My teenaged years were spent in my father's small Reformed Baptist church in Ohio. We never had thoughts of becoming a mega-church, but we never turned away a new family or two. A sight I remember seeing repeatedly, however, was the tendency for us to suddenly have a caravan of visitors.
There would be nothing for months. Just the regulars would show up. They'd worship on Sunday, fix the roof or cut the grass on Monday, worship on Wednesday, show up for Bible study on Thursday, clean the church on Saturday and repeat.
Then visitors often showed up in groups of three to five families, and there was often a story involved -- a story of being removed from another church. At times, these stories were one of injustice, and in some situations, my father would try to help them heal the rift with their previous churches.
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