My church (Orillia Citadel) was blessed recently by the visit of the Guelph Youth Band. The link began last September when Amanda, a member of the youth band, began attending the Orillia campus of Lakehead University. One of the families in our church welcomed her into in their home, and the members of the band invited her into their fellowship.

Also that fall, a training band was initiated in the church by our youth band leader, as a family consisting of mom, dad and four children, who had joined the church during the summer, expressed an interest in learning brass instruments, together with a member of the Sunday school.

The Guelph youth were the guests for our youth weekend, which was planned by our youth pastor and his team. Several special moments resulted, but I will just share two that were of the greatest significance to me.

During the Saturday night concert, our training band members were invited to sit in with the youth band and play a piece that had some solo moments for them.  Their joy in being part of a wider fraternity, if even for a few moments, shone from their faces at the conclusion of the piece, bringing tears to my eyes.

Also attending our church is a young man named Ryan whose dream has been to sing with our worship team. He has some physical challenges but he is a great worshipper, and he has memorized the song: “Here I am to worship.”  Imagine his excitement when he was invited to join with the team to lead the congregation in worship on the Sunday morning. His whispered comment to the team leader, “Thank you for making my dream come true,” will resonate in my heart for a very long time to come.

And what of the other end of the spectrum? For some time now, my husband and I have been leading chapel services in several local seniors' residences.  However, when our community care ministries met recently, it was unanimously agreed that our overall ministry would be much more effective if each “mini-team” were to visit one residence only, rather than several, and thus build up a deeper relationship with those who attend the services.  Some new community care ministry members have recently been enrolled, so it was also decided that it would be helpful for them to shadow the present leaders until they felt confident enough to lead meetings themselves.

Thus, Ron accompanied Robert and me to a seniors' residence. He said he would be comfortable playing a cornet solo, and being part of a dramatized reading, and that he would also support by listing the names of all in attendance and writing their names on stick-on name tags to help us memorize them.  The residents were quite comfortable about this.

There were 10 residents in attendance, and at the end of the service I felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit to tell them I would pray for each of them by name. The effect was electrical. Rather than bowing their heads, they looked at me and the appreciation on their faces from the sense of inclusion they felt, filled me with a deep sense of joy.

But that wasn't all. On previous visits the residents have immediately left the room, but yesterday no one moved. Then, one by one, they began to ask us questions about ourselves, prompting Ron to tell them that he had not been a Christian very long. He shared how he had frequently driven past the church, but that one Sunday morning he felt an urge to go inside. He experienced such a sense of belonging as a result of the inclusive approach of the greeters that he has been attending ever since.   He shared that he has learned to play the cornet so he can minister with music to others.

When the residents did eventually leave the room, Ron, Robert and I discussed together the lesson that we had re-learned through the experience—that the Kingdom of God is all about belonging! And I travelled home singing in my heart some of the lines from a song by John Gowans that say it far better than I ever could.

“They shall come from the east, they shall come from the west … both the rich and the poor, the despised, the distressed … the black, the white, the dark, the fair … from every tribe and every race, all men as brothers shall embrace; they shall come from the east, they shall come from the west, And sit down in the Kingdom of God.”

Can you think of a greater sense of belonging than that?

Colonel Gwenyth Redhead is a retired Salvation Army officer. She and her husband, Robert, have held a wide variety of appointments in the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. However, her passion has always been to encourage others in creative responses to God through writing of scripts, stories, articles and lyrics (mostly to Robert's music). She has two daughters, Joanne and Corinne, and rejoices that they, too, use the creativity God has given them in ministry.