Mt. Calvary Serves Their Community Context
A case study based on a real congregational experience
Mt. Calvary Serves Their Community Context
By George W. Bullard Jr. , Strategic Thinking Mentor for Christian Leaders, Congregations, Denominations, and Parachurch Organizations BullardJournal@gmail.com
“I am going to shoot those church people who come to my farm to pick up my workers and take them to English classes. I don’t want them Mexicans learning English. Then they will try to become citizens. I am sending them home when I am finished with them.”
This was the warning Lillian Gaines received from one of the farmers in the county from a worker sent to her with this message. It really scared her. As a black woman who had lived in this county all her life, she knew that whichever farmer sent that note was serious.
She and her pastor gathered their ministry leaders to share the note, pray, and decide what to do. They determined they could not stop the ministry to which God had called them.
Their decision was to continue the ministry, get word to the migrant workers to walk to the road outside all the farms as they would not be able to picture them up inside the farms anymore.
This worked. They never heard anything from the half dozen farms where they picked up migrants to go to English classes.
Who Is Lillian Gaines? Lillian Gaines, a retired schoolteacher who served as a reading specialist, is an active leader in the Mt. Calvary congregation. This church is in the unincorporated community of Allen Crossroads. The population count for this village is around 500. Five churches are in the area. Mt Calvary formed near the end of the Civil War when emancipated slaves decided to form their own church.
All five Allen Crossroads congregations have between 35 and 55 in attendance. About everyone in the community claims membership in one of the congregations. Five families claim no church membership. A popular story around the community is that every congregation has visited these five families multiple times trying to “get them saved.”
Lillian was no exception. In retirement she decided to befriend each of these families with the hope that she might be able – with the Holy Spirit’s help – to convince them to become followers of Jesus. In visiting these families, she discovered the parents in one of the households could not read and write above a third grade level. Once she had gotten close to this family, she explained her professional ability to the parents and offered to help them with their literacy skills. They accepted.
Over the next 18 months she worked weekly with the husband and wife and dramatically increased their reading level. She used a simplified version of the New Testament as parallel reading. Through this in-depth relationship the parents began asking questions about what it meant to follow Jesus and accept him as their Lord and Savior. Lillian answered their questions, prayed with them, and had a group of ladies in Mt. Calvary praying for them. The parents and all four of their children became baptized followers of Jesus at Mt. Calvary.
Lillian had leadership skills and great passion for what she felt God would have her do. While tutoring these parents, she also organized a group of people in her church to be tutors for other adults in their county. Her pastor and church elders blessed her ministry. Eventually she recruited all five congregations in the village to help. Mt. Calvary commissioned her as a missionary to Allen Crossroads and the surrounding areas.
Obviously in a congregation the size of Mt. Calvary this became the major ministry beyond their regular worship services. Their pastor was covocational and drove more than an hour to preach on Sundays and for other pastoral duties. Until Lillian’s retirement, Mt. Calvary was primarily a preaching station and community gathering place. Now it was coming alive as it saw people, their spiritual development, and missionary work in the community as their God-given focus. They were not only thriving. They were soaring with faith.
But this is not the end of the story. The need for literacy missions in the county was greater than Mt. Calvary could handle. Their county – Jefferson – was a poor county. Years ago it dropped its focus on adult literacy when insufficient government funding was available to them. Lillian and the Mt. Calvary congregation determined they could take the lead in a community-based adult literacy program.
Mt. Calvary sponsored training for tutors. All five congregations helped discover people in need of and willing to accept tutoring. Within a year the program became so popular that it expanded throughout the county and involved more than a dozen congregations.
What pleased Lillian and Mt. Calvary was the spiritual nature of this ministry as people learned to care holistically about one another. The focus of the congregations historically was on the people already connected with their congregations. Now they saw people who were outside their congregations becoming their primary concern. Within two years more than 130 people received tutoring by almost 60 trained tutors.
The impact on all congregations was obvious. The community congregations began holding annual weekends where they would pray, rejoice, dialogue, and plan the next year of ministry. They became captured by God’s empowering vision for their congregations. Yes, they were more than thriving. They were soaring with faith and in anticipation of the next thing God would do in and through them.
Something Else was Next! This is not the end of the story.
During an annual weekend at Mt. Calvary the idea of broadening their ministry arose when talking about immigrant farm workers in the area. The immigrants wanted to learn English and to go through the US citizenship process. Just the idea caused controversy. What if they are illegals? Does this take the focus off African-Americans? What will the farm owners say about their workers learning English and US laws?
Each of these concerns had legitimate points. After months of prayerful consideration, and discussions with farmers and county officials, this new dimension of ministry began.
What about the immigrant farm workers? Would they respond? That became the least of concerns. More concerning was having enough tutors trained in English as a second language to respond to the multiple requests to take part in the classes. Coordination was complicated. When to conduct the classes that would not interfere with their work. How to supply transportation. Meals became an issue as the farm workers missed meals provided to them by the farmers.
Ultimately there arose resistance from the farmers as the farm workers began to read and learn about American laws and their rights. One farmer even threatened violence – “shooting those church people” – if they continued to come on his farm to pick up workers.
Among the farm workers were a high percentage of people who were not Christians. As Christians tutored them, that began to learn more about being a follower of Jesus. Some became Christians, or renewed a Christian commitment they had not practiced for years. The request then came for them to have a church composed of people from Central America, which was the predominate background of the farm workers.
The sponsoring congregations – led by Mt. Calvary – launched the new congregational expression by finding a pastor, a meeting place, furnishing it, providing essential supplies, and praying fervently for the effort. Allen Crossroads now had six congregations and it felt good.
The Rest of the Story During this missional activity, what happened to Lillian Gaines and Mt. Calvary that made them a congregation not only thriving, but also soaring with faith?
Through the initiatives that began with the inspiration of Lillian Gaines, Mt. Calvary discovered the people God called them to serve. They did not at once have clarity and alignment. They arrived at it through an action then reflection approach. Following the initiation of one or two of the new ministries, they began a dialogue on what God’s voice was say to their congregation about vision plus intentionality.
They began to discern clarity and how to align everything with this clarity. This came after congregational prayer, powerful messages by their pastor, testimonies by laypersons involved in the ministries, and dialogue with the people God called them to serve,
Their pastor supplied the spiritual focus. But it was a group of women in the congregation who planned, promoted, and led in the practice of the God-inspired ministries. It also created a ministry partnership that crossed denominational lines, theological perspectives, and racial and ethnic barriers. It produced a community-wide and eventually a country-wide ministry focus.
The strength of what God created, revealed itself in an obvious way when health issues caused Lillian Gaines to no longer be able to lead the effort. Through her commitment, humility, and foresight a strong, broad, and multi-congregational leadership base emerged that carried on the ministry when the opportunity to lead was no longer hers.
