By Becky Alexander
Cell phones. iPods. Laptops. Churches. What do they all have in common? They are portable.
Don’t think churches fit in with that list? Meet Journey Church, Auburn. It gathers for worship at Lee-Scott Academy, a private school, on Sunday mornings at 10:15, but the place doesn’t actually look like a worship center until about an hour before the service starts.
At 7:30 a.m., the staff, the load-in crew and the tech crew arrive to unload a trailer of everything needed to do church. Then setup begins.
At 8, the band arrives for sound check and rehearsal. Throughout the morning, waves of other volunteers arrive to set up chairs, the preschool/children’s ministry and the café. By 9, the school is transformed into a church.
“We are portable out of necessity. We are also portable by choice,” said Eric Taylor, lead pastor of Journey, in Tuskegee Lee Baptist Association.
Because Journey is a new church, it doesn’t have the financial foundation to purchase land or buildings at this time.
But that’s OK, Taylor said — Journey has developed a good partnership with Lee-Scott and looks for opportunities to bless the school. Last year it gave the faculty and staff restaurant gift cards, and this year it plans to be involved in sports and PTA events.
‘God blessed’
Randy Norris, pastor of the Church at Ross Station, Bessemer, said his church feels similarly — that their arrangement is God-blessed.
On Sunday mornings the church gathers at Bumpus Middle School in Hoover, and a team called the Movers and Shakers unloads and sets up chairs and equipment much like volunteers at Journey Church do. It’s a good situation, Norris said.
“We are portable because this is where God wants us. This is the door God has opened to us,” he said.
Meeting in the school is cost-efficient for the Bessemer Baptist Association church, and working with the school administration has been positive, he said. The school is beautifully maintained and is a familiar landmark in the community, and Norris said he feels it is a non-threatening place for new people to attend church.
Some disadvantages do exist — like having to occasionally adjust the church’s schedule due to school events such as prom, graduation and plays, or the toll that the major set up and break down of supplies and equipment can take on volunteers over time.
But both pastors say their congregations are willing to work around disadvantages to reach their target audiences.
For Journey Church, it seeks to reach people disconnected from God and the church.
“That can mean the 20-year-old college student or the 50-year-old businessman who’s gone through a bad divorce or the 30-year-old single mom that feels marginalized by the church because of her failed marriage,” Taylor said.
For Ross Station, it’s the large influx of people who have moved to the area. It now has members from Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee and Ohio, as well as from other cities in Alabama.
And though the Ross Station congregation is in the process of purchasing land to build its own church campus someday, Norris said, “We are hoping to stay portable as long as we can without it hindering our growth.”
Share with others: