Cover Story for July 14, 2005
After almost a century of ministry, mostly white Weatherford Memorial Baptist Church in south Richmond has voted to give its facilities to mostly African-American St. Paul's Baptist Church near Mechanicsville. The action is being heralded as a model for other churches in transition.
By Jim White
On a prominent corner in south Richmond sits a Monticello-style sanctuary with wings gracefully extending on each side. As I entered the circular vestibule, the white columns, marble floor and brass chandelier arrested my vision and caused an involuntary pause in my steps as I surveyed the symmetry. The sanctuary is also lovely and large. The educational building and gym are attached to the sanctuary by white-columned porticos. No wonder folks are finding it hard to believe the church would simply give it all away!
Like so many churches in changing circumstances, Weatherford Memorial Baptist remembers the glory days. Founded in 1907, the congregation moved to its present location in 1950, led by their pastor, J. Levering Evans. Evans had grown up in China in a missionary family and had earned a doctor of philosophy in economics from Yale University. Evans predicted that the church would be a lighthouse to the southern part of Richmond, and soon 750 worshippers crowded a building that doubled as a gym and worship center-an innovative concept at the time. The 1960s brought a decline in attendance, but the congregation believed that constructing a permanent sanctuary would cause increased attendance. Construction began in 1971. That same year the courts ordered busing to integrate schools and as a consequence many families began relocating to Chesterfield County. During the 80s and 90s, the congregation remained strong despite dwindling attendance. Even though successive pastors raised an alarm and called for radical changes, the congregation resisted. Like the proverbial frog in the kettle, the changes around and within the church occurred so slowly that they hardly noticed.
By 2001, the church could no longer deny what was happening. Average Sunday school attendance had dropped to 90 and at pastor Rick Hurst's initiative, the church began a “Rekindle Strategy” aimed at assessing church and community needs and proposing ministry options. In 2004, the finance committee reported that without a turn around, the church would run out of money within a year.
It isn't as though the church has not attempted to turn things around. They instituted community ministries that include a food pantry and clothes closet. The church welcomes anyone who will come to a week-day worship service designed to meet the needs of persons who receive food. The Richmond Baptist Association directs a ministry center for south Richmond at the church. The church even began a contemporary worship service, although some admit that their hearts were not in it. Youngsters play Upward Bound basketball games in the gym and a small African-American church meets in their building.
“It's not that we haven't tried” comments life-long attendee and church secretary Gayle Bradley, “but we don't know how to reach the people who live around us.”
In December of 2004, recognizing their position, the congregation considered a proposal to sell their buildings. That same month, the congregation asked Glenn Akins of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board to meet with them. Simultaneously, the pastor led the church to study several books, including George Barna's Turn Around Churches. The book studies and Akins' counsel led church members to conclude that they do not have a strong enough core group to revitalize or to start over.
After listening to church members describe their condition and studying their circumstances carefully, Akins proposed options to them in March of this year. He reports, “The philosophy that I go by is that I have the same moral obligation that a physician might in dealing with a patient. I don't feel that I have the right to offer false hope. I could not give them a solution that I believe would not work.”
After presenting options and countering each with why it wasn't a viable alternative, he concluded by asking the church to consider giving their buildings to St. Paul's Baptist Church, a church that is reaching thousands of Richmonders.
“When Glenn said ‘Give it away,' it was like an electric shock went through us,” reports Ruth Guill, a strategy committee member. Her husband, Maynard, who chairs the committee that manages the $580,000 endowment, continued, “I thought ‘Humph, that doesn't fit with what I've been thinking. Six months ago if someone had said we would be doing this, I would have said they were crazy.” Others agreed. Yet, as they thought about it and prayed, they began to see potential.
What would cause an aging white congregation in South Richmond to give its buildings valued at more than $2 million to an exploding, predominantly African-American congregation near Mechanicsville? The church has had dozens of groups wanting to buy the building. But it's not about money. It's about missions. They believe St. Paul's will continue and enhance the mission they began to South Richmond 98 years ago.
Weatherford Memorial takes its name from a Colonial Baptist preacher whose voice would not be stilled even by imprisonment. The church members, more than anything else, are unwilling that proclaiming Christ on that prominent corner be stilled. They believe the Lord wants those buildings, made sacred by their worship and sacrifices, to continue to be a lighthouse and to continue in the Baptist family.
Gayle Bradley offers an interesting question: “Could it be that God led our congregation to this place to minister for a time, but that his greater vision was for St. Paul's to minister from this point to reach those we could not?”
On June 12, the congregation of Weatherford did an amazingly generous and courageous thing. They voted, 59-11, to give everything away. The buildings, despite some peeling paint, have been well maintained. One has a new roof. Mold problems that had plagued the sanctuary have been corrected. The endowment fund will be trusted to the care of the Virginia Baptist Foundation and the interest will be divided evenly between the Richmond Baptist Association and the Virginia Baptist Mission Board that the church may continue in perpetuity to give to missions.
As expected, members are feeling grief at the loss of the place and people in which they have invested so much of their lives. After Sept. 25, their last Sunday, they don't know where they will worship. But sorrow was not what they were feeling most. “I'm excited about where my wife and I will go and what we will do. I don't have a clue where that will be,” affirms Jimmy Boggs, who says he was baptized twice at Weatherford-once six months before he was born and again years later-”but I believe the Lord is in this and I trust him. We might end up sitting right here and helping minister through St. Paul's. I am proud to see the legacy of Weatherford live.”
Another strategy committee member adds, “It's like a miracle has happened. Until this, we could not agree on anything and now we are really united.”
Asked what advice they might have for other churches, the strategy committee responded as one voice: “Change.”
“We saw what was happening, but we didn't want to acknowledge it. We were in denial,” lamented Ruth Guill. “If we could say one thing to other churches it would be, ‘Churches have to change. Those that don't change, don't survive.' ”
“By the time we saw what we needed to do we were just too few, too old and too weary to make it happen,” added Boggs. Among themselves, they agreed that although they changed some, they simply would not or could not make the radical changes necessary at the time they were needed.
Weatherford Memorial Baptist Church will be remembered not only for its years of ministry and commitment to missions, but because these people of faith dared to see beyond themselves to the greater kingdom good they could do in planning past their end. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24). Weatherford will not die. Its ministry will be reborn in a different form.
The exchange between Christ and Martha seems appropriate. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world” (John 11:25-27).
Virginia Baptists join with our Weatherford family not in mourning a passing but in celebrating a life!
Jim White is editor and business manager of the Religious Herald.