How to make the most of a church’s 50th anniversary

This year Community Wesleyan Church is celebrating its 50^th Anniversary.   With God’s help, we have worked hard to use this event, not just to celebrate the past or have a party, though we will do those too, but also to launch our church forward into its next decade with momentum and clarity of vision.   Our aim is not only to celebrate God’s faithfulness in the past, but also to look forward with faith to his future acts through and on behalf of his people.

Since we have been complimented on how well this celebration is going so far, I thought I would write a couple articles about how it has happened.   What have we done right that helped it happen?

Set a precedent at lesser anniversaries

As I reflect, the first ingredient of the success of this celebration plan has actually been the precedent that we set in previous anniversaries.   No one argued, as sometimes happen, about whether we should celebrate; it was a given.  The only question was how.   We had in varied ways marked every five year anniversary since I arrived as pastor 21 years ago.   In fact, as I look back, the variety in itself was a helpful part of the precedent we had set.  Many of the activities for the celebration had been tested before.  For example, for the 45^th anniversary, we had decided to send a short term missions team to Romania.  It was a big goal for us.  But it was a success and so it was natural to decide a few years later to include sending another missions team as one of the ministries that would mark the 50^th.      As a part of the 40^th we had a great feast.  That idea will be part of this celebration as well, though it will be carried out a little differently.    If we had not set a precedent by celebrating lesser anniversaries, I do not think we would have been ready to create the excitement and energy that have gathered around this celebration.

Start early

It is hard to believe now that we started talking about this anniversary about 30 months ago.   It seems like a big lead time, but organizing takes time and most of the committee work is going to happen in the winter and in the fall.   It was fall of 2009 when we approved the idea of having 50 different outreach and service ministries before April 22, 2012.  Pastor Eric created a motivational video and we began to promote the concept that one great way to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of our church would be to reach out to others even more than we had been doing.   We felt that if we kept doing only what we were doing, we would fall short; it would take an acceleration of activity to reach the goal.   That is what we have achieved.   But it could not have happened if we had not started early.   We also started early on the concept of doing makeover type renovations to various areas of our church for the 50^th anniversary.  This required raising significant funds too.    While we have not yet reached every goal we set, we have so far radically renovated the kitchen, the children’s church area, the library, the vestibule, and the sanctuary.    If we had not started early, this kind of vision could not have been accomplished for the 50^th.    Starting early allows time for momentum to build.    It allows time for committee work to happen behind the scenes.    It grants a season for more ideas to germinate and develop.   Fund-raising campaigns take years to complete.  Getting an early start was essential to the overall success we have enjoyed.