Do you miss Homecoming? I do, too. Deeply. Though the COVID experience has disrupted our ability to celebrate Yates’ birthdays the past couple of Octobers, there’s good news: a birthday party is coming this month! I hope you’ll come and celebrate Yates’ 144th birthday at a Homecoming Cookout on the grounds on Sunday evening, October 9, at 5:00 PM. Together, we will enjoy hamburgers, hot dogs, and picnic sides (vegetarian burgers will be available). We’ll hear special music by the Continentals, play lawn games, and all we ask is that you bring a favorite side or dessert to add to the feast.
Bring yourself and your household — including your pet, if you wish (leashed or otherwise contained, as appropriate!). Come with a lawn chair or picnic blanket, and don’t forget that favorite side or dessert to share.
Over the years of my ministry, I have had to grow into the experience of homecoming. The churches I have served in North Carolina have taught me much about homecoming. I have been moved by the joy of reconnecting with longtime friends in faith. I have been inspired by looking back at the lives and shared experiences that shaped the church’s character. I have been renewed by remembering that it is through Christ and in Christ that the church exists and leans into its future.
I often turn to a homecoming prayer written by John Killinger to set the tone:
It is always good to go home, O God. We are grateful that our final home is in you, for that is where our hearts are. We thank you for the things about home that remain comfortable to us — the good people we knew, the memories that are rekindled when we return, the church where they sing the old songs, pray real prayers, and declare the gospel the way they always did.
And we thank you for what those returning bring to us at home — a sense of freshness, a reminder that there is a world out there beyond the one we know, a witness to the power of the church and the congregation to draw them back, and a testimony to the way the gospel continues to go out from this place to the farthest corners of the earth.
Let it be so.
Grace and Peace,