Does Church Matter--Really?

Dawson Baptist Church - Philpot, Kentucky - 1962

I can think of nothing more appropriate for this Pentecost Sunday than what we do this day. Celebrate your 229th birthday. Thinking about this service and this day I pulled a page out of my own life and did some remembering of my own. I was Pastor of a church I did not like. Things had not gone well. Oh, the church was growing some. But there was this little group that kept after me. I kept thinking well if I work just a little harder—maybe they’ll come around. It didn’t happen. And I was growing more and more bitter and just wanted to give it up. Finally I resigned at age 55 with no place to go. I just threw in the towel.

And after I resigned—the strangest thing happened. The first church I had ever served called and asked me to come back and preach one Sunday. It was as rural a church as you have ever seen. And I was a city boy. And my wife was a city girl.  She thought we had gone to darkest Africa. And this little church with a tiny steeple—sat on the side road of old Highway 54. And when its rained water would come all the up and cover the parking lot and almost get in the building. Well on those Sundays—we couldn’t get there and we called off church. So I proposed a simple solution—why don’t we just move. Move somewhere on the new Highway 54 where all the cars pass by—and we’ll be away from all this rising water. After my proposal—the Deacons didn’t say anything. They just sat there. Silence. They looked horrified and looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Move the church? Well—we didn’t. And one day I moved on. 

Must have been twenty-five or thirty years later they called one and said: Guess what we have built a new church up on the new highway. Huh? Why didn’t you do that years ago when I was your Pastor. On the phone they said we are having a celebration of our new church. And we want you to come and preach and help us celebrate. And I did.

And my wife and I had a good time seeing old friends and remembering. And the new church was beautiful. So as I left they gave me a video tape of the last service in their hundred-year old building. And back at home—pretty much having given up on the church in general—I put on that video-tape and watched it one evening.

The last service the church had was on a Sunday night. They gathered that evening in June to tell stories about the Dawson Baptist Church and what it meant to them.They filled the house that night. In the tape little had changed. The video began by showing the tiny, white-clap-board building with the gravel parking lot. There was a steeple with a bell and a cord hanging down in the vestibule that somebody rang every Sunday. As the camera moved inside, you could see they had bought new pews from another church which did not quite match the decor. Sure enough there were the two cursed ugly Warm Morning heaters at the front that kept the place too warm or not warm at all. In the gothic shaped windows bits and pieces of colored glass had been knocked out and replaced through the years by other pieces of glass that did not quite match. In the center stood the pulpit with the Pulpit Bible Midge Sadler had given in memory of her oldest son and her husband killed in a terrible automobile accident while I was there. On the right was the Hammond Organ which Miss Jenny had played just as slow as she could. They always told me that Miss Jenny worked in the distillery all week but, they added, she didn’t drink the stuff. Opposite the Hammond organ was the spinet piano. Behind the pulpit was a huge crochet framed piece of the Lord’s Prayer somebody had made. On the left of the Pulpit behind the piano were the two rows where the choir sat.

Different members stood that night and told what had happened to them in that special place. They remembered their own baptisms in the creek…and when their children had been dedicated to the Lord. Someone told about their bout with cancer and how the church gathered around them and loved and prayed. A  proud member told of how they took up money and sent one of their girls off to college because she had no money. She became a missionary. They remembered revivals and Vacation Bible Schools and losing jobs and coming together after a long hard week in the fields. Mostly, it was personal stuff. In that little frame church on a side road, for a hundred years they had found something that kept them going. And as I finished watching the video I sat there in the dark brushing away the tears. For they had reminded me that what happened there had made that place holy ground. And that even though I was having a hard time in my own life…I needed to remember all the things that happened through the years in churches everywhere.

And we come here to remember, don’t we. That’s what Heritage Day is all about. 229 years ago a tiny group started this church. First it was Hopewell-Keowee Presbyterian Church. And then Old Stone Church. And then Hopewell-Presbyterian and in 1893 they changed the name to Pendleton Presbyterian Church. 50 Pastors served you as your Ministers for Supply Pastors until 1966. Some of those men were monthly. Some were half-time. Some round-robin with another church. And some stayed as much as 16 years. But your written history stops in 1966. Somebody needs to bring it up to date. 

Anything happen here after 1966—of course. Many things. And we have come today to remember baptisms and funerals and weddings and Sunday services and even an occasional sermon. Not too speak of Session meetings.  But there was so much  more. Prayers and hugs and singing and Holy Communion and casseroles brought and faith strengthened and hope, too despite the ups and downs in the country. All these we come to remember.

Some of you are down in the mouth about the present. What are we going to do? What is going to happen to our church? Well—Heritage Day answers that question. What you do here matters terribly—and the challenge is to keep on keeping on.

Our text is that wonderful passage when a women pushed her way through the door of Simon’s house and broke open a very expensive jar of perfume and anointed Jesus’ head. Those looking on were horrified. Especially the Session. A woman in public of all things. Touching Jesus. Pouring out perfume that could be used to feed a whole lot of people. Interrupting that fine meal with all the men sitting around eating and talking and telling lies . Lot of muttering went on that day—but Jesus said of what the woman had done: “This will be remembered.” It kept them going. 

And looking back from then until now—we look back at your long history of ups and downs—of wars and depressions and pneumonia that took little ones and old ones away—not to speak of the heartbreak and fear and longing and failure. But something more. What happened here should be remembered. 

Going back to my old church to preach—they helped restore my fragile faith. What had happened there through the years was important—maybe more important than all those other things. 

And this is the challenge today. To remember. To do your part—to break open your own flask of perfume—whatever it is and pour it out for the glory of God. Give. Come. Pray. Work. Believe. Hope. Love. And just keep coming. And just keep coming.That’s the great challenge of this day.

Once in a foreign land missionaries came for the first time to preach the gospel. Nobody had ever done that before in that out of the way place. And years later someone found a short history of that place. And it read: “They gathered sticks and built a fire—we kept it burning.”

Well folks—somebody else gathered sticks in all sorts of ways and started a fire and some days it must have sputtered and been weak—but they built a fire…and those that came after them kept it burning. And here—on this day…we look back and remember what Jesus said of that woman. She has done a beautiful thing and this will be remembered. And looking back—years from now may they say of you—oh, those others back there built the fire…but we kept it burning. And my friends that will be a beautiful thing. Thanks be to God. 

(This sermon was preached on Heritage Sunday, at the First Presbyterian Church, Pendleton, SC, May 20, 2018
This picture above is of the Old Stone Church  in Clemson, SC which was the second home of this church. It is on the National Historic Register.)

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com