‘The doors of the church are open’: How one local pastor changed my views on faith forever

“The doors of the church are open.” That’s how the Rev. Grady A. Yeargin Jr. ended almost every one of the hundreds of sermons I heard him preach at the City Temple of Baltimore (Baptist), the Bolton Hill church I attended for half my life. Technically, that meant Sunday’s lessons were now ready to be carried from inside the walls of the building into the world. But if you knew “Rev,” as the kids who grew up at City Temple called him, you knew that openness started with him.