Teaching Tuesday: 150th Anniversary

Series: 
Sermon: 150th Anniversary Celebration

On Sunday we celebrated MCC’s 150th anniversary. And what a day it was! We had more than 400 people in attendance for the event and enjoyed a unique worship service and great food together.

It was moving to see so many past MCCers come together with our current church body to praise our God for so many years of faithfulness by Him and by our people. 

As MCC’s newest Lead Minister, I am honored to join a long line of preachers and pastors who love Jesus, his church generally, and this church specifically. In the months since I joined the ministry staff I’ve been struck by that dual loyalty the Spirit has placed on my heart: I love Christ’s church - the global embassy of his Kingdom here on earth. And I love Minier Christian Church, our local expression of the worldwide body of believers. 

It was really neat, at our Sunday celebration, to witness so many others who feel the same way! 

As a matter of personality (and maybe some self-training), I am not someone who instinctively focuses on the past or finds my mind or emotions drawn to much nostalgia or sentimentality. I do think our culture engages in too much of these, and it damages our ability to see the world clearly and think Christianly about our place in it. I once read this definition of nostalgia: it’s remembering things as they never were. I think that’s pretty close to right most of the time. 

So, I’m not big on pining for the past. But I am big on knowing our history, because it helps inform our present and can inspire our future, when we learn the right lessons from it. And I’m a fan of honoring and celebrating the faithfulness of those in this church family who’ve come before us, because doing so helps draw us into God’s grand narrative and points us toward the same Savior who was, and is, and is to come.  

We do honor the past by remembering the ministry and good works done in this place, but we honor the past best when we continue that ministry and good works and persist in making much of the name of Jesus.

We’re standing on the shoulders of generations of MCC Christians who have modeled for us what it looks like to follow Jesus year after year, through good times and tough times, through tragedy, through celebration, through leadership transitions, through disagreements big and small, through election seasons and civil unrest and all kinds of things that divide people. 

We’re the recipients of the gift of church unity from those who’ve come before us. 

Almost nothing lasts 150 years. Minier Christian Church has, and it has by the grace of our faithful God and faithful Christians choosing togetherness over divisiveness time and time again. 

Unity is a choice, and it’s often the harder choice. It’s often the more humbling choice. It’s often the less popular choice. 

But it is extremely pleasing to be part of a church that makes that choice, and has made that choice through every cultural and church era in living memory, and then some. 

Sometimes we think of the times we live in as particularly divided or particularly dangerous or fragile. But Minier Christian Church was founded less than a decade after the end of the Civil War! 

There were probably people in that original charter group who had serious disagreements about how the war was fought or what the country and Christians should do in the aftermath. But they met and worshiped together anyway. 

There are all kinds of forces in this world that work to divide us, but this body of believers has elevated Christ Jesus to his rightful place as Lord of our lives and Lord of our church, and made unity in the truth of the gospel the priority of our fellowship. 

I’m so thankful for that.  

Thinking back on 15 decades of faithfulness causes me to think forward to 15 decades more. 

I dream about how our current membership can put its stamp on the Love20 area in the name of Jesus. I envision a church body that loves God and loves each other so well that it can’t help but attract unbelievers in our doors and to the foot of the cross. 

I want to lead our church today with an appreciation for the past and an anticipation for the future. If the Lord tarries, I want those of us in this room right now to be the reason Minier Christian Church can celebrate 200 years of faithful service in 2074. 

I hope to be here for it. 

Many of our MCC family will be in heaven by then, but some of our younger people may well be here to celebrate that occasion as well. And I hope they can look back on this season of MCC life together and find us faithful to our God and King. 

Much has been done in this place for Jesus. 150 years worth of ministry. But there’s much more to do. Until the last trumpet calls and our Christ comes back, there is work to do. 

Melissa and I have two sons. Cash is five and Gus is one. If they are members of this church (or another church) in 50 years it will not be by accident; it will be a result of much effort and prayer and guidance and teaching and mentoring and correction and love, and not just by their parents, but by a whole church body that embraces the priority of nurturing and equipping the next generation. 

If God grows our church in the coming months and years, it won’t be because we started just the right program or landed on the perfect slogan or because we got new chairs and a new sign - though I like those things - it will be because God’s people here at MCC took their roles as God’s people seriously. It will be because our discipleship is evident, our relationships are authentic, our war against sin is aggressive, and our worship is genuine. 

It will be because our church provides a glimpse - just a glimpse - of the coming kingdom of heaven.   

What a loving and faithful God we serve. May we be loving and faithful in our service to him and each other.

To know Him and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady