Founder’s Day


Today we commemorate the founding of Church of the Holy Communion forty-four years ago. A church building was here, but there was no church. It is a sober reminder that the Church, though needful of a place to meet, is more than the structure itself. This is why it takes so much to plant a church that will continue beyond the lifetimes of the founders. First it takes the presence and will of Almighty God for a Church that lasts to be started. The Psalmist says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” Then the next verse which is hardly ever read states, “Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1-2). A Church has to be built for God’s glory. It has to be because He wants it to be there. If it’s merely about a human ego, it will fail. But as the second verse explains, God’s help is continually needed. He must perpetually watch over the Church after its built. If the people of God ever lose their faith and faithfulness to the Lord, who sustains what has been built, then as the Psalm says they will watch in vain. The Lord begins it and it is He who continues it. Without Him, His presence, and His help, we labor in vain. So today we first and foremost thank Almighty God for His goodness and faithfulness to the parish of the Church of the Holy Communion.

Secondly, the passage from Psalm 127 implies that, if indeed God is in what is being done, the work of the workers will be significant. God uses faithful people to accomplish His will. What happened forty-four years ago was a small group of Anglican Christians from the Church of the Transfiguration and other parishes, inhabited an existing little church in the middle of nowhere at the time, to continue and extend the kingdom of God. It took faithful commitment and vision. Gradually others came. And over time this parish truly believed and truly kept to the Word of God that was handed down to them. Many times they did so against significant odds and discouraging setbacks. With God’s help they perpetuated a great, Biblical, liturgical and sacramental tradition by establishing and perpetuating worship in the timeless common prayer book tradition. So we also are reminded today to thank God for those who have labored so diligently in obedience to the Lord all these many years. Without their, and I should say, your faithfulness, what the Lord had intended has come to pass.

Yet, we should not fail to see that those who have gone before had a great vision. They were not only preserving what had been given to them. They were trying to push out into the future. No doubt they could not see all that would come of what they did. But they did strive to extend the kingdom of God. And they along with you have continued to spread the Word of the Lord. So in the midst of pausing to thank God for Him and His faithful people we too must press forward with God’s help to think and plan about how to extend what He has done in this place. To this end today we also launch a campaign to burn our mortgage by December 2008. Our goal is to eliminate $500,000 worth of debt. Already, I’m pleased to announce, a number of our faithful members have stepped up to pledge 40%, $200,000, of that goal. We have a great beginning.

There should be a sense of humility about what we do today. We, by God’s grace, have been allowed to become part of something so much bigger than ourselves. I think in the years to come, as Anglicanism realigns and this parish is allowed to be involved in a glorious historic moment, we will be aware we are participating in something beyond our fondest expectations. I’m always reminded of the vastness of God and His kingdom when I enter an old church in England that says on a sign near the front, “God has been worshipped in this place since . . .” and the year could be A.D. 879, 1121, or 1356. Those dates tell you when the church was started and how long it has continued. They also imply that something, to be more precise Someone such as the Lord, much bigger than we ourselves has kept His church going through thick and thin. Today we have learned that God has been worshipped here by the people of God in the old Church, and now in this magnificent new one, since the mid 1800s. Wars (going back to the Civil War), storms, fires, calamity of every sort, have come and gone. But God is still worshipped in this place. For us since 1963, a great historic commitment to the Faith once delivered in the Anglican Way, that wonderful tradition of Biblical and Reformed Catholicism in the Morning Prayer and Holy Communion traditions, has begun and continued. May what we do today with our worship and our commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ in this place never end.    Amen.