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This is From the Archives, where we present something from our extensive collection of archival photos, records and all manner of materials dating back to when the church was First Methodist Episcopal, to First Methodist, to Church of the Savior, to St. Paul's to Crossroads.
It's World Communion Sunday this weekend, and this week's archives items are related not only to that, but also highlight some interesting historical continuity here at Crossroads.
World Communion Sunday was started at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh in 1933, and has grown into a global movement which the United Methodist Church has long particpated in.
Here is the bulletin from Church of the Savior from October 4, 1981. We could use the same outline from this service for a service today. Look at the Confession and the Absolution - they were standard items back then and still are today. They sang a Doxology and a Gloria Patri. They began their service with a carillon prelude. They sang Let us Break Bread Together.
Even the church's phone number was the same number 45 years ago that it still is today: 455-0153 (though we have since added the 330 area code at the beginning).
This also happened to be the weekend in 1981 that they dedicated the memorial kneelers, which are still in our sanctuary and which we still use when we kneel at the Altar rail. The subject of those kneelers could be an entire From the Archives discussion itself.
On the back cover, hidden among the announcements, is a statement that the church observes open Communion, meaning that the church offers the sacrament to anyone who wishes to receive it, whether they are a Methodist, or even a Christian, or not. And today, at Crossroads, we still carry out that same practice every time we celebrate Communion. It may almost seem a trivial thing now, except when you remember that there are still churches today who exclude anyone from their church's sacrament who isn't a member. It wasn't trivial 45 years ago to take such a stance, and it still isn't.
You can also read on the back cover that Bishop James S Thomas was going to be on Cleveland's channel 5 that day. He, of course, is the namesake of the former James S Thomas United Methodist Church, and is himself the center of many discussions about the history of the church in this area.
But we're moving past all of that to focus on this: There's an interesting little historical coincidence in this bulletin, namely the announcement of something called the Crossroads Seminars.
The word "crossroads" was always in the air at First Methodist/Church of the Savior. Virginia Gingrich entitled her two red-covered church history books Church at the Crossroads. That word was on the minds of people when a name for the new combined Church of the Savior/St Paul's congregation had to be decided upon in this century.
The second archives item is the signup sheet that someone made (and Virginia saved) for these seminars.
If you're interested, the Crossroads Seminars you could sign up for 45 years ago in 1981 were:
1) Handbells Ringer with Margaret Becker
2) Social Issues with Leland Cope
3) Old Testament Prophets with Rev Kutz (the church's Associate Pastor)
4) Death, Gying and Grief with Rev Jay Althouse
5) Self-Discipline, Nutrition and Exercise with Roberta VanDorsten
6) The Apostle's Creed with the church's main Pastor, Dr Griffith
Little did people 45 years ago know that every time the word Crossroads came up, they were foretelling a little of the church's future. Which is a great reminder to always be asking ourselves: what seeds are we all planting for the future, knowingly or not, right now?
(Click to open the PDFs in new windows.)
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