Small town problems

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

Short warning: long post follows, but I believe there's some
really worthwhile stuff down there, especially about my current
church Apostlic Life UPC.  Read and enjoy :-)

> It burdens me to see only 40 out
> of 150 people show up this Sunday because my Pastor was at Gen.
> Conference.

[BRAG MODE ON]

We broke Yet Another Sunday School attendance record last Sunday while
Pastor, his wife, and several church members were at General Conference.  :-)

Trivia: Apostolic Life is listed as number eight in North American in
increased attentance this last year.  Our attendance increased something
like 284%.

           *                   *                  *
		      Church Differences

Like Bro Harrell, I too find the "differences" between different apostolic
congregations/fellowships/whatever to be fascinating.  Since I've been
baptized in Jesus name, I've belonged to three different churches, all
of them EXCELLENT.

1. Life Tabernacle UPC Wichita Falls TX, Pastor W. Elms.

    Excellent church, with outreach to the military community at
    nearby Sheppard AFB, a mobile Sunday School on a tractor-
    trailer that is taken to a different "economically disadvanted"
    neighborhood every other week, and a Spanish language ministry.
    Very multiethnic congregation.  This is where my wife and I
    were baptized, and where we got married.

    We were the big church in the area, so the smaller churches came
    to us for regional activities and stuff.

2. 1st United Pentecostal Church, Euless TX, Pastor J.C. Benson.

    Another excellent church.  Bro Benson has a true pastor's
    heart.  In some ways a typical "comfortable" suburban church
    with membership composed mostly of middle-class folks who
    are pretty well off financially, though there's an entire
    range represented from wealthy businessmen to poverty-
    stricken single-moms; from a large, God-loving youth group
    to retired missionaries who still jump and shout for the
    Lord (anyone who knows the Rothmans -- they were in Euless 
    when I lived there).

    Interesting things about Euless: the city is right next to DFW
    Airport.  American Airlines is based in Euless, and Delta has a
    large hub at DFW.  There's also a regional Air Traffic Control
    facility in Euless.  So you have many airline and FAA employees
    going to church in Euless.  Many of the singles are fans of Bro
    Stoneking.  So they get together and says "Hey, Bro Stoneking is
    preaching in San Diego this weekend.  Let's go."  So they use their
    free flight benefits and take off to San Diego.

    It was at Euless that I had my first exposure to inner-city
    ministry.  We supported Sis Cheryl Kilough and her mission in
    downtown Arlington TX for a while.  Her and her two pre-teen
    sons live in the "church" -- a building that used to be an
    AT&T Phone Store.  The front part is the sanctuary, the middle
    part was Sunday school and office space, and the back part is
    living space for her, her sons, and however many homeless women
    cared to sleep on the floor back there.

    The "office/class" area is an open space with wall dividers with
    one walled in office, which Sis Kilough and a few others had the
    opportunity to discover was bulletproof.

    She'll be driving along the street, drive under an overpass and
    hit the brakes and pull over.  She'll say "just a second," kick
    off her heels and climb up to the top of the bridge embankment,
    where there's a sleeping bag and a backpack.  She leaves a note,
    comes back and says "I figured that must be somebody new, I didn't
    recognize the pack and EVERYBODY knows you don't stay under THIS
    bridge -- you'll get mugged.  It's probably a woman too, out
    looking for a job I'm sure."

    Then she drives to a group of abandoned buildings, where we meet
    with John.  He's a Vietnam vet, lives in an old Branniff Airlines
    cargo container.  She asks him what the latest word on the street
    is about some people, invites him over for a spaghetti supper at
    the mission.  John stays in his cargo container, works as a laborer
    through a temp agency if he needs some money.  Doesn't accept
    government welfare.  Really lucid guy when he's not drunk or high,
    spends a good amount of his time reading.  If the winter in Fort
    Worth gets too cold, he assaults a police officer so he can spend
    the winter in a nice warm jail cell.  Word on the street has it
    he's spent time in the slammer for homicide.

    Then we go and talk with another homeless guy Fred. He won't talk
    to very many people, but he'll talk with Sis Kilough.  He'll
    eventually repent, get baptized, and receive the Holy Ghost.  He
    lost his "home" which was a wood-carboard-scrap shack on an
    abandoned, overgrown lot -- the city tore it down as a fire
    hazard.  Sis Kilough helped him track down his Social Security
    retirement pay which Fred's son had been fraudalently cashing
    in his name, and set Fred up with an apartment.

    Sister Kilough is a VERY interesting and energetic person.  She
    ministers to cocaine addicts, homeless, ex-cons.  Sometimes on
    Sundays her and her congregation of street-people will go to Dallas
    where the homeless people hang-out under the freeway interchanges,
    and have church there.  The local Big Baptist Church tried to hire
    her to head up their street mission department, and the Texas
    District UPC also tried to get her to administer a state-wide
    street-mission program.

    She is *not* without controversy, that's for sure.  She is very
    opinionated, takes a very strong stance on standards (i.e. long
    sleeves for all, hair up, etc), can be taken by some to be very
    "controlling."  In her instance, this is probably good.  The people
    she is over need somebody to tell them how to order their lives.
    She doesn't treat them like slaves or robots, but more like a
    mother would her children.  She's taught adults how to read, how to
    balance a checkbook, how to pay bills, how to shop -- basically,
    she's had to teach some people how to behave in modern society.

    As far as fellowship with other churches in the Dallas/Ft Worth
    area, well, most of the churches are *BIG*, so we never really had
    much in the way of sectional activities or anything.  We might
    occasionally run into each other after church at a restaurant and
    so on.  I think the youth and single groups do a lot of things
    together.  We might visit revival service or three another church
    was holding.  Or we'd drop in at 1st UPC Dallas (Pastored by Bro
    Foster) when they host the Stockton CLC Choir.

    The pastor of a nearby church, Calvary Tab in Keller Texas, is
    pastored by one of my best friends Bro Jerry "Buddy" Whitley, so of
    course we fellowshipped a lot together :-)

    Euless is also just a few miles away from Christ Church UPC in
    Irving TX, where Dan Dean is the music minister.  I can't for
    the life of me remember the pastor's name, though he does have
    a book on church growth out and he's a fairly big name in UPC
    circles.

3. Apostolic Life Church, Champaign-Urbana IL, Pastor D. Rogers

    A home missions work here in Champaign-Urbana.  When I first moved
    here, it was meeting in a conference room at the Campus Inn off of
    Neil Street in Champaign.  The Campus Inn was purchased by the
    neighboring Radisson Hotel for their expansion, and the conference
    room was slated for demolition, so, like Abraham, on to a new spot:
    the Best Western Cunningham Place on Cunningham Avenue in Urbana.

    We've been looking all around town for some affordable property --
    finally found some and we're overcoming the final hurdles of red
    tape before closing on the property.  BUT, payments will be nearly
    what we've been paying on conference room rental, AND the Best
    Western management recently changed and the new manager informed us
    a few weeks ago that our rent (currently $600/month) would be
    DOUBLING.   YIKES!  How will we afford this?

    Well, the Lord has provided for us, as we knew he would!  The
    largest real estate firm in Champaign-Urbana, Devonshire-Coldwell
    Banker, just completed construction of their brand-new corporate HQ
    in south Champaign.  They have a "Community Room" which can seat
    250 people, and they offered our church FREE USE of this room until
    we complete building our own structure on the property we're
    purchasing!!  Can you believe that??

    We've been "testing" the place by holding midweek services there
    the past couple of weeks, and we decided we like it enough to pitch
    our tent and our first Sunday service there will be this next
    Sunday, when we hope to break yet another Sunday attendance
    record.  Can you say "looking for a city"?  :-)

    We have two vans -- one each for Urbana and Champaign.  And we go
    EVERYWHERE in town.  We visit five different trailer parks and two
    different "project" neighborhoods.  We haven't been shot at
    directly yet, though we have had to park down the street and walk
    the kids home through several police cars barricading the street on
    a couple of occasions, after determining that it's safe of course.

    We routinely visit the neighborhoods that some of my white friends
    think we're NUTS for visiting (y'know, the myth that they'll shoot
    any white face in these neighborhoods), but after a while they get
    to know you; us guys from Apostolic Life carrying bibles are just a
    normal part of the 'hood.  It might help that we're in good with
    the local PAW congregations -- their choir's been to our church,
    and our Pastor has preached at their church.  We've also given
    assistance (funds, clothing, time, other stuff) to a ministry
    called Urban Restoration Ministries which is headed up by an
    African-American Apostolic preacher.

    Some of the church members have had to duck for cover to avoid
    being a random target of a "drive-by".  Only one family in the
    church has actually seen blood from a bullet hitting, and even that
    was a minor injury.  These gangsta's are LOUSY shots.

    It's not just "swell" we're seeing in our church, it's true
    growth!  Our youth group has grown from NOTHING two years ago to a
    half-dozen teens who have repented, been baptized, have received
    the holy ghost, and are endeavoring to live holy.  An additional
    half-dozen or so teens come to church regularly.  Only THREE of
    these teens have parents who come to church regularly -- ALL of the
    teens come to church because they WANT to: they are genuinely
    interested in the things of God!  We didn't use to run the van for
    the Sunday night service, but the teens *begged* us to until we
    relented.

    One possible problem in this wonderful scenario:  there *possibly*
    might be some subtle, unintentional racism.  The black teens don't
    seem to get quite the attention the white teens do.  I haven't done
    a lot of observation on this yet, and it could very well be because
    the black teens simply don't have telephones while the white kids
    do, i.e. they're much more difficult to contact.  But to even avoid
    the *appearance* of a racist attitude, we probably should expend
    some effort in spending time with the African-American teenagers.
    I'll talk with my pastor about this and see what kind of ideas he
    might have.

    Why am I concerned about this?  C-U is a very racially divided
    city.  The smallest circumstances can blow up into the stupidest
    things.  The police car blockades I wrote about above?  Racial
    incidents.  The last thing we want is for our church to be branded
    a haven for whites only, it's taken us too much effort to get to
    the point where we can talk to the parents of these children.

    We regularly fellowship with Sidell Pentecostal Assembly, Villa
    Grove UPC, and Rantoul UPC -- we'll do things together, meet after
    church at the Pizza Man restaurnant in Villa Grove, etc.  Several
    of the people in church know several people in Bro Tyler's church
    in Gibson City, though I don't think we've ever actually *done*
    anything together.  People from Gibson City will show up at UPC
    sectional youth rally's and stuff, even though they're ALJC :-)

Richard "revival in Champaign-Urbana" Masoner