Pass It On

When I was in my first Associate Pastor position at First Baptist Newport News I learned quickly that the “other duties as assigned” portion of my job description frequently outweighed my actual assignment on staff. As the youngest staff member, technology, whether phone, computer, printer, projector, or sound, defaulted to me. It may come as no surprise to you, though, that “church technology” is rarely cutting edge technology, and never was this more true than with the sanctuary lights. The lighting system was installed in 1999 and the software that controlled the lights was designed in the late 1980s. To call it technology was accurate, but generous. So when the sanctuary lights wouldn’t turn on one Sunday morning it should not have come as a surprise, but it did. The lights had always worked, for as long as anyone on staff could remember, and no one knew anything about how the system worked other than the location of the on/off button. After random experimentation and considerable panics we got the lights on for the Sunday service, only to realize we now couldn’t turn them off. After several days of a heightened electric bill, I finally got connected with one of the church’s oldest members who, it turns out, had chaired the lighting committee when they were installed. With his help and several boxes of his personal notes we were able to reprogram the proto-floppy-disk that controlled the lights and get them working again. It almost didn’t happen and it wouldn’t have happened without the presence of this member and his unique experience with these lights. Churches are notorious repositories of institutional knowledge. The long term faithfulness of church volunteers and staff are gifts to congregations, until a sudden absence leaves a hole no one else knows how to fill. 

This week I was reminded that the language of faith lasts only a generation. Each new generation has to be brought into the story of faith and taught what it looks like to live within the narrative of God with us. This is not a new truth. Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, as he speaks to the new generation of Israelites, the ones who have only known the wilderness wanderings of God’s people, reminds them of their history. He tells them of slavery in Egypt and of God’s deliverance, but rather than simply an event of the past he speaks as if they were present during these climactic moments of faith, both in liberation and rebellion. Moses goes on to instruct the people before him of their responsibility to invite the next generation into these same stories. It is then in this remembrance and sharing that the past and future are brought into the present. My faith and yours was shaped and formed by those who loved us and poured their lives into our own. For the language of our faith to persist, we must do the same. In what ways have you seen God that the next generation needs to hear?