Family

I love my family.  I’ve got cousins all over South Carolina, and across the nation.  We are a pretty close-knit group.  But they are not my only family.  Facebook has reconnected me to a bunch of my friends from high school, and they are my family, too.  I am a lucky man.

And there is another group … People with whom I’ve been connected in ministry over the years.  From places like Washington Avenue, Enoree, Fairview, Woodmere, and now Ebenezer.  And they are STRONG family.  They live across the nation.  While most of them I worked with in Youth Ministry, they now have families of their own.  Serve in churches and ministries.  Work as doctors, lawyers, ministers, and a variety of other occupations.  They chase their dreams and live their lives, and it blesses me to see it all unfold.  They are family.

It’s funny:  Yesterday, I was thinking about how close this family is and how (many years ago) Seth Buckley modeled this idea of FAMILY in ministry.  I was thinking about some of those people and how we all pull together in times like SC has been through in the last few weeks.  And about 30 minutes after all of that processed through my mind, my phone rang.  It was Chris Meaders … The Iceman himself.  Once upon a time, I was Chris’ 7th grade Sunday School teacher.  I was his JV basketball coach.  He has grown up a little since then, and is now the Missions and Discipleship Pastor at Mt Airy Baptist Church in Easley.

He wanted to check on us and said he had a burden … He and his pastor were looking for a church that would need help after all of this flooding and mess.  We discussed it and I tried to do my part to connect him with a target.  And God only knows what HE will do with the faithfulness of Chris, his pastor and his folks from Mt Airy.

Family … Wow!!  I am blessed.