Home

Home is surely where the heart is.  And the heart is where home is.  And home is made up of more than walls, furniture and rooms because heart and home are truly intangible.  Love and respect, honor and dignity, significance and value, laughter and empathy coalesce to become that place of refuge and comfort that is truly the heart and hearth of home.

We know full well that the church, as the Body of Christ, encompasses all of these values and becomes the true home of extended family.  And each of us has been adopted in, some decades or generations ago, some only recently as “newborns”. 

Though she sometimes attended services in a building, Victoria had never entered into the true family life “at home” in a church.  But friends are sometimes as near as family, and family never gives up on family.  So it was with a young man from her school who invited her to his youth group middle school Lock-In their sixth-grade year.  At the time it just didn’t jive for Victoria, so she didn’t return.

Yet love is ever-present and ever-active.  Just as the fragrance of Christ permeates an environment, love and respect speak powerfully to watching and listening hearts.  As Victoria observed those attributes in the family life of her ever-faithful friend over the following months, she was prompted to say yes to his second invite to the Lock-In during their seventh-grade year.  And Victoria’s heart responded to the call to come home.  She began to attend Fusion and church services regularly and was enveloped by the love of God and of His people.  She joyfully embraced a relationship with Jesus Christ and her brothers and sisters at Salem First Baptist.
Along with heaven, this home at SFBC is where Victoria’s heart is and where she has begun to serve with an excited passion, blessed by those intangible and intrinsic values of the church.  What a wonderful home and family, a place to truly belong, even as a young teen attending on her own!  We love you, Victoria, and rejoice in your love for Jesus and the church!