It’s probably not the thing to worry about, but nevertheless, I think about it. Should there be 200 candles on the cake? There probably should just be three big number candles (2 – 0 – 0).
First Presbyterian Church of Columbus, Indiana, where I serve as pastor, will celebrate its bicentennial in 2024, and planning has already started to mark this milestone. I’m not really in charge of the cake — I can’t be trusted with some things. Still, I’m distracted by the visuals of a cake. For a person’s birthday, the cake can be a sweet way to acknowledge the time which has gone by, the many memories, a life well lived. For the most part, I think those birthday celebrations are about looking back, which may be why some of us have a hard time with “big” birthdays with a zero at the end, which make us feel like we’re entering a whole new decade. My dad had a way to tease us at a birthday, maybe even a “big” birthday. Papá would say, “Well, that was your first 50!,” or whatever the birthday was, “Now here comes your next 50!”
As the big church anniversary approaches, I hope we will be able to think more about the “next 200” than about the past 200 years of ministry. I imagine there may be some resistance to this notion. After all, we want to look back to celebrate: Look at what we’ve accomplished! (Ahem — what God has accomplished through us.) Of course, it is the good and right thing to do. But as people of faith, this could also be an opportunity to look forward into a future we cannot see clearly and wonder what God will do through us next!
There are aspects to looking back which could bring some anxiety, some worry, even as we celebrate previous accomplishments: the congregation used to be so strong but now membership has been declining, the world seems to care less about what the church says or does! Those worries may lead us to a kind of scarcity trap, a feeling that our best years are behind us, and it’s all downhill from here. While we certainly need to have our eyes open to the realities of ministry and culture, it would help us to consider them from a perspective of God’s abundance around us. Our God is not a God of scarcity, but of boundless love and grace, a God whose “power at work in us can do far more than we dare ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20, CEV). So, even as we might reminisce or compare, we open ourselves up to the ways in which God will fulfill God’s purposes in us and our community.
A forward-looking bicentennial celebration is all about seeds. If you are fortunate enough to have a fruit tree in your yard, you realize the sweet fruit hangs on a tree that began years, maybe even decades, earlier as a single seed planted in welcoming soil. So, it is with the ministry we have today at the church. Whether it is at its prime or not, faithful members were led by God decades ago to bring about a way to share God’s love — through starting a preschool, purchasing an organ or stained-glass windows, building affordable housing, etc. God gave those faithful folk the seed. They planted it and cared for it. Today we now enjoy the fruit, which blesses our community. What ministry seeds are we planting right now that may bear fruit fully after we’re all gone? Fifty or 100 years from now, someone will be celebrating another church anniversary and will be grateful for the seeds we plant and water today.
We will celebrate our bicentennial with gratitude for what has been, and filled with eager, faithful anticipation for what God will bring, just as we approach Advent and Christmas every year.
