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Message from the Pastor - Ken Radant

I trust your week is going well. It’s nice to have sunshine again today, even though September has brought a little more cloud and instability.  Please do join us in praying for sun this coming Sunday as we plan for our BBQ and official 100th anniversary celebration.  We’ll enjoy good food and fellowship even if things turn damp, of course; but it always feels better to do this kind of event outside—especially if we get a good number of guests for the occasion.

Since this is the last newsletter before our 100th party, I thought it might be useful to run a few more approximate calculations of the sort I included in last week’s sermon. With that in mind, did you know …

  • That 100 years plus 11 weeks since the official start date of July 2 makes this our 5211th Sunday to gather as a formally-organized church? That’s a lot of Sunday!

  • That if our average Sunday morning attendance since 1924 was 125 (which is only a guess and quite likely a bit low—though that first building in the early years didn’t hold a lot of people!), that would mean the cumulative attendance over our history would be 651,375. That’s a lot of people worshipping together, just on Sunday mornings.

  • Our church’s income in 1925 was $225.80. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $3,945 in 2024 dollars.
    Our “stretch” budget in 1979 was $119,000. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $472,430. (Life was more expensive in 1979, and the church had grown considerably.)
    Our budgeted revenue in 2023 is $522,000. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $522,000!
    Suppose we averaged 1925 and 1979 for our first 50 years, then averaged 1979 and 2024 for the next 50 years, we might guess that our congregation has given the 2024 equivalent of something like $36,777,125 toward ministry through WVBC over 100 years. That’s a lot of generosity and trust in the Lord’s provision.

  • When I worked in education, we used to talk a lot about something called “unduplicated headcount.” That was the number of different people taking classes in a year, as opposed to the total attendance in classes—which would be inflated because some students took multiple courses. I wish we had an unduplicated record of all the people who’ve been part of our church over our 100 years, but we don’t—or at least I don’t know where to find it. But looking at the few numbers we do have and taking a wild educated guess, I suspect we’ve had somewhere between 800 and 1200 different individuals regularly attending our Sunday morning services. (This is likely low; I don’t think it’s high. And it doesn’t count all the people who only came once or twice, not to mention those who attended Salt Circus or other ministries and events who weren’t part of Sunday mornings.)

Well, that’s a little attempt at rough math, in honor of September and being back-to-school. In one sense, none of it matters. Ministry is not about math, and people aren’t numbers that we count in order to rate our success. Every single individual is a person made in God’s image—infinitely valuable, loved by our Lord, and worthy of our loving service. Every individual will live forever somewhere. Every individual has a name, a family, a collection of hopes and dreams and gifts, potential to impact others, and so much more. Each person we have ever served in the past, and every person we serve now and into the future, are all worth our best efforts in our Lord’s name. Numbers are not the point.

But numbers do help to give us some perspective. Sometimes, in the day-to-day effort to walk with Jesus and to serve Him, it’s possible to get bogged down in the details and to think our efforts aren’t accomplishing anything. “It was just another Sunday morning. Just another lesson for the kids. Just another set of worship songs. Numbers were down a bit this week. I talked to a couple people, but not many. We had 2 visitors and I’m not sure if they’ll return next week. Are we really making any difference?” 

It's good to remind ourselves that, not only is each individual we serve infinitely important, but it’s also true that over time our service to a few here and a few there starts to add up to quite a lot. We’re not a megachurch (for which I’m actually quite grateful!). But over time we have impacted a lot of people’s lives, on a large number of occasions. Our investment in ministry has added up in a significant way. And the impact on those who we’ve touched directly, not to mention others through them, is–well, to borrow from the TV commercial—it’s priceless!

I hope you find that encouraging. I do. Someday when we find ourselves in the resurrected new world Jesus is bringing, we’ll have time to hunt down all those numbers to learn their names and hear their stories, and it will be an amazing blessing. In the meantime, we’ll keep on serving together, touching the individuals whose names we do know, learning the names and stories of new folk, and sharing the love of Jesus together. Knowing that it all adds up to good in our Lord’s Kingdom.

With that kind of comment in place, I feel like I ought to be preaching on the parable of the talents this week. But I’m not. Instead, we’ll have a brief devotion out of 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. It will be more in keeping with the 100th anniversary celebration, and hopefully it will be encouraging too. You may enjoy reading through it between now and Sunday.

Meanwhile, have a wonderful week. Richest blessings!