Stephen Yeargin

Sunday morning my wife and I will be joining a Disciples of Christ congregation in Nashville. It marks the end of a two and a half year search for a spiritual home since first contemplating the move back to middle Tennessee, and a wonderful beginning. We sat down with the senior pastor after services last Sunday to discuss the particulars of membership, and found them to be just as open and accepting as our time there had lead us to believe.

My story with regular church attendance is a mixed one. As a young teenager, I had attended Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist congregations at some point for extended periods of time. I eventually settled on a rural, Missionary Baptist church down a long highway and literally surrounded on three sides by corn fields. It was there that I found salvation and declared membership through baptism during a Wednesday night service in September of 1997.

I remained fairly active in the church until moving to Nashville in 1999 to finish up my junior and senior year of high school. I only visited a few times after that and hardly at all when I started college 15 miles away. It was during that time that I came to realize that my personal walk in the teachings of Christ and the church as an institution did not always mesh. They were not irreconcilable differences, rather a sense that my worldview might cause discomfort if shared with certain congregants.

My faith never really wavered: I deeply believe in a higher power, and while my conversations with the Almighty are less frequent than they have been in the past, I take great comfort in knowing that there is a grace out there that can accept me despite my many faults and that, through faith, all things are possible.

I have enjoyed, and have even been deeply moved by, our previous visits and the warm welcome that has been extended. I am excited that we are starting this new journey together.