Ideas for Churches Celebrating their Anniversary

A church-wide celebration of an important milestone can be an unforgettable time in a congregation’s history. The most creative efforts move beyond simple nostalgia for the past and employ history as a tool for establishing identity and moving confidently into the future.   Here are some tips and ideas we’ve gleaned from churches in contact with the Congregational Christian Historical Society:

 A Few General Suggestions:

• Begin well in advance. Some congregations start planning for a special anniversary two or three years before the actual event.
• Create a core committee, representative of the congregation and its leadership, to oversee planning and delegate work to appropriate subcommittees.  
• Many committees select a theme for the celebration year, as a way of organizing a variety of different events. One church, for example, lifted up the idea of “home” for their celebration, a metaphor which allowed people to talk about their church family with special fondness, and to contribute to a nearby non-profit agency dealing with housing issues.
• Think creatively about events that are fun and inspirational, but also provide opportunities to learn about Congregational or Christian history and find expression in worship. These might include:
• Writing a pageant or drama about your church’s founding
• Putting together a scrapbook
• Commissioning a hymn or special music
• Creating a timeline (church, community, and national events)
• Organizing a book club around historical themes (see the following link for some suggestions)
• Making a commemorative quilt
• Designating a special gift to an organization that your church played a role in establishing

Two other ideas need special mention: write a history of your church and Organize your records.

Writing your church’s history :
The Congregational Library collection includes many examples of local church histories, from simple booklets to lengthy bound volumes, and will send out samples, if requested.   One of the best reference books for a project like this is James P. Wind, Places of Worship: Exploring Their History (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1990).   The Congregational Library’s web site also offers lists of sources and a thumbnail historical sketch. The library also keeps a good quantity of town histories and vital records, and in some cases, church records themselves.   We also have all old denominational yearbooks, which often provide biographical information on clergymen, church membership figures, and so forth. Your local historical society will also be helpful in providing sources.

Do an oral history project.   Enlist and train younger church members to interview older ones, perhaps even in a “memory booth” at a church supper. Have the interviews transcribed and preserved on acid-free paper.

Organizing and maintaining good church records:
An anniversary year can bring much-needed attention to preserving the past. The Congregational Library can provide local church historians with tips and guidelines for creating and maintaining a good archive of written materials.   (See link.)   It is important to think through what you should keep and what you can safely discard; not all of this, however, has to be written text. Our archivist has written a guide for churches, which is also accessible though our home page under "for church historian"

Create a photo archive of pictures donated by long-time members. Have a history night to display the pictures or show them in a photographic slide or Power Point format.

Keep the “big picture” in view :
An anniversary year can open up important questions of Congregational or Christian identity. What do our “roots” mean?   We can’t bring back the past, and we don’t need to be prisoner to it—but can it also provide a foundation for thinking about who we are and where we’re going? It’s often surprising to see just how much the core principles of a tradition, like the Congregational or Christian, continue to influence the way we do things, even when we don’t recognize them at work.  Why not use this time to start a new conversation around these questions?