Coming Home

My last post was about the campmeeting sermon that I'll deliver in three days.  The theme for this year is "Coming Home" - a theme that I've struggled with for several weeks.  If you're planning on being there this week, don't worry, I won't spoil my sermon here.

Home is a tricky topic for me.  I don't think of home like many other people think of home.  I was born in 1980 and in 18 years (before college), my family lived in 6 different houses in 3 different states.  In that time, I went to 5 different schools.  When I went to college, my family moved again.  You remember how your parents turned your bedroom into a guest room while you were away?  Mine moved to Nebraska before my junior year.  After college, I moved to Metro Atlanta for grad school.  I served one church for 2 1/2 years and another for 2 years before moving to McDonough, where I am now.

Since then, I have been a candidate for ministry in a conference that I did not have a membership in.  Upon commissioning and ordination, I became an itenerant minister, which means that if I'm like the other United Methodist Pastors, I'll move an average of every 6 years for the rest of my career.

I think I might qualify as a nomad or a rambler.  In my 29 years, the longest I've lived in one house was 5 years.  Can you see why this theme might be a challenge for someone like me?

I have several friends that talk about home being the place that they graduated from high school, where their parents still live and they still have friends that they reconnect with.  That concept is something completely foreign to me.

Home has a different meaning for me.  It's not the house or the town (maybe that's why I so easily see the church as something more than a building).  Home isn't the place or the things that I've known my whole life.  Home is where I find love and support.  Home is where my wife is or my parents are.  Home is where there is a church that accepts me as one of their own.  Home, for me, is Valdosta, LaGrange, Dacula, Lawrenceville, McDonough, Oakland, Duluth, and Milledgeville.  It's a 1960's brick house on GA-81.  It's the new home of my parents.  It's a small church ready to bust out and a large church bringing up the next generation of ministers.  Its an in-between church where people still call my only by my first name (instead of Reverend Stroud).  Its a college campus.

In so many ways I think I'm blessed.  Home is wherever I am with others that love me.  I'm not tied to a place like so many others are.  The big question, I guess, is what it means to me to "come home". 

Where is home for you?  Have you thanked God that you have a home?