Below is a social media post that our Regional Minister, Rev. Dr. Adam Harmon, wrote after he visited with us for Homecoming last Sunday. He loved being here with us, and he was especially moved by the hat rack that our own JR Beckwith built from the two doors that once served as the church's front entrance before the Gathering Space was built. Thank you, JR, for creating such a lovely way of honoring our past people and history as we continue to look forward to all that God has in store for us now and in the future. Thank you, Union Family, for being who you are. The way you do life and ministry together is a rare and wonderful gift! Jesus loves you, Union Family, and I do too.
Two old doors from Union Christian Church's building now hang inside the church, turned into a coat and hat rack. The hats staying there, I was told, belong to members of this congregation who have passed. Someone decided their story should stay close enough to touch every time a person walks through.
I worshiped with Union today on their Homecoming Sunday, 174 years of ministry in Watkinsville, complete with a Blessing of the Backpacks for their students and school staff heading into a new year. I had the honor of preaching during the service, and Pastor Heather Webb gathered us around the Lord's Table. The fellowship hall filled afterward with a covered dish lunch that felt like the whole point of the day.
But it was that hat rack I kept coming back to. A gray fedora. A wide-brimmed hat with a soft scarf still looped around it. A dark felt hat with a polka dot scarf. A smaller tweed cap by the door. The scarves hanging with the hats representing a husband and wife. Six people, six lives, hanging where everyone can see. Union's mission statement says they are called by God and led by the Holy Spirit to be a community that learns and shares the stories of faith. Whoever decided those old doors and those hats belonged together understood exactly what that means.
That, I think, is what homecoming actually is. Not only old friends finding their way back for a Sunday, but a congregation choosing to keep the people who built this place close enough to remember by name, one generation handing the next a reason to come home.
Grateful for Union Christian Church, for Pastor Heather Webb, and for a homecoming that told the truth about what it means to belong to each other.
