Some endings deserve more than turned-in keys and a moved-on moment.
For more than forty years, the Emmanuel Senior Enrichment Center has made its home in our building. Aging adults and people with disabilities found welcome there — meals, community, dignity, a place to belong. And in offering that space, we were shaped by it too. The ESEC wasn’t just a tenant. It was a living expression of things we say we believe: that generosity matters, that community is worth building, that the doors of this place exist to open outward.
That chapter has now closed. The ESEC has moved out of our building. And before we rushed past it, we stopped. We remembered. We gave thanks.
The rite we used was grounded in a passage from Joshua — the moment when God’s people had just crossed the Jordan River, and God told them, before they took another step, to pick up stones. For us, the stones were not literal stones — but memories. Stories. Markers. Something to point to when someone asks, “What happened here?” Something that says: this was real. This mattered.
I love that image. God is not in a hurry to move on.
There was grief in that space — quiet, honest, real. The transition wasn’t always smooth, and we said so plainly. We even paused to confess that none of us navigated every part of it perfectly. That kind of honesty is its own form of grace. So is the willingness to stand in a place and say, The people who came through these doors mattered. The staff and volunteers who showed up faithfully mattered. Forty years of partnership mattered — that is worth stopping for.
The calling that animated the ESEC more than forty years ago — to welcome, to serve, to open our doors outward — didn’t end with it. That calling is woven into who we are. It shows up in the new partnerships we already carry, in the ways we already say yes to our community, and in the ways we hope to keep saying yes as God continues to show us how to live out God’s love in our beloved community of High Point.
But that’s not really the point of this letter.
The point is the “stones.”
We picked them up. We held them. We told the story of what happened here over these forty years of partnership. And we trusted that the God who was present in this place has not gone anywhere — and will not.
In Joshua’s story, picking up the stones wasn’t the end. It was a moment on the way. The people remembered, gave thanks, and then kept walking — into whatever God had next for them.
That’s where we are. The journey isn’t over. Not even close. God is not done with us yet.
To read the full Rite of Decommissioning and Thanksgiving, click HERE.