An Honest Reflection at 250 Years
This year, the United States turns 250 years old. That is a long time. Long enough to carry real glory and real grief. Long enough to accumulate both stories worth celebrating and wounds worth lamenting. Long enough for any honest person of faith to hold the anniversary with some complexity — grateful and sobered at the same time.
There is a word for that posture. It is humility.
As a Spirit-filled church near Grand Rapids rooted here in Ravenna for over fifty years, we want to mark this anniversary the way the people of God have always marked uncertain seasons: with honesty, with prayer, and with a deep trust that God has not abandoned his purposes in this world.
This post is not a political statement. It is a pastoral one. And it begins with a question worth sitting with: What does faithfulness look like when the nation you love is imperfect, and the kingdom you belong to is not of this world?
The People of God Have Always Lived Between Two Kingdoms
The early church did not have a nation of their own. They lived inside empires, under rulers they did not choose, in cultures that did not always welcome them. And yet they were not nihilists. They were not cynics. They did not disengage.
They prayed for kings. They served their neighbors. They blessed the cities where they were planted. They held their hope in God with both hands — not because the world was good enough to deserve that hope, but because God was trustworthy enough to sustain it.
That is the long tradition we inherit. Christians have always been, in some sense, what Scripture calls "strangers and exiles" — people whose deepest citizenship is not stamped on a passport but written in the Lamb's book of life. The apostle Peter described it plainly: "Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul" (1 Peter 2:11).
That is not a call to indifference. It is a call to a different kind of engagement — one shaped by kingdom values rather than tribal ones.
Humility Is Not the Same as Ingratitude
Some people hear the word "humbled" and think it means diminished. It doesn't.
To be humbled is to see clearly. It is to receive a gift without pretending you earned it. It is to love something enough to be honest about its failures. It is to hold gratitude and grief together without letting either one cancel the other out.
Abraham Lincoln — in the midst of this nation's most terrible crisis — called for a National Day of Fasting and Prayer. He described Americans as "the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven" and then, in the very same breath, asked whether the calamity of war had come as a correction from God upon a proud people who had forgotten the source of their blessing. That was not anti-American sentiment. That was biblical sobriety. That was humility in its truest form.
We can love this country — and we do — and still acknowledge that no nation is beyond the need for repentance, reformation, and the mercy of God.
What It Means to Be a Hopeful Exile
The prophet Jeremiah wrote to the Jewish exiles living in Babylon — people displaced, confused, and grieving the home they had lost. His words were bracing and, perhaps, surprising: "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29:7).
Pray for it. Serve it. Seek its good — not because Babylon was perfect, not because every policy was right or every leader was just — but because God's people are called to be a blessing wherever they are planted.
That is what hopeful exile looks like. Not despair. Not uncritical nationalism. But engaged, prayerful, sacrificial presence — rooted in a hope that does not come from political outcomes but from the promises of God.
At Outpouring Worship Center, we hold to this deeply. Our mission is to love God, love people, and change the world. Not a corner of the world. Not only the people who look like us or vote like us. The world. That is a big, beautiful, and humbling calling.
A Faithful Church in a Complex Nation
We have been part of this community in Ravenna for over fifty years. That is its own kind of long obedience. We have prayed through national crises, local struggles, seasons of prosperity, and seasons of grief. We have watched generations of families grow up in this church and carry their faith out into the world.
What we have learned is this: the church is most faithful when it is most distinct. Not combative. Not withdrawn. But genuinely different — shaped by a love that is patient, a hope that is steady, and a truth that does not shift with the cultural winds.
As this nation turns 250, we want to be that kind of church. A community that prays earnestly for this country. That serves our neighbors without asking who they voted for. That holds the banner of human dignity high because every person is made in the image of God. That lives with enough humility to say: we do not have all the answers, but we know the One who does.
A Word of Invitation
If you are reading this and you are tired — tired of the noise, the division, the uncertainty about where this country is headed — you are welcome here. Not because we have a political program to offer you. We don't. But because we gather week after week around something older and steadier than any nation: the Word of God, the worship of Jesus, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
"Fresh Outpouring. Every Generation." That is our tagline and our prayer. We believe God is still at work — in Ravenna, in Michigan, in America, and to the ends of the earth.
Come and see.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna, Michigan.