An Old Church Plans for Multiplication

by Ron Hamilton, CCCC Conference Minister

The Congregational Christian Church of Los Angeles celebrated its 125th anniversary on Sunday, August 18, 2013. The day began with a worship service, a youth cantata and a meal. The special events concluded with an evening worship service. Rev. Dr. Ron Hamilton, CCCC Conference Minister, brought the anniversary service message.

A history of the church was presented in the anniversary service. The members of the church were reminded of God’s faithfulness to the church in many ways.

• The church was started by a group of farmers who came to California from Iowa.
• It endured the changes in the community when the Hollywood Freeway was built near the church and many members were forced to relocate.
• It was forced to rebuild after the Sylmar earthquake in California in 1971.
• It made the transition of leadership with a primary focus on leadership from a growing Filipino membership.
• It went three years without a pastor under the leadership of faithful members of the church.

While the church looked back and celebrated God’s faithfulness, they also looked forward with a desire to live in faithful obedience to the Lord Jesus in this generation. The evening concluded with a statement of the church’s vision.

It is an important part of our vision statement that we send out missionaries and plant churches. This vision statement is the reason why we exist as a church. That is to preach the Gospel to the lost, to equip the saints for the ministry and to send out missionaries and plant churches. And all for God’s glory.

We are heading in this way now to send out missionaries and plant churches. It is really encouraging to see how our church has existed for 125 years as we took that path of obedience to Matthew 28:18–20. Our church strategy is to plant churches in the Philippines, Africa, Russia, India, China and other countries in the 1040 Window. We will support church planters full-time, help them build their pastoral libraries and develop resources for ministry, and help them build self-supporting churches that make disciples and multiply themselves. We are committing our resources to this mission.

We are also going to give our support to the CCCC and their ministry of planting churches. We are going to begin partnering with the CCCC in celebration of our 125th anniversary. We now want to give the CCCC something to demonstrate that support at this time and we ask Rev. Dr. Ron Hamilton to receive this gift as a token of our support..

The Conference rejoices with the church in this wonderful celebration and thanks God for the example that they are providing to our member churches at this time.