This is a week of some significant anniversaries. First of all, last Tuesday was my 45th wedding anniversary. I was 20 and the former Cynthia Scott Douglas was 19. I’m pretty sure that nobody — and I mean nobody — thought we would last.
My parents were sure that I would never finish school and, as far as they were concerned, I had jettisoned my hopeful future for something immediate and fleeting. I’m pretty certain that Cindy’s parents weren’t overly thrilled either. After all, she won numerous academic awards in high school, was a person with an infinite future, and, at age 19, she, too, was throwing her life away on a guy with no discernable future.
And I get it. With the advantage of hindsight, I can easily see how everyone was absolutely right. It was a huge mistake for two kids who were clueless, education-less, and jobless (except for menial jobs) to get married at 20 and 19.
Except we didn’t throw our lives away. Against all odds, we finished college, went on to get advanced degrees, and both wound up exceeding everyone’s professional expectations. Except for our own expectations. We knew it would be hard and we knew life would require a lot of extra effort. But we were determined to do the best we knew how. And here we are 45 years later, three sons and 11 grandchildren bear witness that we made it.
This Sunday is also an anniversary for our church, Christ the King. On Sept. 11, we celebrate 20 years as a congregation. When one realizes that 92 percent of all new church plants cease to exist before their 10th anniversary, it makes this day especially meaningful. We began with 11 people plus a few members of my family in our living room in Sharpsburg. After a month, we occupied the chapel on Sundays at Carmichael-Hemperley Funeral Home in Peachtree City for over six years. Finally, we built a sanctuary on our own 12 acres and followed that up with a Parish Life Center.
On Sunday, we will have our International Patriarch, Archbishop Craig Bates from New York, join with us in celebration and thankfulness. This, too, has succeeded against all odds.
And finally, as the founding pastor of the church, it is also my 20th anniversary with this congregation. In some ways it was much easier to be a church planter than I thought it would be. In other ways, it was much more difficult than I anticipated. This is, by several years, my longest tenure at any church. In many ways, it is still a new church and, at 20, there is a new excitement, a new vision, and a new mission.
And here I must give thanks and credit where credit is due. In our marriage, in the church, and in my ministry as a pastor, there have been many, many people who have encouraged, sustained, and helped us along the way. We did none of this by ourselves. We owe much to so very many.
But the greatest thanks and gratitude goes to God. He never gave up on us, never turned His back, and never made provision for failure. Through it all, God was faithful, even when I was not. There were lean times, hard times, bitter times, and times when the future looked black and bleak. And those were the very times, when our own resources were at an end, when it seemed we could hear Him say, “’For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope’” Jer. 29:11.
And those three anniversaries converge this week in that message … a message of a future and a hope. To God be the glory, great things He has done!
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Sharpsburg, GA (www.ctkcec.org). He is the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese which consists of Georgia and Tennessee (www.midsouthdiocese.org) and the Associate Endorser for the Department of the Armed Forces, U. S. Military Chaplains, ICCEC. He may contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.]
