Homecoming
Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni or other former members of an organization in order to celebrate. It is a tradition by many high schools, colleges, and universities in the United States and Canada – and sometimes even churches!
This fall marks the 75th anniversary of our existence as a Christian Reformed Church. First located in Bellwood from 1949-1963, then in Elmhurst from 1964 until the present. To celebrate, we’ve invited many former members and friends to return and join in the fun. We’ll have a great worship service honoring God for his faithfulness and goodness over the past 75 years. After worship, it’ll be time to celebrate with some great food (even cotton candy!), specialty coffees, a bonus hymn sing for those who want to belt out the old favorites, and even the promise of t-shirts! (stay tuned on that last one)
In preparation for this Sunday, a few serendipitous things have happened to me (you might even call them “God sightings”. First, Justin Lawrence managed to find an old record book amidst some old Elmhurst CRC files and place it on my desk. This book contains the handwritten minutes of the meeting in the fall of September, 1949, when the church was officially constituted. The pages record the names of the first 15 families that made up the church. Amazing! Also incredible that one of those first families requested to rescind their membership only two weeks into the existence of that newborn church. Even the good old days were complicated!
Secondly, in preparation for this event, a few of us staff members took to the old neighborhood in Bellwood to shoot some video in front of the house where our church first met (3510 Monroe Street in Bellwood) and across the street in our church building which still stands proudly and is home to a different congregation, the Monroe Baptist Church. As Kyle Olson, Billy Heschl and I stood there, a woman named Shirley pulled up and asked what we were doing. After making her acquaintance, it became clear that she is a leader of that church these days. Kyle pulled up some old photos from the early 1950s, photos of the Sunday school 100 kids strong. Shirley gasped and stood with mouth agape. Her knowledge of the neighborhood only went back to the 1980s. We shared a special moment, marveling at how the same God who had drawn kids to a church 75 years ago was still doing the same work, on the same block, all these years later. And not only that, our same good God has multiplied the work and sent one part of his family off to continue in Elmhurst while planting a new part of his family to continue on in Bellwood.
Sometimes, I feel like things might be unraveling in the many institutions dear to me here in the United States of America. And then God sends moments like this—like a thunderclap—which remind me that his goodness and mercy are always at work, silently oiling the gears of history, building a Kingdom that can only sometimes be perceived with our physical senses.
I hope and pray that this Sunday’s homecoming at Elmhurst CRC might give all of you a sense of God’s beautiful work over time, even through the likes of us. I would love to see you there for the celebration.
– Pastor Gregg