Sunday, December 28, marked a significant transition for Yates that reaches beyond our ministry team into something generational. Mackenzie Smith, raised in this church and educated at Carolina and Duke, returned to us for a season. Across her years of ministry training here, she has shaped us even as we shaped her.
I have known Mackenzie for eleven years, watching her move from an energetic youth full of charisma toward something deeper. Danny had the wisdom to direct that energy toward those who felt reticent, who wondered if there was room for someone as personality-forward as Mackenzie. In that deployment, Danny offered trust, recognizing that though her gifts are publicly on display, those are not the leading ways she wants to be known.
What has impressed me most is her willingness to be herself while allowing others the same freedom. She can hold the tension between quiet and loud, energetic and restful, in ways most of us cannot.
For two years, Mackenzie served as a seminarian in residence, experiencing the width and breadth of congregational ministry. She moved through administration, pastoral care, youth, children, and music, experiencing the fullness of what church may require. Everyone who listens knows how musically capable she is. What you may not know is how much she wanted to grow in everything else. I have grown close to Mackenzie around those learning edges, having long conversations about spiritual formation and the different tasks a pastor encounters.
Our relationship has been a window for me into the emerging generation of church leaders. What are you reading now? What concerns you? How generous to have a tutor. I called her my Rosetta Stone, especially when trying to understand what my own Gen Z children were saying at home. The values of this generation matter profoundly. These are the people we want to reach with the gospel, the partners we need to reach the world for Jesus’ sake. Having Mackenzie on our team gave me an indispensable window into that world.
Her investment this past year as interim minister for children and youth has left its mark. As we continue finding our way in the world that COVID created, Mackenzie built bridges between the robust outreach communities Danny formed and various areas of church life. She helped the institutional church and the emerging church shake hands, sometimes hug, and develop a sustainable future. It was visionary work.
I am grateful. I am also grieved, as we always are when someone good departs. But I am heartened: when Yates sends people, whether to India or to Westwood, we do not send leftovers. We send our best.
Mackenzie carries the indelible marks of this church to her next place of service. Every day she serves at Westwood Baptist Church, her voice will be purely her own. Yet riding along will be something of each person who had a hand in her formation, every prayer invested in her life.
That is what it means to be the body of Christ. That is what it means to be a church that not only grows, but sends.
We are grateful for you, Mackenzie.