Giving Thanks for My Home Church

Giving Thanks for My Home Church

 Home church. 

That’s where I traveled this past weekend.  When you read those words, I bet you made a mental journey to somewhere special, too.  What is it that makes that church where you grew up, or where you first came to know Christ, such a happy holy place to return to in person or in memory? Let me tell you a few of the reasons why my home church is so precious to me. 

My home church, the East Park Baptist Church, is the only church my family attended together.  That white stucco building on the little side street of Ebaugh Avenue is the place where my father and mother, sister, brother and I shared the same Sundays, enjoyed or endured the same sermons, were touched by the same solo, and laughed at the same funny things that inevitably happen when a group of people work hard to be reverent.  Sometimes all five of us were involved in the same church event; a Lenten drama, a Christmas musical, a mission project.  When I moved my church membership to the first place I served on staff, the five of us were never at the same church again.  But we did, in our home church, create a treasury of memories we enjoy to this day. 

My home church is where I learned, through flesh and blood examples, what loving Jesus and living for Jesus means. I think of A.G. Vaughn, who wasn’t related to us (he spelled his last name with only one “a”), but who sat with me on the ride side front pew every Sunday for months so my parents could sing in the choir.   I remember the sisters, Sarah and Annie Beth, who never had children of their own, but taught three generations of our family in Sunday School.  I think of Lowell Sweat whose willingness to invest in the lives of rowdy boys to shape them into Christian young men led him to work with us in Bible study, Training Union, and Royal Ambassadors at the same time.  Jack Fulmer, our bivocational music minister, never had a part-time devotion to his ministry and taught me more music theory than I learned in any private lesson or band or orchestra in which I played.  Among the great pastors who served that church while I was there, I best remember Harry Floyd who called me down for running in the church building, counseled me when I professed my faith, baptized me as a believer, prayed for me in the hospital, served on my ordination council, and gave me part of his pastoral library when I was called to my first church.  Even today, my first pastoral reflex is to do what Harry Floyd did. 

Perhaps the greatest gift my home church has given me is encouragement.  East Park believed that young people could become Christian leaders.  On youth Sunday, practically every lesson was taught by a youth.  Every leadership role in worship was filled by a student who had been coached by a member of the staff.  Before I left my home church, I had led prayer in worship, taken up the offering, led congregational singing, shared a solo, and made my first clumsy attempts at preaching.  I wasn’t Billy Graham, but they couldn’t have praised my efforts any more if I had been.  My home church invited me to explore, discover and develop my ministry gifts.  What wonderful Christian people!

Due to some overwhelming building needs, my home church will close the doors of its present location at the end of June to merge with another Baptist church.  The work will go on and so will the influence of that holy place and those loving people upon my life and the lives of countless others.  I'm so thankful to call East Park my home church.