This Memorial Weekend, we are talking about the church. Specifically, we are talking about the kind of church that we are and how we came to be this church. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t all because of those in this current generation. We are the result of much hard work and dedication by those who came before us. If we stand, we stand on their shoulders. Celebrate all of this with me and spend some time reflecting on where you are with the church and where perhaps you should be.

Standing on Giants

I am a pastor. I hope that doesn’t come as a shock to very many of you. That’s my job. It’s my calling. A job and a calling, though, are somewhat different from a passion. Hopefully they all intersect in a beautiful harmony that brings joy and fulfillment to your life, but bills tend to demand payment whether we’ve hit that mark or not, so they don’t always. Now, as it turns out, I’m also pretty passionate about many of the parts of pastoring, but the two that fire me up more than anything else are teaching and writing. As such, I’m always on the lookout for an idea. The thing about ideas, though, is that you find them all over the place. Sometimes they are in the places you expect, but sometimes you stumble across them where you would have never thought to look before. And then there are the times when they just hit you totally out of the blue. A little over a week ago, an idea hit me completely out of the blue, and I knew that I needed to write about it. I’d like to share some of that with you this morning. 

A writer’s got to write, and so I write a daily blog on the weekdays. If you follow that, some of what I’m going to say this morning may sound familiar because I first started to flesh this idea out last Friday when it was fresh so that I didn’t lose any of it. Let me also say this by way of introduction: This message today is primarily for members. Sometimes we have to talk about in-house stuff, and this is the largest regular gathering of members we have, so it makes sense to use this on occasion to do that. 

If you are not yet a member or are still just visiting with us, number one, I’m so glad you are here. Number two, you actually picked a really good day to be here and for a couple of reasons. First, because this sermon isn’t primarily directed toward you, if you start to get bored with it later on, you can tune it out and you probably aren’t going to miss much of anything. Second, and more importantly, if you are still in a connecting phase in your relationship with this church and are prayerfully discerning what exactly you want that relationship to look like in the future, and especially how formal you want that relationship to be, the things I’m going to share with the folks who are already members over the next few minutes are going to be really important things to know in terms of helping you make an informed decision. 

Let me also add this: If you’re just visiting with us today and are starting to get more than a little curious about what exactly you have stepped into this morning, this is actually going to be a really good day for you to be here as well. You are going to get the kind of peek-behind-the-curtain at who this church really is that often takes weeks to discern. I’m going to give a huge part of it to you all at once and right out of the gate. 

So then, what is this idea that hit me out of the blue the other day that seemed to possess sufficient significance that I decided to make it my sermon for this morning? Well, it all started with a conversation I had after Bible study the week before last at the Gathering Place. As I was walking out of the building, I saw one of the parents of one of our Wednesday-night-only kids loading his little one up in the car. I had gotten to talk to this parent a couple of times before, and felt like we had connected pretty well, so I went over to say hello. 

After a few seconds’ worth of small talk, this parent shared how the family was actively planning to come visit on a Sunday morning soon with an eye toward transitioning here. This family is actively engaged with another church. Now, let me say that the last thing I ever want to do is to recruit members from other churches to come here if they are connected and serving and growing in that church. There are too many unchurched folks in our area for me to worry very much about reaching out to already-churched folks. At the same time, I am unashamedly an advocate for the importance of going to church where you know your kids are getting fed a healthy, Gospel diet, and where they are learning to love not just Jesus, but His church. In fact, I’m a pretty bold advocate for being actively involved in the church where your kids are growing in their relationship with Jesus. It’s tough to be involved with two churches just like it’s tough to be involved with two families. Pick the one that is benefitting you and benefitting from you the most and plant yourself there. 

The reasons this parent gave for their considering such a significant shift—because it’s a big deal to move from one church to another; that should never be a step taken lightly—were our excellent and active kids’ ministry (and we had actually had more kids than youth here that night for the first time in a very long time), and the significant and growing number of younger couples. They love their church and the people in it. They’ve been involved there a long time. But it is an aging congregation that doesn’t have much going on for kids right now, and has very few couples their age anymore. They want to make sure their little one grows up to think church is exciting and fun, and when there aren’t very many other kids around, that’s going to be a whole lot less likely to happen. 

That conversation was actually tough. It’s hard to be in that kind of a place with a church you’ve been a part of for a long time, and I feel that tension in my soul when I talk to anyone who is going through it. At the same time, it was a pretty encouraging conversation because it reflects in some really exciting ways where this church is right now. 

That wasn’t the conversation that sparked this idea. That came the next day. The next day I went to visit Jewell Parker in the hospital. Jewell passed away this past Monday evening. Now, many of you didn’t know who Jewell was. That’s okay. Jewell didn’t know who many of you are either. And although that fact would have bothered her that day if I had brought it up because she hated not knowing who somebody was in the church, it would have excited her a whole lot more. Jewell lived 95 years on this earth. She joined this church not too long after she got married in 1949. She got married at 19 (to Ted who was 18—they actually ran off and got married in secret a full week before they told their parents). Do the math, and that would have put her joining this church a little before 1960. Again, do the math: that’s almost 75 years ago. That was when our old building that we are about to expand and renovate still smelled new. She was a vital member the whole time. To my knowledge, that made her the longest continuously active member of the church. 

Think about that for a second. Jewell was a vital part of this congregation longer than most of the people in this room have been alive. She saw a lot of different seasons in this church before God took her home. Although Jewell is all better now, she was pretty sick before she passed. But she wanted to get better. She never gave up. She wanted to get better because she wanted to be able to do something. About a month ago she reached out and asked if I would let her share her testimony with the church. I told her that I would be glad for her to do that. I wasn’t just putting her off either. I absolutely meant it. 

I meant it because I knew that she wasn’t just wanting to share the story of how she became a follower of Jesus in the first place. She wanted to share with the church how blessed she was because of this church. She wanted to share about how much she loved her church, and about the incredible difference this church made in her life. She wanted to encourage everyone to make sure they were connected to a church because life just isn’t the same without the church. Every time I saw Jewell over this past month, she reminded me that she wanted to give her testimony, and I assured her that I would be glad for her to do it. As it turns out, she didn’t get to do it in person. Instead, she just lived it for all of us to see. She loved this church and considered herself blessed beyond measure because of it—because of you. 

That same day, her son was there in the hospital with her, and he and I were talking a bit about the church since she had brought it up. I shared with him about how we are growing right now, and about how many kids and young families we have connecting here right now. I shared with him about the conversation I had had with the parent the night before after the Gathering Place. And he was just as excited as he could be for us. He reminded me that not every church can say that. Lots of churches are either dying or eaten up with conflict or both. His saying that reminded me of another story. 

When I was interviewing with the search committee here, in one of our meetings, after they had asked me a variety of questions, they asked if I had any questions for them. I did. In fact, I had a whole list. One of them (which I was encouraged to ask by some of my mentors at the time) was if the church had ever been through a split, what the last major conflict the church had faced was, and how things had been resolved. Do you know what they said? Nothing. I got a bunch of blank stares. The reason for this was not that there were too many to remember or that they didn’t want to tell me about it. Rather, the reason was that these folks who had all been connected with the church for a pretty long time didn’t know about one. This church has never experienced a split, and it really hasn’t been through a truly, congregation-wide conflict. Do you know how rare that is for churches these days? 

This church family has a remarkable character of harmony, of unity, and of a high trust in leadership. That’s just who we are. So far as anyone around here remembers, that’s who we have always been. That is part of what makes this such a welcoming church. Instead of having to focus our energy and attention on bickering with one another, we channel all of that into welcoming new people and loving on one another and the community around us. 

And as I was talking about all of this with Jewell’s son, something occurred to me. It occurred to me, and I said it out loud. I said, “The reason for all of this is because of people like your mom.” If we are standing today as a church—and hear me well when I say that we are standing today as a church—it’s because of the foundation that was built and is still being sustained by the people who have come before us. Many of them have gone home to be with Jesus, but some are still here, blessing us every single time they are in the room. I think of people like Ted and Jewell Parker, Mae Brooks, Joyce Little, Harold and Louise Floyd, Peggy Carey, Wilson and Aline Tarlton, Judy Tucker, Annie Hartsell, Margaret Tyson, Keith and Barbara Drye, Jack and Bea Goodman, Roy and Margie Helms, Clyde Hatley, Joe Huneycutt, Miky Huneycutt, David and Claudette Love, Sonja Linthucim, Mike McClellan, Billy and Ronell Taylor, T.E. and Elizabeth Arrowood, and the list goes on and on. 

These and so many others before even them built the foundation of this church, and I don’t mean just the physical one—although some of them quite literally helped to do that too. These folks built the spiritual foundation that we are now building on. Their faithfulness and dedication to Jesus, their willingness to put Him first rather than their own wants and desires, their commitment to seeing the church built up into something that was and is a fitting tribute to the glory of the One whose name we bear is why we are where we are today. They invested their time, talent, and treasure, and then they passed on the importance and worth of this to the ones who came after them. Many of you are in the room right now. And, like they did, you are passing it on to the generation that is still rising, and the generation after that which is mostly over in the other building now having a blast as they learn about Jesus and the worth of the church. 

This is the idea that finally coalesced into a single sentence. And this sentence isn’t unique to me. A similar sentiment has been expressed by many others and with far greater eloquence. But the idea just isn’t one I could shake. It seemed especially appropriate for us to hear on this Memorial Day weekend. Here it is: We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. 

Now, on the one hand, this is just how generations work. No generation stands on its own two feet. Every generation stands and builds on the foundation provided by the generation that came before it. As true as this is, though, we’re not always so quick or willing to accept or embrace it. It takes a lot of humility for one, to accept that the success we are experiencing isn’t something we achieved on our own. But when we are willing to wrap our hearts and minds around the truth, we can benefit from it in more ways than we could possibly count in the little bit of time we have left together this morning. It’s enough to know for now simply that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. 

And lest there be any doubt, this is all just exactly how God designed the church to work. (I’ll bet some of you were starting to wonder if we were ever going to open our Bibles this morning.) The Scriptures point to all of this in a number of different places, but something Paul wrote to his ministry partner, Titus, really puts it all in one place. Flip almost to the back of your Bible with me to Titus 2, and let’s take a quick look at this. Like 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus is one of Paul’s pastoral epistles in which he gives a lot of counsel on how to successfully pastor a church. In the middle of his letter to Titus, Paul gives some attention to the importance of sound teaching, not just from the pastor to the people, but from one generation of the people to the next. Check this out. 

“But you are to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching.” There’s the pastor-to-congregation part, but keep going with me. “Older men are to be self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, and sound in faith, love, and endurance.” In other words, older men (you can decide whether or not you fit that description), you are to be an intentional example to the younger men of how to be a good and faithful member of the body of Christ. You can’t just sit back and wait for them to come to you to learn this. You need to consciously, actively, seek them out to teach it. The teaching doesn’t have to be formal at all. You can just position yourself near enough to them that they can learn it by osmosis. But you have to actually do that much. 

Here, Paul shifts gears to the older women in the church. “In the same way, older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking. They are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, to be self-controlled, pure, workers at home, kind, and in submission to their husbands, so that God’s word will not be slandered.” 

Now, we have to do a bit of cultural interpreting there, but not a lot. Don’t let yourself get hung up on the culturally harder parts. Focus on the big picture. Older women, it is your job and duty to actively seek to pour into younger women in the church so they know how to be good and faithful followers of Jesus. Don’t assume they are going to figure it out on their own. Don’t assume they are going to come and ask for help when they need it. They probably won’t at all, but if they do, that’s usually a sign that things have fallen so completely apart for them they may not be able to be put back together again. You have to be active and intentional in pouring from your cup into theirs. And if your cup isn’t very full, then you need to be intentional about getting it filled so that you have something to pour. That next generation is depending on it whether they realize it or not. 

Finally, Paul shifts back to the men, and although there is a break in the flow, we should read this as Paul calling older men to do for the younger men the kind of thing he had just commanded older women to do for younger women. “In the same way [older men], encourage the young men to be self-controlled in everything.” Do you realize just how many things there are that younger men need to be self-controlled in? If you are an older man, you probably do, and you also probably realize just how hard that can be. They need your help. They can’t stand on their own two spiritual feet just yet. They need your shoulders. So, “make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching. Your message is to be sound beyond reproach, so that any opponent will be ashamed, because he doesn’t have anything bad to say about us.” 

Do you see the big picture of what Paul is talking about here? Yes, there are a lot of little details that we could get completely lost in, but we’re not going to do that right now. Do you see Paul’s big picture? He envisioned a church that was very intergenerational and in which all of the generations were actively pouring into the other generations to the benefit of everybody. The older ones mentor the younger ones and the younger ones encourage and strengthen the older ones. And both of them pour into the youngest ones so they will grow up thinking all of this is just normal. This is the kind of church culture I was raised with, and it’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. In fact, of all of the kids who grew up in that culture and baked in it for so many years, I don’t know that any of them have really drifted away from the church into adulthood. That’s the power of getting all of this right. That’s why doing what we are doing here matters so much. It’s why it’s worth everything we can give to it to make sure we sustain and strengthen and extend it so that others can experience it and be blessed by it as well. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. 

Listen: there are a lot of really good things going on at this church right now. We have a bunch of folks with a bit more…season…to their lives who are actively involved in key roles. There’s not a culture here of folks reaching a certain age and then declaring that they’ve done their time and someone else needs to pick up the mantle even though they still have time left. What a profoundly unbiblical idea. There’s not really a concept of retirement in the Scriptures, especially so far as actually doing Gospel ministry is concerned. And these…more seasoned…folks whether they mean to or not are actively inculcating the next generation coming along behind them in the culture of this church that makes it so good. Much credit goes to you for this. 

Much credit also goes to the next generation who are actively receiving this wisdom and perspective and love, and are modeling it for their own kids. Meanwhile, they are more and more jumping in with both feet to serve in all sorts of places because they’ve seen the example their seniors are setting and because they realize that unless they jump in and follow suit, the whole thing will collapse. And also they love the Lord and His church and have a passion for seeing it grow and advance. 

Because of all of this, we have kids and youth coming out our ears. We have families actively looking in our direction because of that, because they know we will love their kids and teach them to love both Jesus and His church. But we don’t stop there. We love them too, and so they connect. In all of this, though, we aren’t doing anything new. We are just building on the foundation that others have already laid. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. And because they stood so tall—because they are standing so tall—so can we. 

So, what’s the point of all of this? It’s here: church, be encouraged. You are part of a great work of God’s Spirit. He is doing this work through your faithfulness. What we are experiencing right now is no accident. It is the result of a lot of hard work and faithfulness over a lot of years by a lot of people that is continuing all the way through to this very moment. And there are a lot of fun things going on because of it. Yes, we are growing. We are growing numerically. We are growing spiritually. We are soon going to be growing physically. In the next couple of weeks we are going to hear back from several different contractors who are all very interested in helping us with our new building and renovations. Can you imagine what the impact of seeing something new being built on Main Street is going to be in this community? We are already starting to have very early conversations about what we’re going to do when our new building fills up. God is moving, He’s moving through you, and it’s really fun to watch. But all of this didn’t come from us. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. 

That’s just how God designed the church to work. He meant for it to work just like Paul tells us here. And as we keep doing that, as we keep pursuing the advance of His kingdom together along the lines He has given us to follow, we will keep seeing more and more of His harvest come in. 

There’s just one more thing. If you are not yet a member or are just visiting, tune back in with me for just a second and then we’ll be done. You know a little more now about the church you are sitting in. Don’t you want to be part of a church like this? Don’t you want to move beyond just sitting in a seat on Sunday mornings to experiencing the full wonder of what God is doing here by making your connection official? Maybe you’re not there quite yet, and that’s okay. But think about it because there really is worth in being connected; fully connected. It’s worth your becoming a member here. You don’t want to miss out on being a full and official part of this community any longer than you absolutely have to. Come talk to me about it, and let’s get that conversation started. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and we would love to have you standing with us, growing God’s kingdom together.