We walked into an old country church last Sunday morning. It was only by "chance" that we were there. Two months ago, while my parents were visiting, I had taken them for a drive out in the country. We passed a beautiful old church that read "Pastor Charles Meadows" on the sign. Could it really be? I promised my parents that the next time they visited, we would head to that church on a Sunday morning to see if it was THE Charles Meadows.
When I was a little girl in Elkview, West Virginia, a two hour drive north of here, we used to go to a rather large country church. We stopped going around 1977 or so, but our Pastor was Rev. Charles Meadows. Fast forward to last Sunday. Mom, Dad, the kids and I got dressed up and headed out. They peeped around the corner at the older gentleman standing in the front of the church. Could it be him? Thirty-four years is a long time passing to try and determine whether or not you are looking at the same person.
While mom and dad tried to determine if they had the correct Charles Meadows, I said hello to my friend Chassie who attends church there, but didn't expect to see anyone else I knew, as we were in another county and I still find I don't know a lot of people around here. After talking to Chassie, I turned around only to bump right into Haus. Haus is a friend of mine and Rich's that we met probably our first month living here. A big country guy with a heart of gold, always laughing, and always concerned about "Richy" and whether or not he is going to be deployed again anytime soon. I will admit, it was a surprise seeing the bible in his hand, but I was happy to see him and enjoyed watching him sit with his wife near the back of the country church.
I walked up to the Pastor and said, "Excuse me, but are you the same Charles Meadows who was pastor at Mt.Pleasant Baptist Church in Elkview, WV?"
"Yes I am." he replied.
"Well, I am not sure if you remember Al and Lois Fields, but I am their daughter and they are sitting in the back row very anxious to see you."
"Boy, you sure look like your momma." he said, as he got up as hurriedly as his tired body would allow and headed towards the back of the church to greet my parents.
He went on to preach his sermon...a biblically sound one, but , to me, there was nothing that stood out, nothing that caught my heart or stirred the Holy Spirit inside of me. Just as the service was about to come to a close and Pastor Meadows was going to do the altar call, little Richy looked at me with those words every mother loves to hear, "Mom, I have to go to the bathroom."
"Really son?" I whispered, "Can you not just wait until Pastor is finished praying and then I will take you out there?"
Though he said yes, the wiggling of his legs told me otherwise. I decided I had two choices, take him and miss the final prayer, or leave this adorable little church with a yellow puddle as a sign of our visit.
We went out the front door and back into the side where the bathrooms were. Little Richy had not been in the bathroom for two seconds when I heard Pastor Meadows shout, and I mean SHOUT, "PRAISE THE LORD!!!!"
"Hurry up Richy, we are missing something!" I yelled into the bathroom.
Quickly, we came back into the front of the church only to see Haus standing at the altar next to Pastor, tears streaming down his face, as he has just accepted Christ as his Savior. His wife was dropping tears of joy and the smile could not have been wiped off of her face. Tears immediately ran down my face as it began to hit me what a huge blessing it was to witness this , when all I had thought I was doing was bringing my parents to see their old pastor.
Someone in the congregation spoke up and said something nice about the Pastor. Then someone else asked if anyone else had anything to say before they closed the service. The Pastor was crying so hard over Haus' coming to the Lord that he couldn't even speak at that point. Then, my dad stood up. No, let me rephrase that, my dad stood on the PEW in the back of that church, bible in hand, crying. Did I say crying? I have only seen my dad cry one time, ever...ever.
"It was 1968 and I lived in a small town," my dad began through his tears, "I lived in a little neighborhood next to a church. I would drive by that church and they would be tearing a side out to make it bigger and I would say, 'those people are nuts, this is a small town'. Later on they would be tearing out the other side of the building to make it bigger and I would say, 'someone in there is crazy, they do not realize what a small town this is and they are never going to get enough people in that church.' Then one day in 1969, I was at work and my wife called me. She said this man had knocked on our door and told her about the Lord. She wanted me to have what she had, but I wanted nothing to do with it. The next week, he came back and I was there. Right then and there he led me to the Lord and we joined that big church and found out exactly why they were doing so good. They were doing so good because this man right here was leading people to Christ, just like he led us, and if it weren't for him, we would never have been led to Christ when we were."
Well, you know there was not a dry eye in the entire church. I just stood there in complete amazement. A simple trip to a country church. I had just wanted to take my parents to see if there was any chance this was their old pastor and instead of it just being something we did, it turned out to be a huge day of blessing for everyone involved. It was one of the most beautiful days I can remember in quite a long time and I feel so blessed to have been there, seen my childhood Pastor, witnessed Haus as he stood there in the front of the church, and witnessed my own dad and his gratitude. In some way, it made me even more grateful for my own church family too (if that is possible). I thought of Kyra and Richy and how they will remember Roger, our Pastor now and how I pray they can grow up with him being the Pastor we go to every Sunday. I don't know, I thought of a lot of things, but mostly, all I could think was "Look at that, God has gone and outdone Himself again."
