08/30/2026
(Long I know but worth the read)
I walked through a lot of doors getting ready for today.
The doors of our Corps office—over and over again.
The automatic doors of Walmart, looking for one more thing I was convinced we needed.
The doors of Party City and Staples, trying somehow to make Christmas appear in Salisbury while the calendar still said August.
There were emails to send, decorations to hang, bracelets to prepare, letters to print, name tags to organize, refreshments to arrange, and plans that seemed to change almost as quickly as we made them.
But this morning, none of those doors mattered.
There was only one set of doors I cared about.
The doors of our church.
And this morning, they opened.
At first, people began arriving a few at a time.
Mothers carrying little ones.
Fathers walking beside their children and family.
Grandparents.
Brothers and sisters.
Children holding hands.
Some walked in smiling and talking. Others stepped inside a little more cautiously, probably wondering exactly what they had gotten themselves into by accepting an invitation to Angel Tree Sunday—in August!
And then I watched our Corps do something beautiful.
They made room.
CSM Joshua Meredith stood before a chapel filled with faces we had never seen before and welcomed them into our church family.
Melissa Brigman sat at the table by the door, writing first names on sticker after sticker. They were simple name tags, but I loved what they represented.
We didn't want people to be applications.
We didn't want them to be numbers.
We wanted to know their names.
Betty Wilson got everything ready in the Kitchen and out to make it look so beautiful!
YPSM Debi Meredith seemed to be everywhere at once, helping families, making sure children had their name tags, and doing all those little things that make people feel like someone was expecting them.
And everywhere I looked, our Corps people were welcoming, serving, smiling, helping and talking with people they had never met before.
That's when a thought hit me:
We had prayed for these families before we knew their names.
Today, our prayers had faces.
Then, somehow, right in the middle of a hot North Carolina August—
Christmas came to Salisbury.
The Christmas tree was decorated.
The chapel was full.
And we sang:
“Joy to the World, the Lord is come!”
It felt a little strange singing those words in August.
But it also felt wonderfully right.
Because the message wasn't just true in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
It's true today.
Then came one of those pictures I hope stays in my mind for a very long time.
The children started coming forward for the children's message.
And they kept coming.
And coming.
Until the front of our chapel seemed to disappear beneath a sea of little faces.
I shared John 3:16 with them and told them there were two words I especially wanted them to remember:
LOVED.
And—
GAVE.
“For God so LOVED the world that He GAVE His only Son…”
Before they returned to their seats, each child received a brightly colored bracelet from our YPSM Debi Meredith with three simple words:
JESUS LOVES YOU.
Maybe one of those children will still have that bracelet months from now.
Maybe someday they'll see those words again and remember that Sunday when they went to The Salvation Army and somebody told them that Jesus loved them.
Then came the message.
Interestingly enough, the theme was about doors.
About those doors God places in front of us when we don't know exactly what is waiting on the other side.
And we talked about four beautiful phrases from Scripture:
Fear not - Unto us - All people - Whosoever.
Because the Gospel isn't reserved for people who already have everything figured out.
Jesus came for ALL people.
At the end of the message, I gave an invitation.
I asked those who felt God speaking to their hearts and wanted to respond to simply raise their hands.
And then I watched.
A hand went up.
Then another.
Then another.
And then hands began appearing all across the chapel.
We finished our worship singing:
“O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”
But the story wasn't finished.
We opened another door.
The door to the Fellowship Hall.
There were all kinds of cookies there, with a nice cool cup of lemonade, and plenty of conversation waiting on the other side.
And people stayed.
They talked.
They laughed.
Our regular Corps people sat and visited with people they had never met before.
I stood by the doorway and shook hands as families came through.
And then something happened that may have blessed me as much as anything else today.
Parents began coming up to me.
But they weren't asking about Angel Tree.
They were asking about Sally Kids.
“When does it start?”
“What night is it?”
“Can my children come?”
They were asking how they could come back.
And suddenly, all those trips through all those doors preparing for this Sunday seemed worth it.
Because Angel Tree may have been the reason they walked through our doors this morning…
but now some of them wanted to know when they could walk through them again.
That has been our prayer all along.
We don't simply want families to know The Salvation Army that helps at Christmas.
We want them to discover The Salvation Army that is a church.
A church that will learn their names.
A church that will love their children.
A church that will pray with them.
A church that will walk alongside them.
And most importantly, a church that will continually point them toward Jesus.
Only after everything was finished did we really begin looking at the numbers.
52 families.
127 people.
Approximately 65 children gathered at the front of our chapel.
But there is one number from today that means more to me than all the others.
38.
Thirty-eight hands raised during the invitation.
Thirty-eight people who acknowledged that God was speaking to their hearts.
What happens next?
I don't know.
I don't know which families will return.
I don't know which children will show up for Sally Kids.
I don't know what stories God may eventually write from those raised hands.
But maybe that's the beautiful thing about doors.
You don't always have to know what's waiting on the other side.
Sometimes God simply asks His people to open them.
Today, our Corps did.
And people walked through.
To God be the Glory!
