Our church has just renovated the original chapel, built by Presbyterian church planter Sheldon Jackson in the late 1800s. As part of the dedication (whenever we get to do that!), members have been invited to write a letter to be put in a time capsule that will opened 25 years from now, in 2045.

I found it to be an interesting exercise, and it affected me on two levels:

• First, what would I want to say to people 25 years from now? For me, that means teaching! What’s the most important thing I can teach them? You’ll see when you read our letter…
• Second, what do I need to do today to bring about the desired result? It provides a new focus to work we’re already doing.

So, without further ado, here’s what I wrote:

May 13, 2020

Greetings, MCPC (Monument Community Presbyterian Church) members of 2045! As we write this, we are in the middle of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) lockdown. We’re not meeting on Sundays except through our computers. For those who believe that the sole purpose of a church is to gather on Sundays, this time has been a real challenge! 

But it’s a challenge we’ve been working on. We were trying to build some things into the DNA of MCPC, and so the question I’m asking you all in 2045 is, Did we succeed?

The first thing we were working on was helping people experience God on a daily basis through time in the scriptures and prayer. People who follow Jesus have Jesus present with them and don’t NEED a weekly sermon to hear from God. They should know how to hear from God daily. So we were teaching a simple method, and some of our members were practicing this or some variation of it:

• Read a portion of scripture, maybe just one story in a Gospel, or a Psalm. Be alert for God to speak through one of the verses.
• Reflect on that thought, thinking about how God wants you to put it into practice.
• Respond to God in prayer over what God told you. Make it a 2-way conversation!
• Record the conversation in a journal. 

That’s it: read, reflect, respond, record. It would be nice if, by 2045, most people at MCPC were hearing from God that way.

Second, we wanted MCPC members to understand that they were on mission wherever they were: work, school, neighborhood, family. We were teaching that “ministry” is not something that happens only in the church when the pastor does it. Ministry is what the members do when they are modeling godly character wherever they are, making good work, ministering grace and love, molding culture, being a mouthpiece for truth and justice, or being a messenger of the gospel. (This list was borrowed from the book Fruitfulness on the Frontline by Mark Greene and incorporated into my book Everyone on the Wall. Maybe these books are still in the church library, along with a book by Mark Greene’s colleague Neil Hudson: Imagine Church. The MCPC elders were studying that book in 2020.)

Those are the two most important things we think we were working on in 2020. We pray if you’re reading this in 2045, that MCPC is a vibrant Christian community, characterized not only by hundreds gathering on Sunday, but also by those hundreds walking with God every day and helping others do the same.

God bless, Bob and June Ewell, 74 years old in 2020.

Right after I wrote that, this verse came up in my daily reading:

This will be written for the generation to come, That a people yet to be created may praise the LORD. (Psalm 102.18, NKJV)