Yesterday, January 25, Alice and I attended Thompson’s Station Church early service to say happy anniversary to our friends and neighbors Tom and LeighAnn McCoy. Twenty years ago they became members 7 and 8 of that church. I don’t know their exact attendance now, but it appeared to be well over a thousand in that service and they had another to go. A few weeks ago they had passed the 1800 count so I figure they must be over 2000 now. Tom said in his sermon that they have about 2500 members.
Just think. A young man and his wife accept the invitation to become the minister of a church of 6 people and rather than moving in a couple years — as is most often the case — they hung in there and grew with the church. If one were to count the people who have been members but moved to different locales, helped start other churches, and the like, I imagine the number of people affected would be pretty high. Add to that the folks they’ve helped with benevolence, counseling, and the like and it gets even higher.
Some folks think numbers are nonspiritual. If you want numbers for the sake of numbers, I agree. But if you think of each number as representing a human being, a soul, then each number becomes precious.
Tom makes it clear that it hasn’t been 20 years of roses and happy times. Just like every other relationship, there are ups and downs, valleys and mountaintops. However, they stuck it out and made a major difference in this community.
Perhaps that is a good thing to think about the next time you want to leave a relationship — marriage, family, job, church, whatever. Staying in the name of the Lord does far more good than leaving because times sometimes get tough.