Sunday was the 205th Anniversary of my church, FBCDC. To spruce up the website’s front page last week, I asked Mary, the current acting church secretary, if she could spare a few historic church photos from the archives, and she sent me these lovely pictures, some dating back to the first days of the church in the early 1800s, when it was just four ministers and six laypersons gathering in the old Treasury Building, and later the current location — but the old building — at 16th and O NW.

I was also in charge of the Gospel reading for the day — the Parable of the Prodigal Son, from Luke, which I gave my most bombastic effort. (Not for nothing, after all, was I bronze medalist in interpretive reading back in Ateneo Grade School.) If your browser or media player can handle WMA audio, you can listen to me read from the pulpit, and hear the choir sing Bruckner’s “Locus Iste,” sound files courtesy Pastor Jim. (Note that I am also singing in the choir, so whenever I read the Gospel, it means that after singing I must spring to the pulpit immediately from the chancel while the echoes of the gradual are still fading. It’s fun.)

(Also see FBCDC+204, my entry from last year’s anniversary.)