So, to follow up from the previous post, I found myself at 18 years old and coming on staff at very small church in northeast Tennessee, having grown up in a thriving megachurch about 5 hours away in a larger, mid-sized city. It was a big change in environment, culture and attitude. Again, one wasn’t better than the other…it was simply different.

Coming from the mega church where visitors were expected, there were VHS cassettes wrapped in the latest copy of the church paper and a variety of ministry brochures and other pieces of information that might help a visitor learn more about the church. If you were visiting, there was a point in the service where ushers would walk from the front to the back carrying several of these packets, hand them to those who felt brave enough to raise their hands and that was the end of the immediate contact for visitors. Pretty quick and painless, and it left the impetus for follow up on the hands of the visitor.

Walking into the small church, visitors were given a little embroidered rose stickers to wear on your shirt or jacket. The greeters at the front door always had a few on hand, and as if being a new face in a room of 95 people wasn’t evidence enough, the rose solidified the fact that you were new there. At a point, later in the service, people in the church were asked from the front to identify any guests they brought, by standing and introducing them and everyone would say ‘hello.’

Both gatherings had bulletins, choirs (the small church choir wore robes) and offered Wednesday night meals. Both had Sunday school, youth group and children’s ministries. Both practiced weekly communion, believer’s baptism, and made the sermon the central point of the service, hoping to bring encouragement for following Jesus to everyone in attendance. Both ended with an invitation, and a song. But the small church sang the same closing song every week. “The Family of God.”

It was different and still rang of elements from home. But the people were nice, they few us poor college students, and the old people didn’t treat us like we had our heads on backwards. They were used to college students coming through, and they welcomed us quickly.

My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) and I started attending a Sunday school class with a guy named John who was the Youth Minister there, and we got locked in with the community. We were hooked.

There was this little room just off the fellowship hall that we called the ‘Holy of Holies’ it was run by the Women’s ministry, had deep, shag carpet (with a rake) and was decorated in dusty rose and lace doilies. We were warned not to eat in there on Wednesday nights. We thought it was funny.

The minster had been on staff for over 25 years, and the people had a very open relationship with him. Everyone liked him, it seemed, He always wore a suit on Sunday mornings, slacks and button up on Wednesday nights, had his dark hair slicked back and wore these thick rimmed glasses that looked like he had kept that style since the 50’s.

We went home for Christmas, and came back in January. We went with John and the Youth Group to Gatlinburg for the TCTC where my wife and I got fake engaged & fake married in front of the “Chapel in the Valley” so we could send our parents pictures and freak them out a little bit.

Shortly after that, the church started getting ready for Easter, and all of a sudden John was gone. We found out that he was moving back to Florida to work with the youth in his home church. And so, a few weeks later, the elders got together and asked me if I would want to serve as the interim minister over the summer, for the next three months or so while they looked for a full time youth minister. That meant not going home, staying in the house of one of the elders as their guest, and taking care of the weekly and summer programming.

Since I was in school for ministry, it sounded like a great idea & good experience. I said yes, and was excited about moving into my first office. I was 18 years old. I had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t have a prayer of filling office space. “Oh,” and they told me, “VBS starts in six weeks. I don’t think anything has been planned yet.”

Oh…

To be continued.