Courtesy of Chortitzer.com
After operating for over a century, the church is being closed and the CMC is holding a celebration service to commemorate the role that it has in played the in Mennonite history both within the Conference and on the grander scale.This final service at Randolph will take place on Sunday, August 29 at 2:30 pm. Faspa will be served after the service. All are welcome to take part in this special event.
Many Berliner Kehlers will recall attending the Randolph CMC Church. Some of the deceased Berliner Kehlers are buried in the Church Cemetery, across the road.
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As we are closing an era in our conference with the closing of our oldest church, Randolph, it would be easy to look at this as a failure, an inability to keep things going. Being that it was the first church that our forefathers started upon coming to Canada, we owe a lot to those men and women who have left us a good place to live, but above all, a solid spiritual legacy that they have lived out through some difficult times.
Now we are in much the same situation that the children of Israel were when they came into Canaan. After time they seemed to forget that God had delivered them from a hard life and brought them to a land that flowed with milk and honey, where they did not have to build their own homes or plant their own vineyards. After a while they forgot their God and did their own thing. When I look at our lives today, we also have a good life style that our forefathers built for us through God’s grace and strength. We stand in that same scenario where we too can so easily forget where all that we have comes from. God, through delivering our forefathers into this land, sustaining them throughout their hardships (though some did not survive), has given us the ability to live in luxury and ease compared to them.
As we journey on without our first church in operation, and as we keep the cemetery across the road as a heritage cemetery to remind us of what God has done for us, we need to remember that we need to continue to serve the same God faithfully as they did before us. We too must keep the faith, finish strong, and leave a good witness for our children to follow as Paul said to Timothy.