“The best anniversaries...are celebrations of God.”
Each month, we send out a note from Erik reflecting on life in the church, current happenings, and more.
September 12, 2025
Dear City Church,
I’ve never been great at celebrating anniversaries. Don’t get me wrong, I remember my wedding anniversary every year and share a toast with Sarah. But work-related anniversaries are harder for me. I don’t like to make a big deal of how long I’ve been pastoring at City Church (it makes me sound old). I don’t hand out Red Lobster gift certificates or Casio watches to employees when they hit a 5- or 10-year milestone of service. Historically, I’ve resisted drawing attention to how old City Church is.
That’s because for years I relished City Church as a bit of an underdog, flying below the radar of other established and self-promoting churches in Richmond. In conversations with others, I would introduce City Church as a “new church” or a “small church with a big heart for Richmond.” But recently, as people have asked me how long I’ve been in Richmond and how long I’ve been at City Church, I’ve had to admit that 17 years is a long time. We’re not a church plant anymore. I’m not some hip, young pastor.*
Two weeks ago, City Church celebrated its 19-year anniversary as a church. As best we can tell (from research mostly based on Jennifer Murphy sifting through old emails), the congregation now known as City Church** held its first worship service on Sunday, August 27, 2006. While nineteen years isn’t a significant anniversary, twenty years is. And that’s next year! It’s got me thinking about how we should celebrate.
One reason I’m resistant to overwrought celebration of church anniversaries is that it can lead to a glorification of the past. But a church’s glory days are never in the past. They’re in the future—specifically in heaven, in glory—with our Savior. Church anniversaries can also feel exclusive, particularly to people who are newer to the community. I would never want to put together a celebration of the past filled with inside jokes or shared memories that make those who weren’t around feel dumb or second-class.
The best anniversaries in my mind aren’t celebrations of certain people or even of the church itself. They are celebrations of God. Marking a City Church anniversary is really an opportunity to give God all the glory for his faithfulness to an otherwise unremarkable group of people and their unremarkable pastors.
The best anniversaries are also occasions for recognizing and recommitting to vision. That could be a married couple observing a wedding anniversary by renewing the love that has sustained them. Or it could be a church marking its anniversary by recommitting to the vision of gospel outreach and growth with which it started.
As we do every fall at City Church, this September (just a few weeks after our nineteenth anniversary), we’re reflecting on our church vision—our Who We Are statement. We’re digging back into the sentence that has served as a lodestar for our community: “We are broken people, loved by God, continually restored by Christ, and sent out to worship God, serve Richmond, and work for its renewal.”
Every anniversary gives us a chance to thank God for how he’s sustained us and a chance to recommit ourselves to what we aspire to be. It gives us a chance both to remember Jesus’s restoring love and to pledge ourselves again in life-giving service to others.
So, join with me and raise a glass: to City Church and to another nineteen years of God’s faithfulness to our ragtag group of sinners and saints.
Stay Well & Do Good,
Erik
*Truth be told, I never was.
**The first name of the worship gathering was Franklin Street Community (because it met in a building on Franklin Street), but was changed to City Church of Richmond in 2009 to better reflect its ministry to the larger region.