When we came in sight of Cyprus, leaving it on the left, we kept sailing to Syria and landed at Tyre; for there the ship was to unload its cargo.  After looking up the disciples, we stayed there seven days; and they kept telling Paul through the Spirit not to set foot in Jerusalem. When our days there were ended, we left and started on our journey, while they all, with wives and children, escorted us until we were out of the city. After kneeling down on the beach and praying, we said farewell to one another.  Then we went on board the ship, and they returned home again. When we had finished the voyage from Tyre, we arrived at Ptolemais, and after greeting the brethren, we stayed with them for a day.     –Acts 21:3-7 (NASB) 

It is a military tradition to conduct a Hail and Farewell on a routine basis.  These events were especially common in my first 15 years of service as I progressed through the ranks from Lieutenant to Major.  It was a time to welcome new members to the unit and to say farewell and honor the deeds done by the departing Soldier and, if he had one, his family.

I was reminded of this tradition on two separate occasions in the life of our congregation recently.  The first occasion was when we said farewell to a family that had been part of our congregation for more than 20 years.  It seems their work here is done for now and God wants them to use their talents elsewhere for a while.  This was no long-time “pew warmer” family.  No, this was a family of disciples.  The wife and mother of the family had grown up in the congregation.  She and her husband had married in the old building.  Their kids grew up in the congregation, with one of them graduating this past May and the other two in their high school years.  He was our Missions Deacon and led both our local outreach ministry and out of state or out of country missions ministry.  For the most part, all we had to do was give him a budget, show up when he needed us, and champion his work.  He took care of the rest.  His wife was a stalwart example of a Christian wife and mother.  If the family was in town then their kids were at every youth and every other congregational event you could imagine.  They left us with many memories, a huge hole to fill, a legacy of service, and a level of community involvement not seen in the congregation before.  In fact, one of the community involvement events is the annual county parade, which we will participate in this weekend for the fourth year in a row.

I think we can all agree it is important to recognize the service in the kingdom of our brothers and sisters who move on.  Our differences center around how we honor their service.  Since I do not know how you honor the servants you labor with, I will share how we honor ours.

In the past our congregation was small enough we would have had a congregational fellowship and farewell meal for the family.  However, God has blessed us with growth to the point that we cannot honor everyone in this way.  Our congregation is in one of the fastest growing communities and counties in the country.  We are a transient congregation because a large part of our congregation is made up of the young professional working class that is better off than much of the country.  They work for companies and corporations and move where the job sends them.  These factors combine to make it difficult to try and honor everyone leaving with their own event.  Instead, if possible we bring those leaving up in front of the congregation on one of their last Sunday’s with us and say a pray asking for God’s blessings to flow on them as they continue his work elsewhere.  We rely on our small group ministry (which we call House to House or H2H) to honor those leaving on a more personal level since they have formed deeper relationships.  In the case of the family I mentioned earlier, they were honored twice in H2H.  First, their teens were honored in the teen group and then the parents were honored in their H2H group.  In many ways, this way of honoring our moving members is much more effective and personal than any congregational fellowship could ever be.

The second event reminding me of the military’s Hail and Farewell tradition occurred the same month, a couple of weeks later.  We had three families express their desire to be numbered with the saints in our congregation and join us in God’s work in the community.  Our tradition is for my fellow shepherds and me to meet with those expressing said desire, and we try to do so before we announce from the pulpit they have joined us.  This pre-announcement meeting (which admittedly happens after the fact sometimes) is an opportunity for us to match names with faces and families, introduce ourselves and our backgrounds, and to all around share in a time of discovering how we all ended up at the same place and time.  We like to take the meeting and find out where our new members would like to serve the congregation so we can put them in contact with the right folks.  We also take this time to encourage our new members to get involved in H2H if they have not done so already.  Although, we have found most new members are already involved in H2H and it is one of the factors in their choosing our congregation in which to serve.  I look forward to these meetings for many reasons and we have been told many times by those we are meeting with how much they appreciate it.

I hope your congregation has some “Hail and Farewell” method of its own.  If not, I encourage you to do so.  Maybe some of what you read here will inspire ideas of your own on how to honor both those leaving and joining the work in your congregation.

May your blessings exceed mine today and every day.

-DEM