By: Rev. Brett Blackman
2022 was a very significant anniversary for our church—being in Newberry County (South Carolina) for 250 years. Pictures fill a wall in our fellowship hall: church buildings no longer standing, congregation photos of bygone eras, and other historic memorabilia. As I look at these pictures chronicling our past, I am amazed and grateful for God’s sustaining hand throughout our church’s history. A history that predates our nation’s founding and continued through the Civil War, two World Wars, and other significant milestones in our nation. A past marked by worship services, session and congregational meetings, prayers, struggles, and victories. To recount the journey (with credit to my predecessor Rev. Gary Pierstorff for his research), our church is a merger between two churches from adjacent towns. Beginning in 1767, settlers arrived from County Antrim, Ireland and settled in Newberry, South Carolina (between King’s Creek and Cannon’s Creek). A few years later, in 1772, the Cannon’s Creek ARP congregation was established. A neighboring ARP congregation in Prosperity, SC, was later established in 1802. The two churches eventually joined together in 1959 to become the Cannon’s Creek-Prosperity church of today.
With our 250th anniversary as the commemorative backdrop for our annual Homecoming service last October, our guest minister Dr. Leslie Holmes (a native of Ireland), reminded us of God’s faithful provision in the life of our church throughout all these many years. But along with the call to remember God’s faithfulness in our past, he also exhorted us to rest neither on milestones nor legacy but to seek the Lord for our future as well. Quoting Hebrews 10:25, Dr. Holmes stressed the continual and vital importance of gathering together for weekly worship, as God’s people pray together, sing together, hear God’s Word together, and encourage (and be encouraged by) one another in the Lord. The point was that God builds His kingdom through believers who are committed to Him, to one another, and to our community—seeking to be “salt and light” to the world around us.
Having such a long history is also a poignant reminder that in regard to the work of God in the lives of His people (whether collectively or individually), God values the process of spiritual development in us just as much as the destination. The Bible is filled with examples of God choosing the long (and often challenging and messy) journey of faith, testing, and refinement rather than the short road or the quick fix. Indeed, most of Biblical history (from Genesis 3 to Revelation 21) is an outworking of this priority. And so it is with all of us, the Church universal. God’s people are on a journey through a desert, delivered from the bonds of Egypt and walking together, in faith and obedience, toward a Promised Land. As we heed the call to seek the Lord for what lies ahead, we look to Him in faith and hope, looking to Jesus Christ—the “new and greater Moses” (Heb. 3:1-6)—who leads and equips His people, step by step. As we walk together on our pilgrimage, Psalm 90 (by Moses) is instructive for us:
“Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. . . .
Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. . . .
Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands.”
Rev. Brett Blackman is a graduate of Erskine Theological Seminary (MDiv and ThM) and has served as pastor of Cannon’s Creek-Prosperity ARP church since 2014.