“Homecoming means coming home to what is in your heart.”
We had homecoming at Goshen today. We were celebrating 212 years as a body of believers in this area. Our building isn’t 200 years old, but it is more than 100 years old. It was dedicated with an all day meeting and dinner on the grounds in 1889. The visiting speaker, Bro. B.F. Hungerford wrote this diary entry about the day which was on the last Sunday in September.
“5th Sunday. Took an early start for Old Goshen church 7 miles from Lawrenceburg to preach the dedicatory sermon of their new house of worship. Bro. Burford is a slow driver. Road hilly and rocky. Was two and one half hours going 7 miles. Was worried at the pace but couldn’t complain. Reached there at 10 1/2 a.m. House full of women and babies. Woods full of men and horses. After some choir singing, preached the sermon. Text Psalm 127:1 and Ex. 19:4,5,6. An old time basket dinner.”
And now all these years later we are still having those old time basket dinners to celebrate our church. Things aren’t quite the same as when Bro. Hungerford made his way to Goshen. A Sunday school addition was built and dedicated in 1949. While that was before my time, I’m absolutely sure the ladies of the church brought more baskets of food that day. Then a few years ago our little congregation stepped out in faith and built a beautiful fellowship hall next to the church. That’s where we’ve been having those basket dinners at Homecoming and for all our “eatin’ meetings” ever since.
I became part of this church family when I got married a lot of years ago. At the time, my husband’s family lived just a mile or so down the road. Darrell and I didn’t live that close but we drove the miles to attend church with his family and we never stopped driving out to our little country church even though we pass a wonderful bigger church not far from where we live. But Goshen became our church home and the drive wasn’t so bad.
Things were different when most of the little churches in our county started up. Back then, people came to church in buggies or maybe walking. So, it was like one-room schoolhouses. The people needed several spread around the county to make the trips short. Automobiles changed that and made it easier to travel farther to church, but during the Great Depression and after, most country folk had to count their pennies. They didn’t want to spend extra gas to go across the county to another church when one was right down the road from where they lived.
But times change. We still drive the ten miles or so to our country church. Other members drive the same or farther. We like the family feel of the church, but because we are small we don’t attract new people the way the bigger churches in our area do. When my children were young, the church had several families. We had all ages and enjoyed activities with the kids. Our attendance was good, sometimes 80 or more. That might not sound like a lot to you if you go to one of the big churches, but in those days, most of our church pews had people sitting in them. Now our attendance is generally around 25. Even though we do seem to be drawing in a few new people, we have plenty of empty pews waiting for new people to come on in and join us.
But we didn’t have those empty pews this morning as you can see in the picture above. Today our pews were packed and we had to bring out some extra chairs. Folks came home to enjoy a time of memory and fellowship. We had a pastor return who got his start at Goshen in 1958 and so many of the young people in the church at that time came back to see him and do some reminiscing. My husband was one of those happy to see him and his wife. You can tell that from his smile in the picture here. Bro. Al and Peggy Hardy’s visit made our day extra special and had a lot of people smiling. The day was a blessing.
Part of that blessing was having the Patriot Quartet bring the Gospel through song to us. Darrell sings bass with the group and enjoys being at Goshen on Homecoming with his fellow singers. I’ll try to post a video on FB next week of one of their songs I videoed.
Have you ever been to an old fashioned basket dinner at a little country church?
If not, as I suggested to my social media friends, you need to put that on your bucket list. And then come on out to Goshen on the 1st Sunday in October next year. Those of us gifted with another year will be here with baskets of food and a box of Famous Recipe fried chicken. You can count on plenty of delicious desserts. Today we had pies and cupcakes and banana pudding and a carrot cake trifle and brownies and well, too many to name. Nobody went away hungry.
Giveaway for Suzanne Woods Fisher’s book A Healing Touch and my book, The Song of Sourwood Mountain is still going on. I’ll pick a winner Wednesday and notify that person by email. Then I’ll share the winner’s first name and last initial here on my blog post Wednesday night. The giveaway is open to USA only. (That pesky expensive postage.) To enter you need to be 18 or older. You can throw your name in my giveaway hat by leaving a comment on this post or my post last Wednesday here where I share more about Suzanne’s book. Deadline to enter is midnight EST on Tuesday, October 8, 2024.