April 24-25, 2010 - Church Years: 25th Anniversary - Geist Christian Church of Indianapolis IN

Church Years - 25th Anniversary

by Randy Spleth, Senior Minister

April 24 & 25, 2010

Scripture: 1 Peter 2:1-6

Text: Joshua 4:1-9

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I was asked this week when I was going to retire. It was the first time someone asked me that. I guess I’m looking old even though I have a dozen years to go before drawing retirement. He might have thought that I needed to retire, that he’d heard enough of my sermons over the last 21 years that he's been a member. He’s been sitting at my feet a long time. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that; it was just idle conversation.

It did give me pause and obviously, I’ve thought about it. This is our 25th anniversary as a congregation and I’ve had the privilege of serving this congregation for all 25 years. That’s unusual since the average life expectancy of a senior minister in American churches is 7 years. If you reach 12 years, you are in the 95th percentile. Twenty-five years is rare.

Maybe the question about retiring had to do with tenure. Given the seven year statistic, I’m into my fourth life as your pastor, having completed three 7 years life expectancies and working on another. Maybe’s it’s like dog years. You know, people talk about dog years compared to human years as seven.

Veterinarians will tell you that multiplying 7 times the dog age isn’t a perfect science and they even have charts that will give you more accurate “human age” depending on breed. If you are really into dogs, you can download an app on your phone that will immediately do the calculation for you. But if dog years and preacher years are the same, I’d be 175 years old and no wonder he asked when I was going to retire. If there is a life expectancy for preachers, I’d rather be compared to the Galapagos Island Turtle which has a life expectancy of 200, a factor of point .36 in human years. In that case, I’m 9 instead of 175. I’m feeling younger every day!

Do churches age the same as people or dogs or turtles? Just how old are we at 25? The comedian George Burns, who lived to be 100, was asked when he turned 70 what he’d like people to say about him in one hundred years. He replied, “He looks pretty good for our age.” When I think about the number of lives we touched over the past 25 years, the number of babies we’ve blessed, the number of students and adults who’ve accepted Christ, the many we’ve baptized, married, fed, served and when I look back and look around, I have to say, “We look pretty good for our age.” Whatever the real age in church years they’ve been good years, blessed years, years filled with faithful stories of faithful witness.

I am not one given over to nostalgia. I’m not overly predisposed to reminiscing, to remembering the past. I’m future oriented. But scripture does teach us about the importance of spiritual signposts, of markers of a place and time which signify achievement, give testimony to God’s faithfulness and encourage future generations who will follow. There is perhaps no better example of this than the crossing of the Jordan River as found in the opening chapters of the book of Joshua.

Joshua begins with its namesake, Joshua son of Nun, assuming leadership of the tribes of Israel after the death of Moses. Moses was 120 years old when he died which is really old in pastor years. Joshua has the privilege and challenge of leading Israel into the Promised Land and the entire first chapter of Joshua encourages him to “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1: 9). It is one thing to say, “God is with us.” It is another thing all together to own it, to claim it, to believe in God’s abiding presence and faithfulness.

Forty years earlier, the Israelites were poised to enter the Promised Land. Moses sent a reconnaissance team ahead to determine what the land was like. A team of spies reported that the land flowed with milk and honey but “They said, ‘The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size…we seemed like grasshoppers’” (Numbers 13:32B-33A). Because of their fear, they were turned away from the Promised Land. Now, they are ready to enter it again and the legend of giants still exists. Be strong and courageous is a tall order. What the Israelites need is a sign and a marker. They get both.

God instructed Joshua to cross the Jordan River, a river that is at flood stage. He is to send the Ark of the Covenant ahead of the Israelites and just like Moses parted the Rea Sea, the Jordan River will part. It happened exactly as promised. Once on the other side, Joshua sends 12 men, one from each of the twelve tribes to select a stone from the river bed. Using the stones, he erects a monument, a marker so when future generations pass by they will ask “What do these stones mean to you?” (Joshua 4:6b).

A marker provides an opportunity to tell your story about God. The marker at Gilgal by the river allows Israel to talk about the faithfulness of God. They can share that God parted the Red Sea and also dried up the river Jordan so that they could pass over into the promised Land and that “ He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God.” (Joshua 4:24). God is faithful and their stones provided them with an opportunity to talk about God’s faithfulness.

Our stones provide the same opportunity; they give testimony to God’s faithfulness over the past twenty-five years. At first we didn’t have stones. We met at the Eagle Nest club house and as sufficient as the club house was as a space, it didn’t provide a marker. We put up a sign and hoped people would come. Our first worship service was on April 28, 1985. We’d sent out a mailer inviting 7,077 households in Castleton and Geist to attend our worship. One of our first families, Jeff McQuinn, brought half a dozen pads and a couple of boxes of pens to sign-up all of the people who would show up to worship but could not get in. Out of that mailer on that first Sunday, exactly one person arrived, joining 30 others who we knew were coming. There were a total of 31 that first worship. The next week, attendance plummeted to 14. Over the next few weeks several families came because of our mailer; but we learned that it is difficult to talk about the faithfulness of God without a marker, without a place of milestone, a place to point to. It’s why Joshua had the tribes build a moment to mark their history and it is why we are now able to speak powerfully about God’s presence in our life because we don’t just have one, we have two places that are points of interest.

Our first marker was a 6,000 square foot multi-purpose building with a barrel vault in the middle of soy bean fields on Mud Creek Road. Ten blocks away Mud Creek became gravel and led into the wilderness of farm land which we now know as Fishers and the location of our second marker. Along the way, more stones were added, a sanctuary with a Celtic cross in 1996. The same icon marking our presence was added in Hamilton County in 2008. But there is no testimony offered by a stone monument or a building. They don't witness to God's faithfulness.

Years ago, when serving my first congregation as a student pastor in Baytown, Texas, I took care of a man dying of cancer. It was my first experience offering support to someone in home hospice. He lived outside of town on a small farm and for most of the summer, I visited him weekly. One week toward the end of my internship, as I headed to his farm, I came upon a group of people gathered by the roadside. I was worried there had been a wreck but as I came along side the group, I discovered that they were standing in front of a roadside maker, identical to so many we see dot the landscape. I realized that I had passed it all summer long without noticing it. But when a crowd stood around the marker, suddenly it seemed important. After my visit, on my way back to town, the crowd was gone. I stopped, read the marker discovering it was the location of a major battle for the independence of Texas called the battle of Goose Creek.

Joshua said that the stone monument is to be a sign among you but a sign isn't a sign if it isn't among you. People have to gather at the stone monument for it to give witness. Your presence here today, your active involvement in the life of our congregation, give attention to the stone markers that we have placed on Mud Creek and Promise Roads.

Or as Peter says it, “like living stone, let yourself be built into a spiritual house…”(1 Peter 2:5b). Stone monuments aren't markers without the living stones of your worship, giving testimony to the faithfulness of God.

The stones though aren't just as a sign among us, they are there for the children among us so that “In the future, when your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’, tell them…” (Joshua 4:6a-7a). For the people of Israel, the twelve stones allowed the tribes to speak of their identity, to tell of the times when life was difficult and they survived, when they were held in captivity and passed through the parted waters into a period off wandering only to pass-over again to a land flowing with milk and honey. Very quickly, they would add to the story, blowing trumpets and seeing the walls of Jericho come tumbling down. Over the years, they'd add stories of kings and prophets, battles with nations and battles with a giant. They'd build more markers and eventually a Temple, only to see it destroyed and rebuilt. There are many stories to share.

We do that now and should continue to do that to each generation. We give witnesses to six families as the first pioneers who grew to 23 and built the first marker. We remember tying balloons on mailboxes to invite the neighbors to our communities. We celebrate children reared in our preschool who now bring their own children to us. We tell of walks for the hungry, visits to the prison, mission trips to help those who suffered from natural disasters, and care offered to the sick and the homeless. We tell our stories of faith, naming God in them not just so that they know what the stones mean but so that they will add stones and stories of their own and will become the witness to achievement and God's faithfulness.

It is a little like that bunk at summer camp or the tree in the park or the wall in the locker room. Those who've been there before you have left their mark. Maybe it's just initials written at night with pen. Maybe it's a heart carved out of the bark of the tree with the name of young lovers. Maybe it's a statement of accomplishment written with a Sharpie. But behind every insignia is a story to be told and each is significant. And even though you are taught not to deface, there is something about the legacy that just makes you add your mark.

Stones give us the opportunity to tell those stories, give us the opportunity to give witness to those who will come after us, to build a lasting legacy, to add our mark. We are doing that, each in our own way, whether you are newly-arrived or an old-timer. Each is a living stone and each time we gather, we build something for that moment and occasion and something for the future. It is why we give thanks, because God is indeed faithful and our stones allow us much to talk about as we witness to the next generations to come.

One of the more newly arrived, both in her presence at Geist and in her walk of faith, one among us who claimed Jesus her Savior and was baptized just a few years ago, sent me an email this week, telling of her sadness in not being able to be present today. She offered, in contrast to the other, that she looked forward to the next 25 years of my ministry. Clearly, she thinks pastor years are like turtles, not dogs! I offered that I probably didn't have a ministerial life expectancy of 25 years but I did say, I'm excited too, because Geist Christian Church at 25, in terms of church years, we are just getting started

What will the future bring? Where will God lead us? The clues for the immediate future are all around us. Continued worship growth at the North Campus.

A Sunday youth presence at the North Campus.
Increased educational opportunities for youth, adults and children.
More small group entry points for everyone.
Greater, deeper Biblical knowledge so that we can grow in spirit as well as numbers.
Becoming a community of tithers who offer their gifts generously and without reservation to care for and save the world and to expand our church’s impact in our communities.

These are our immediate demands.

We need to reach and exceed them so that we are ready to take on what God has in store for us in the long haul. The biggest challenge is always the one right in front of you. But meeting that challenge means we will be strong enough for the next one. We’ve done some things, through God’s strength, that no one ever thought possible. We’ve been like Alice in Wonderland, who sometimes believed at least six impossible things before breakfast. We’ve believed them, and done them, and have the markers to prove it. And that will give us strength to lug the stones of the future that God has placed before us. I’m excited to see what we will build together.