Resources
 Rowan Williams' Why Study the Past? will spark good discussions about how to retell your church history during an anniversary. |
Denominational Anniversary
“Good history makes us think again about the definition of things we thought we understood pretty well, because it engages not just what is familiar but what is strange. It recognizes that ‘the past is a foreign country’ as well as being our past,” Rowan Williams writes in Why Study the Past?: The Quest for the Historical Church.
This slim book by the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury cautions against writing a “version of the past that is just the present in fancy dress.” He also warns against “dismissing the past as a wholly foreign country whose language we shall never learn.”
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Remember, rejoice, rededicate
That makes sense to Peter Borgdorff, executive director emeritus of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in North America and chair of the CRC 150th anniversary year planning.
“There’s always a temptation to look back and glorify the past. But Wes Granberg-Michaelson, a friend in the Reformed Church in America, likes to kid me, ‘Why would you want to celebrate a church born in sin?’ And the CRC did come out of a split. That’s true of any Protestant church,” Borgdorff says.
So the CRC 150th anniversary year—devoted equally to remembering, rejoicing, and rededicating—begins with “a chance to assess the past. Our history includes good things. There’s also some pain and need for repentance.
“We need to confess our conflicts, our litmus test mindset of orthodoxy that has played out since our origins. We’ve politicized issues, going back and forth, yet always claiming the Holy Spirit’s guidance. And we’ve been a little smug in our relation to the Dutch churches and in refusing to join the National Council of Churches,” Borgdorff says.
A mass worship service and dozens of regional events will celebrate the denomination’s reasons to rejoice, such as all the strong institutions birthed by this faith community.
During the rededication phase, Borgdorff hopes church members recommit to following Christ…and to affirming the CRC’s place in the church worldwide.
He knows many Christians now identify more strongly with a local church than with a denomination. And while diving into local ministry is good, Borgdorff says, “You can become so focused on the immediate environment that you don’t see we live in a global village. We can’t sidestep issues in the Middle East and Africa.
“The 2006 Synod adopted a new ecumenical charter. We’re starting a conversation about whether to adopt the Belhar Confession, which grew out of South Africa and deals more specifically with racism and righteousness in public life than our other confessions do.”
A fall conference, Assessing the Past, Facing the Future, will offer reflection on where the CRC is headed.
 Anabaptists believe it's "possible to confess Jesus as Lord above all nationalism, racism, or materialism," as David Augsburger puts it in the much quoted "Mennonite Dream." |
Discuss distinctives
Rich Preheim has always worked in Mennonite denominational circles and is now interim director of Mennonite Church USA Historical Committee.
“I have read plenty of anniversary accounts. They leave me wondering if the book’s subject—be it a congregation or area conference or church institution—ever erred. It’s a challenge to deal with mistakes in a redemptive manner. It means being honest, confessing our errors where possible, and using the opportunity to learn and grow,” Preheim says.
He advises Mennonite church anniversary planners to think about how Romans 12:2 (“be not conformed to this world”) has shaped Mennonite and Amish identity. “Ours is a faith rooted in being different. We have long stood apart from the ways of the world, often for good—and sometimes, at first blush, even downright silly—reasons,” Preheim says.
This nonconformity plays out in regulations regarding dress among “Plain Peoples” and the historic peace stance. Along with refusing to take up arms or pay war taxes, Mennonites have pioneered peacemaking and conflict mediation.
“But while some of us embrace, to varying degrees, our distinctives, others try to distance themselves. They’ve become virtually indistinguishable from mainstream Protestant evangelicalism. In accepting lipstick and high school basketball, some Mennonites have also ended up accepting other beliefs, such as the validity of military action.
“Mennonite conscientious objectors have been tremendous examples of faith and commitment. I fear their stories aren’t being told…or heard,” he says.
The Mennonite Church USA is a recent merger of two Mennonite denominations. Preheim wonders whether “our new identity has been hampered by the lack of understanding of our old identities.”
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God’s people experiencing God
Pastors, buildings, and mortgage burnings make easy ways to trace a church’s timeline.
“But what do you really know when you know that this pastor served from then to there? It’s more vital, more important, and more interesting to retell people’s experience of God with God’s people,” says Lester Ruth, professor of Christian worship at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.
For example, researching older hymnals and written prayers gives anniversary celebrants access to how people worshiped in another era. This method reveals the words and language they used to talk with and about God in worship.
Ruth also recommends interviewing older and former church members, asking for family diaries and journals, checking newspaper archives, and exploring dusty church closets. And it’s good to videotape current worship services for future generations.
“Ravenswood Evangelical Covenant Church in Chicago found things they forgot they had, including an eight-millimeter movie and audio tape of the last service in their previous space,” Ruth says.
Conference and denominational archives often have old church records. Academic historians at denominational colleges and seminaries can recommend books about worship and life in specific eras or areas of a denomination.
Ruth’s Early Methodist Life and Spirituality documents that 19th century Methodists in Delaware and Virginia knew John and Charles Wesley condemned slavery. But they worried that “not owning slaves would have cut them out culturally,” Ruth says. So Methodists brought slave purchase details to church, where leaders would decide how long they could work a slave before freeing him or her.
“We look back and wonder, ‘What were they thinking?’ Fifty years from now, maybe someone will watch a video of a worship service done in TV quiz show style and wonder the same thing,” Ruth says.
For the Charles Wesley Tercentennial, Ruth and other Asbury Seminary members are taping testimonies of people touched by Wesley hymns. They’re also running a contest to develop new settings for Wesley texts.
“I hope that Methodists reclaim Wesleyan identity and use this tercentennial to explore the Trinitarian theology in Charles Wesley’s hymns. Good theology has an artistic quality. I’d love to see songwriters become as good as Wesley at theology and lyrics,” Ruth says.
Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig