September 13, 2026
+ So, here we are.
Seventy years.
Seventy years ago, a small group of
people gathered here in north Fargo and dared to imagine a church.
They could not have known exactly what St.
Stephen’s would become.
They could not have imagined all the people
who would pass through these doors, all the prayers that would prayed here and the
worship that would happen here, all the Eucharists celebrated, all the tears
shed, all the laughter shared.
But they planted something.
And seventy years later, here we are.
Now, I know it’s sometimes in our tendency
to romanticize the 1950s.
I do it.
Have you seen my house?
Have you seen my cool 1959 Lane Acclaim
coffee table or end tables or my champagne blond Heywood Wakefield cocktail table?
And for us, seventy years later, we
still have some hold-overs in the way we think about the Church from that time.
We look at the booming churches of the
1950s and 1960s.
Some of you remember that
And fondly.
We look at the overflowing Sunday Schools
and children in the church.
But. . .
Let’s look at those kids from the
1950s and 1960s here at St. Stephen’s.
There are some photos here at St.
Stephen’s showing the kids of St. Stephen’s in about 1965.
There are about 20 or 25 of them in
that photo.
But. . .let’s ask one very hard
question about that photo.
Where are those kids now?
Those kids who are now in their sixties
and seventies?
How are they somehow the future of the
Church of their time?
Of that group of 20 or 25 kids, I know
of only one who is still a member here.
Laura Nylander.
The rest, this morning, are for the
most part, not in church, I can tell you.
They’re sleeping in—worshipping at the
Church of St. Mattress.
Or playing pickle ball.
Or watching the news.
I was a youth leader at Gethsemane
Cathedral almost 30 years ago before I was ordained.
Back then we had 20 some kids in that
confirmation class.
None of them are members at Gethsemane
now.
Or anywhere else.
I know this.
Because I sometimes do their weddings
or the baptisms of their children.
The belief that a church full of children
is the future of the church as a whole is not a reality.
We need to stop comparing our statistics
now to what they were in 1959.
Those numbers weren’t real.
It was a bubble that by the 1970s, popped.
So then we need to ask, where is the
future of the church?
Well, of course children are our future.
But children get older, they get confirmed and no matter how much we say
otherwise, often think that confirmation is “graduation” from church, and they
go off to college and they often don’t ever come back to Fargo.
So, where do I think the real future
of the Church is?
I’ll tell you. Because I’ve seen it
proven true again and again.
It’s in the young adults of the
church.
They are the future.
Lexi, who is being baptized today
(sorry for calling you out today yet Lexi), is the future of the church.
Krisotfer and Katie and Stephanie and
Amy and Josh and John H and others---they are the future of our Church.
They are the ones who actually choose
to be here.
They are the ones who want to
be here.
Who make the commitment to be there.
Who come and step up and help out and
do ministry here.
And our job is to encourage the young
adults to be the next generation of the church, the one that replaces us.
To be vital and committed and
contirbuting members of the church.
To listen to them and to engage with
them and hear their voices and their concerns and their ideas for what the
Church is and will be.
Because, the Church in my opinion as
somehow who does this for a living, isn’t dying.
But it sure is changing.
And change is hard!
Yes, the Church goes through ebbs and
it goes through floes.
But, as we all know, God always
provides.
And God always renews.
I know.
1956 seems like some halcyon age.
But it’s just that.
Halcyon.
Fantasy.
A misty image from the past.
We will never be 1956 again.
If we want to look to history and examine a time more like this time, let’s
look back 100 years, to the 1920s.
Those numbers reflect a time in which
there was no bubble.
Or better yet, let’s not even look at
numbers and the past.
Let’s look at now and the future.
And not lament when we hear yet again about
the Church “dying off.”
In my entire career as a priest these
stories have been consistent.
They were saying the same thing 20 or
30 years ago when I was in seminary and being ordained.
They were saying the Great Generation
was the last generation of the Church.
Then the Silent Generation was going
to be the end of the Church.
They were saying the same thing about Covid.
“They’re never coming back!” the news
articles proclaimed in 2020.
Really???
Our job is to do what we need to do
here and now.
We need to continue to be this
strange, inclusive place.
We need to worship God in liturgy and
music, and follow Jesus and serve others in love.
And to encourage our next generations
of Christians.
And I also want to add, what is
remarkable about St. Stephen’s is not simply that we have survived for seventy
years.
It is that we have continued to become.
Throughout our history, this
congregation has often been willing to move ahead when moving ahead was
difficult.
St. Stephen’s was an early advocate in
our diocese for women in leadership.
St. Stephen’s later stood for the full
inclusion of LGBTQ+ people.
We continue to be a place on the
forefront of eco-justice, with our commitment to the earth and God’s creation.
We continue to be a place of innovative
liturgy and music
We continue to be a place, in often
dark times, of being the place of full-inclusion in a community in which there
are not many opportunities for such a place.
And that’s important to remember today.
In Fargo-Moorhead, there are currently
roughly five or six congregations which are fully committed to fully welcoming all
people.
Five or six.
Just think of that.
In this community of churches.
In this community where there’s a
church on almost every corner.
There are only a handful of
congregations that are committed to welcoming and including all people in love.
And we’re the only Episcopal one in
our community.
And this is not just something we
decided to do last year or ten years ago or twenty years.
This is what we’ve been doing throughout
our history.
Even when those positions brought
resistance from the larger Church and the community and society.
And that tells us something important
about who we are.
We have tried, imperfectly but
persistently, to actually live out what Jesus commands us to do, “Love one
another as I have loved you.”
When he said that, he really meant it.
Not love some.
Not welcome some.
Not make room for some.
Love one another.
That radical welcome remains at the
heart of St. Stephen’s today.
We are a community committed to
justice and to the worth and dignity of every human being.
So today we give thanks for seventy
years—but we do so knowing we are not building a monument to the past.
We are standing on its foundation and
looking forward.
Because somewhere in Fargo or Moorhead
right now there is someone who does not yet know that they need this place.
Someone who has been told there is no
room for them in the Church.
Someone who has been wounded by
religion.
Someone who is lonely.
Someone who is searching.
Someone who simply needs to hear the
words:
You are welcome here.
You are fully included here.
You are loved here.
You belong here.
There is a place for you at this
table.
For seventy years, God has entrusted
this little corner of the Church to us.
And our job is to be faithful to what
has been entrusted to us by God and those founders.
May we honor those who came before us
not simply by remembering them, but by having the same courage they had—to keep
opening the doors wider.
To keep welcoming.
To keep being radical and innovating
and different.
And weird.
To keep pushing ahead.
And pushing back when we need to.
Seventy years of grace.
God’s grace.
And, by the grace of God, we truly do
have a future of hope.
