church history
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who makes all things new, even years.
I think a lot about the history of the church. That won’t surprise any of you who’ve heard me teach or preach—looking back at where the church has been is something that I love to do…and love to talk about.
This focus on the past isn’t some sort of professional nostalgia. Even that word is really the opposite of how I think about church history. Nostalgia is a kind of sadness or melancholy—it’s a longing for the ways of the past to return to the present.
No one who reads church history wants that.
Sure, there are some great events and eras that catch our collective eye. We might want to be present at moments of great revival, or one of those times where groups of Christians came together as an honest reflection of who Jesus is, or times where the church was a force for justice and righteousness. We’d all like to be there for those.
But church history is more, well, textured than that.
Last week I used part of my study leave to attend the annual meetings of the American Society of Church History, one of the academic guilds where I’m a member. I heard 27 papers in three days—it was a lot. There were some great moments. One young scholar talked about how a former missionary influenced Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, part of the negotiation to end the First World War. Another told the story of radio evangelist Paul Rader’s work to feed the urban poor during the Great Depression.
But there was pain, too. I was shocked to learn more about the ways the church has marginalized or abused people who lived and loved in ways that were different from the accepted mainstream. Another paper traced the deep links between evangelical Christianity and militarism to a school prayer movement in the early 1990s. A few papers discussed the history of the broken relationship between largely white denominations and people
of color.
Looking back on our past is meant to be both an encouragement and a challenge. It’s good for us to look at the successes of the past and try to match those achievements in the present—that’s a good thing to do! It only becomes a problem when we get so fixated on “how things used to be” that we miss where God might be leading us now. Still, it’s good to be encouraged by the past. But we also have to be willing to accept the responsibility for places where we’ve failed to be an honest witness to the Jesus we worship and follow. That’s a crucial role that is built into the study of history.
As we start a new year at First Pres—yet another year with some important transitions ahead—as we begin 2023 let me invite you to think about this question:
What can we learn from where we’ve been that will help us be a more effective church in the future?
In The Tempest Shakespeare wrote: “What’s past is prologue.” That same phrase is carved in stone at our National Archives in Washington DC. Where can our past help us understand something about our present and future? The Mission Study Report from last year has done most of the heavy lifting already, but now as we turn a corner it will be helpful to reflect again on the good, the bad, the ugly…and the wonderful of First Pres SLO. I hope you’ll join in this conversation as we discern where God is leading us in the months and years ahead.
Blessings to you all,
Pastor John