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October

"Heritage" is something from the past that is meant to be used in the present and passed on for use in the future. It’s something which is vital and important from yesterday, for today and for tomorrow. Its worth is changeless.

Perhaps Trinity (Great Swamp) Church has been your place of worship for your whole life so far.  Maybe your ancestors worshipped here 100, 150 or 275 years ago.  Maybe you were “welcomed to the family” forty years ago or five years ago of this past spring.  How ever long your lineage may be, you and I share equally in the inheritance of faith, love and service that began in this tract of “Penn’s Woods” forty one years before the birth of the United States.  Let’s look at that inheritance.  It is a heritage of ministry.

The “Articles of the Christian Congregation at Great Swamp” dated from 1736 express that the priority for the use of church funds was to “be applied to the poor of the congregation, first of all.”  Christ’s disciples are called to meet the needs of others.  We have a heritage of ministry to those in need.

In 1840, The Rev. C. Z. Weiser started the first Sunday School here.  Some loudly opposed it.  Despite that, Weiser’s vision of a school for believers became standard practice in the churches.  This church set a trend for educating God’s people in the ways of love and service to the Lord and others.  We have a heritage of ministry to the hearts and minds of those who would seek to grow into mature faith in Christ.

Although our official anniversary date is Oct. 18th 1734, the early settlers began to gather for worship here in the 1720’s.  Whether in this beautiful stone church or in a primitive log structure, God’s people have gathered to pray, to praise the Lord, hear the Word and dedicate themselves to God’s service in unbroken line since then.  We have a ministry heritage of worship and service to Jesus Christ.

Our heritage has lasted for 275 years because it is a heritage from God.  It is in fact the heritage of all Christians.  You and I must continue learning of the love of God and God’s purpose.  We are to worship God; and as an expression of that worship, we are to reach out to those who suffer from hungry souls or hungry bodies.  Our church has done this and is doing it.  As we face the next 275 years, let us so grow in faith, worship and service that the value of this heritage will be seen by those who come after us.  Let them see it as their heritage from God and may they take it for their own and live it out under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit to the work of Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN.

Yours in Christ,