Do you know your family history? Some people enjoy genealogy and doing a deep dive on their family tree. They’ll use websites like Ancestry.com to trace their lineage to a woman who arrived on the Mayflower or a couple who came to America via Ellis Island. Or maybe they’ll trace their ancestors to a particular village in West Africa. I enjoy hearing stories about my ancestors and the places they lived in and the circumstances they lived through. Their story seems to enrich my life experience. 

We can feel the same way about our church family, of course. Christianity now has—looks at watch—two millennia of history, and the story of our faith starts well before Christianity began. All this history means that the church has a very interesting, very extensive, and very complicated family tree.

Think about just one entry on the branch of the Christian family tree called “Methodism.” Look at that branch’s founding figure, John Wesley. We know that Wesley was deeply influenced by his mother, Susanna, and his father, Samuel. We know that he worked closely with his brother, Charles. And we know what a fruitful, diverging branch of our faith Wesley represents—he pruned back the overgrown weeds of the Church of England, he helped plant the Christian faith in America, and he fertilized Christian ideas by traveling among foreign peoples including Native Americans and Central Europeans. When you read Wesley’s story, you think, “Oh wow. This is *our* story.” And it’s a great story!

Biographies of believers can be fascinating and uplifting. I first became acquainted with such stories through a course that I took in seminary, but I have found historical church lives to be surprisingly relevant for the work that I do every day. Often the problems that we face as a congregation have relevant touchstones in times past. Earlier believers faced the pressures of secularism, for example, not only in 2023 but in 1823. Heck, in regular, old 23! The temptation for people to drop church, the confusion of politics and popular philosophies, the competition for our energy and attention—these seem like singularly modern challenges. But no, they are ancient.

Believers who went before us can teach us about proper fidelity to the Bible, about the use of reason, about compassionate community, and certainly about church divisions. Our faith family tree shows us that branches can be very far apart and still remain solidly connected by our roots in Christ and our forebears. 

In our worship series, Believers: Christians Who Inspire Us, I’ve been preaching about members of our Christian family tree. One of the challenges for me was to choose only a handful of examples. I mean, history is long but a sermon series shouldn’t be! I struggled to determine who was most important and my choices are just that, choices. Someone like Perpetua, who lived shortly after the New Testament was written, stands out because of her willingness to die for her faith. Augustine, on the other hand, encourages us with his vital writings and influential teachings. Instead of John Wesley, I chose his mother, who is less well known. And, as we are a Protestant church, Martin Luther serves as a pivotal node in the family tree.

I hope you’re enjoying this series and will gain insight from it through the month of September. If you’re interested in doing a deep dive into our Christian geneology, may I recommend a book called “131 Christians Everyone Should Know” by the editors of Christian History magazine? I’ve relied on its succinct entries as I pore over the rich legacy that our Christian family tree has left us.