are doing, just tell them you're from the Presbyterian Church in Oak Hill, and this is the sort of thing we do since we got a new pastor from Ireland. That should get them coming here, even if it's only out of curiosity!

One of the geographic features of Ireland and rural areas throughout the British Isles are fields surrounded by 'dry stone walls'. These are walls constructed, not from uniform bricks, but the stones lying in the field. The building of these walls is an ancient craft of considerable skill, maybe not that far from building with bananas.

The fascinating thing about 'dry stone walls' is that there is no cement or glue that holds them together. It is the stonemason's skill in matching the stones together, with a little help from gravity, which enables them to stand. And stand they do. For centuries. They are stronger than normal walls for the simple reason of the way they are constructed, stone resting on stone, no two stones identical, some big, some small, fit together, reliant on each other.

When Paul speaks of the church he doesn't use the illustration of the wall, he uses the body. That's mind-boggling. When you think of the way a 'dry stone wall' is put together, that's one thing, but the way our bodies are put together, that's another.

You think just what a disorganized mess a body would be if all it's constituent parts were laid out on the floor, separate from each other. Put the bones here, line up a few miles of veins over there, sort the internal organs out into piles, we need some buckets for the water, oh, and don't forget the brain. What a mess!

Then God comes along and says, "O.K. Dairmuid, I want you put it all together and make it live". The situation becomes even more complicated when, as Paul elsewhere explains, sometimes the hand is saying, "Y'know I think I could do a better job if I was an eye." And the eyes saying, "But I want to be a mouth". It kind of makes you wish, as a pastor, that Paul had used the illustration of a 'dry stone wall', or even a wall of bananas, rather than a body.

Building a congregation is not an easy job. Nor is it solely the job of the pastor. It is the task of every member, every constituent part of the church to play their part.  Only then does the body become healthy.

Paul tells the Ephesians some of the qualities needed for the task. It takes lowliness and meekness, patience and forbearance. It takes a desire for unity that comes from the Holy Spirit. It takes love.

I like the way Eugene Peterson interprets Ephesians 4 in his paraphrase 'The Message;

"I want you to get out there and walk - better run - on the road God called you to travel. I don't want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline - not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences".

Such are some of the qualities that enable us to fulfill our calling as God's people. They are only nurtured by an appreciation of the power of the gospel message. As we focus on Jesus, on what Christ can do in the lives of God's people, then we see the possibility for building a body. The task has to be a work of the Holy Spirit; the spirit envisioned as giving life to Ezekiel's valley of dry bones, for such a work is beyond the scope of mortal man.

Hold before yourselves the question, "How can we best represent Jesus Christ to this community?" It is so easy to get sidetracked into talking about programs or buildings or personality or specific issues that we lose sight of Jesus Christ, whose body we are seeking to represent.

Lift up your pastor in the heat of your prayers. Accept him for who he is, not how you'd like him to be. Grant him the freedom to nurture your lives with the gifts God has given him. Be slow to criticize and quick to forgive when he and his family turn out to be just as human as you and your family are.

Dairmuid, you are charged with the job of building with bananas, of being a people-mason, of growing this diverse group of folk who have called you to be their pastor into a healthy, living, body. With all the best will in the world, none of us are up to that task. But with God, all things are possible. Through faith such work becomes not only possible, but also probable.

Like myself, you've traveled a long way to reach the Fayette Plateau. We're glad you made the journey. God must be up to something good, bringing us folk from all over to this corner of Creation. What ever it may be, may you as pastor, and all those of you who are God's people here at Oak Hill Presbyterian, discover much blessing as you seek to do God's will.