Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

150 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 1

Once upon a Time Understanding Our Church’s Place in the Story of God Rev. Dr. Don L. Davis

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock – Can You Sense Your Part in the Story (his-Story) of The LORD?

Our temporality is itself a feature of all human experience. We know that a family gains identity and deepens its life by keeping anniversaries and by knowing how to celebrate well the significant events which mark that family’s history. Birthdays are kept with special rituals and celebrations; but so, too, in healthy families, are memories of deaths, transitions, and the characters and events of family history. At a family reunion the foods are brought and ordered, the stories of our grandparents, aunts, and uncles are told, the songs and entertainments are performed, and the memories recited and made real. Eating and drinking together in a family takes time. In everyday life we come to understand certain matters only after we have had meals on birthdays, after funerals, with all the children home and with them all gone, and during the subtly changing seasons of our lives. How much more, then, is our eating and drinking at the Lord’s Table and our singing and hearing the Word of God this way. The meaning of our Eucharistic meal deepens as we mature in the times and places of such gathering. The way Christians keep time – or fail to keep time – is a theological expression of what is remembered and lived. “Why do they keep coming, Sunday upon Sunday, year upon year, just to hear me preach, to sing the same songs, and to pray together?” This startling question from a beleaguered pastor opens up our subject to the real issue of congregational faith and life. Why, indeed, do Christians continue, over time, to gather with such regularity? Obligation? Custom? Or could they be searching for a way of opening their temporal lives to God – a search, perhaps, for genuine transformation? The answer is: all of the above.

~ Doug E. Sailers. “The Origins of the Church Year.” Robert Webber., ed. The Services of the Church Year . Nashville: Star Song Pub. Group, p. 92.