HARNESSING YOUR CHURCH’S HISTORY
How to put yesterday to work for tomorrow.
Douglas Scott
January 1, 1990
The history of a congregation is no more real to most church members than a list of names were to the little girl in the old joke.
She saw the names of military personnel on a bronze memorial plaque and asked her mother, "Who are all those people?"
"Why, they are members of our church who died in the service," the mother replied.
"Which one," asked the daughter, "8:00 or 10:30?"
We may briefly study the history of our faith and perhaps the life of a denomination, but for many members, a church's history amounts to who ran last year's church fair. For others, it's the last congregational crisis that they would just as soon forget. For some, history is the row of dusty board minutes squashed in stationery-store binders on a neglected shelf, or a list of faceless clergy, or the old crank who complains, "We never used to do it this way!" For others still, history is nostalgia for the old Book of Common Prayer or the King James Version.
That's too bad, because a congregation's history is rich with meaning. Here's how I've made use of our congregation's history to build our community of faith both in the present and for the future.
History Shows God at Work Here
A few months ago, our congregation was pressed by a few extraordinary expenses. Since we faced a summer of low attendance and even lower offerings, many were inclined to doubt that God was active here and now. So I announced that next week I would preach the most important sermon since my arrival: "Where Is God Today?"
The following week, I stood in the pulpit and reviewed recent church history: "In the last two years, people from this congregation have served an evening meal twice a week to homeless men and women at St. Barnabas Shelter. Members of this church have made forty-five ...
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