Rally Day

Gather us in and hold us forever;
Gather us in and make us your own…

I have a running joke concerning the special service many churches celebrate at the beginning of the academic year: I pretend not to know what we should call it.

There is a reason for my ostensible ignorance. Congregations I have served or simply attended through the years have various names for the Sunday, and each claim to have a tradition for the name, though few congregation members remember the discussion where the name was chosen.

“Rally Day” clearly remains most popular among congregations with which I am familiar. I suspect it is the name that invokes an escape from the late, warm summer doldrums and a return to the excitement of Sunday School and Youth Fellowship.

One congregation I knew liked to call it “Kick-off Sunday”, which energized many of the football fans. When I encountered a congregation that leaned more toward baseball, I suggested they call it “Opening Sunday”, which had the added benefit of imagining the congregation’s door being wide open for any visitor who arrived.

In Louisiana, a church I worked with for a time liked to call it “Homecoming Sunday”, as so many of their members took extended vacations in the summer and once the school year began, it was time for everyone to return home.

The name itself is not key to the purpose of the day. We celebrate this day as one of hope for what Jesus calls us to be. We are gathered together in joyous worship and in faithful activities to be renewed as a community in the Spirit of Christ. We do this through refreshing again our view of ourselves as disciples and apostles. Disciples are those who learn together; apostles are those who are sent out together. God gathers us together to begin again our work together. Becoming disciples and apostles is the work of the Church: to learn who we are in God’s grace and then to go out and share that grace with the world.

Sunday, September 11 is our Rally Day. The beginning of the fall season and a call to gather again in the blessing of the Spirit. Name the day what you are most comfortable naming it. But I hope you will hear the call of Jesus on Sunday, and in following that call, you will let the Spirit gather you in for worship. In Spirit-led worship, you will know yourself better as God’s own people, prepared to serve and to love our neighbors as God serves and loves us.

Grace and peace,

Bill

P.S. If you want to read ideas of how other churches celebrate Rally Day in new and Spirit-gifted ways, please read this article published by the Presbyterian Mission Agency.