On Sunday, October 27, Haymarket Baptist Church will celebrate its 130th Anniversary with a worship service featuring the preaching of Dr. Charles Stewart, who pastored our church from 2007 to 2016. Dr. Stewart will be preaching a sermon entitled, “Making the Most of the Time,” based on Ephesians 5:15-20 and Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11a.
I am personally excited to see Charles again and to hear him preach. Charles and I met not long after he came to Haymarket as Senior Pastor. I was serving as President of the John Leland Center for Theological Studies and Charles joined our Ministerial Advisory Board. It was obvious that he was a very intelligent and thoughtful minister, and I was delighted in 2009 when he asked me to preach at Haymarket on a Sunday he would be away. Charles invited me to preach at HBC several more times over the next few years. I am certain that those invitations played a key role in the church’s eventual decision to call me as Senior Pastor after Charles left to become Senior Pastor at Marion Baptist Church in Southwest VA.
We have already sent notices to all the church members and many former members, including lots of folks who moved away over the past decade or two. But I would like you to help make our Homecoming more complete by personally calling two or three friends who used to attend HBC. Perhaps one friend moved to Tennessee, or Georgia, or moved to another city in Virginia. Perhaps another friend started attending a different church a few years ago. No matter. We would love to have all those friends come back and join us for this special worship service on October 27. If each of us invites two or three friends to return, we will experience a much richer fellowship that day!
In Christ, Pastor Mark