This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, July 9.
2024 is the 200th birthday of the Wayne Street Church congregation. We are planning a couple of events to celebrate and the whole community is invited. The congregation at Wayne Street Church today has been known by a couple of different names through the years, but what we are recognizing this year is 200 years of ministry to the St. Marys community. We would love it if you would come and celebrate with us.
Having been a part of this community since 1824, we are one of the oldest organizations in this town. You may recall, we celebrated the birthday of the entire St Marys community just last year, so it was less than a year in existence before this congregation was planted here by the old circuit riders almost 40 years before the Civil War. Since then, there have been funerals, weddings, church dinners, groups, events, tragedies and triumphs and thousands of sermons that have come from this congregation. Please come by to celebrate with us. We have a couple of events planned.
First, we are having a combined service on July 14 at 10:00AM. This will give our whole congregation a chance to be together, something that happens much less often than it should. We have some special events planned for that service that I can’t disclose quite yet, but we will get info out soon about some possible special guests and events we will be having. I can confirm that there will be cake. Had to get the important stuff out of the way first.
We are then planning a block party on Wednesday, July 17 at 6:00 p.m. We will be BBQing, and having music and games in our parking lot. It will be a time for all of us to come together and share a meal and possibly tell some of those stories about Wayne Street Church. Nothing says celebration quite like food and we plan to have a lot of it. The whole community is invited to come and celebrate with us.
We have so very few old things in our modern world. I wrote about this a few weeks ago when we talked about how nothing is truly old in the world we know. Everything is always updated, new and improved or whatever. Sure, updates are needed, but there is something to be said about something that is truly old. Compared to everything else we know in our community, 200 is pretty old. There is something comforting about things that have stood the test of time. Ministers have come and gone, controversies have come and gone, good things, bad things, have all come and gone and Wayne Street Church is still here.
We truly hope that you will come and join us for this time together. We are honored to have been a part of this community since it was only a few months old. But here is the really good news. We have no plans to leave anytime soon. It is our plan to not only continue to be a blessing to this community but we also want to find ways to be more involved in what is good about St. Marys. We have lasted 200 years because we have heard the call of our Lord who asked us to feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and reach out to the lost not only here in our town but across the world.
While we truly hope that you will join us for this celebration, we also want you to know that our doors are always open and our welcome is always available. We have made it to year 200 because we are in the business of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ and with a goal like that, I am confident that this congregation will celebrate a 300 birthday in a mere 100 years.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Our world can use all the Good News it can get, and that is what we proclaim, and we would love to have you be a part of our congregation.