Editor's note: This is an open letter to Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church. The Rev. Jim Jackson is pastor of Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church.
Sunday, July 2, our congregation agreed to the sale of our beautiful and historic Bryan Neck Presbyterian Church building. Fortunately the building is on the register as an historic property. Thus, even though people are no longer worshipping there, I assert that the church has not died.
Far from it, the church lives with its beloved memories. Many people have remembered it as “my church.” And that’s good. Israel remembered its temples and thought of them as representing God’s special presence. Surely the Bryan Neck Presbyterian church building stands as a reminder of God’s people meeting in God’s house for worship and spiritual nurture.
So the church lives in the memories of all those who treasure former days.
But that’s not the only way Bryan Neck Church lives, for it is alive in the people who are now worshipping and serving the Lord in other houses of worship, including Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church. And as long as the spiritual descendants of that beloved body are alive (hopefully for many generations), Bryan Neck Presbyterian Church will be alive. Lest we forget, whatever good may come in and from Richmond HillChurch in the distant future will be built upon God’s work in God’s people who envisioned, built, and worshipped in Bryan Neck Presbyterian Church building.
Moses wrote these words to God’s people when he was near death and realizing that he would not enter the promised land himself. “Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, LEST THOU FORGET the things which thine eyes have seen, lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them to thy sons and thy son’s sons.”
(Deuteronomy 4:9) Rudyard Kiplings’s words seem to form an appropriate end of this letter.
“God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle line, Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, LEST WE FORGET— LEST WE FORGET.
In HIM,
Jim Jackson