A week before Easter, we attended a special Easter performance at a local school auditorium.
Why was it so special? Well, one for thing, it featured a 70-voice choir and a 20-piece orchestra which is rather impressive for a small town.
But the other (even more important) reason it was special was because there were twelve different religious denominations represented in that group. Twelve!
As I sat out in the audience and listened to talented people make roof-raising, heart-lifting music, I was so inspired to know the back story, to know that this wasn’t just one church making music for the community, but a whole bunch of people from a whole bunch of different religious backgrounds banding together to celebrate resurrection joy. They were laying aside their differences and saying, “Let’s just concentrate on what we agree on and let’s join together and make some great music.”
What a novel idea!
Now let’s stay on the same subject, but rewind a couple of weeks:
As our own church started gearing up for our Easter production, we were trying to make a decision on who should play the part of Jesus. After we had tossed around a few names one of our team members said, “Why don’t we ask Pastor Frank Lassen from Source Church to do it?”
A pastor? From another church? Isn’t he our competition? Why would we ask another church leader to come in to our church? What if he started stealing people from us?
(That is a list of things we did NOT say.)
Instead we said, “Let’s go for it!” Our church slogan is “Building Bridges” and we thought this would be a great way to do that.
And so Pastor Frank was asked and Pastor Frank said yes. And he did an amazing job.
During the process of rehearsals and drama prep, Steve said to me one day, “You know, Frank’s church is outgrowing their little store front building and they’re trying to raise money to buy property. Why don’t we receive offerings on both of the nights of our drama and give all the money to his church?
Give money away? Doesn’t our church need the money, too? Don’t we have drama expenses that need to covered? Why should we give money to the competition?
(A few more questions that we did not ask.)
We didn’t tell Pastor Frank or any of his church members who were attending the drama what we were going to do; we just did it. And it blew them away.
I talked to Frank’s wife, Cindy, after the first night’s performance and she said, “When Steve got up and said the offering was going to go to our church, well, it just honestly took my breath away. I was just absolutely shocked. You guys will just never know how much this means to us.”
Over the space of the two performances, $3,000 was raised to help Source Church get started on a building fund. Just recently, they asked Steve to stop by their church before our service started so that they could say thanks personally.
Now Pastor Steve Smith and Pastor Frank Lassen are very different guys, from vastly different backgrounds. In fact, if you took a quick look at their churches, you would find all sorts of things that they don’t have in common, from their congregational demographics, to their buildings, to their music styles, to their preaching styles. In fact, the affectionate joke around town is that you can’t go to Source Church unless you have a tattoo. (And having a Harley would be a good thing too.)
But just like the community choir found things in common even though it was made up of twelve denominations, these two wildly differing churches found plenty of things in common too.
Here are a couple of shots from Steve’s visit to Source Church where he received a very sweet thank you from the congregation along with a gift certificate to one of our favorite local restaurants.
Can’t you just see the animosity . . .
. . . the competition
. . . and the discomfort between them?
I didn’t think so.
Over these past weeks since that Easter offering, we have heard dozens of people around the community comment on it.
But the best comment was one that Frank told us about. He said that a friend of his who doesn’t attend church anywhere told him, “I’ve always thought churches and preachers were just in it for themselves and I’d never heard of one church giving money to another church before. It really blew me away. I guess it looks as though I have one less thing to criticize churches about now.”
So. Do churches fight? Do preachers compete and talk badly about each other and try to undermine each others’ work and ministry?
Sadly—sometimes. But happily—not always.
Sometimes preachers (and churches) get it right.
And when they do, I think it makes God smile.
Amen!!
Calvina,
Amen, indeed!
This is such a Blessing and proof that God is good!!!!!
Brandlife, yes, it definitely IS proof of God’s goodness when churches get along like the examples set by Pastor Frank and Pastor Steve. Good stuff!
I have lived in Manteo for 17 years. It is only in the last year or so when I have seen the walls start coming down. It is awesome! We at Source are so thankful for our little island and the community of believers here. No matter what seat they are sitting in.~denise
Denise,
Thanks for dropping by and joining in on the rejoicing over churches getting along. And I’m glad to hear you’ve got plenty of mini vans. My husband would actually love to have a Harley! 🙂
This is so great! Encouraging and wonderful. I love seeing churches helping each other out and working together!
Erin, yeah, if churches can’t help each other out, the world’s in pretty bad shape! I must say, it was a very inspiring thing to be a part of.
That’s awesome!! It’s great to hear some good news between churches. We had a church down the street say some not so nice things about our church when ours was heavily damaged in the 2007 tornado that destroyed our high school and theirs wasn’t touched (not unusual for tornadoes). I’m sure you can imagine what they said. Needless to say, it has not fostered many feelings of good will. It’s sad, but it does happen. So happy to read this post. 🙂
Gayle in AL
Gayle, that makes me so sad to read that about the other church. If there’s on thing that I have little patient for, it is churches who think that they’re the only ones doing it right. No such thing!
I’m glad the post was encouraging to you–we ALL need to be reminded occasionally about the good stuff!
I grabbed this comment from Facebook; it came in after I posted there this morning. The author, Gordon Goertz, is a former pastor and long time friend of our family. I just loved what he wrote.
He said:
This story reminds me of when a group of over 20 from our little church drove almost an hour on a Sunday night to support a struggling church pastored by an old friend. We walked in, unannounced, just before their service began, and told them that we loved them and just wanted to be a blessing. We outnumbered them more than two-to-one that first night and brought an offering to help. Many tears were shed, and we promised to come back. We made the trip four consecutive Sundays, and by the fourth, they had caught up in numbers. They’ve never looked back, now averaging over 200 in attendance each week. They never realized it, but we got a much bigger blessing out of the experience than they did!
Wonderful news! Sadly, too many churches are not showing that side of themselves to the very people they are in place to show true Christianity to. Uplifting to hear how the churches in your community are working together to impact Manteo.
Curious…what were the twelve different denominations represented in the music presentation? Never would have thought Manteo was large enough to support 12 churches, let alone 12 different denominations; had the impression that it was a much smaller community; sea-side quaint would have been my first thought as to describe the area.
Janet, great question!
Let’s see if I can list some of the churches on Roanoke Island; most of them had at least one participant in the choir/orchestra. Manteo First Assembly (our church), Wanchese Assembly of God, Source Church, Manteo Baptist, Mt. Olivet Methodist, Bethany United Methodist, Roanoke Island Presbyterian, Manteo Faith Baptist, Church of God of Prophecy, Free Grace Church of Christ, Haven Creek Baptist, Roanoke Island Baptist, and Church of God of Prophecy. I may have forgotten someone, but that covers most of it.
And somehow with all those churches it does still manage to be “sea-side quaint.” (And I love that term.) The little downtown area is especially lovely, right by the bay.
In our little town, we had a church that was saving for building a new church and our church gave them money to help, fast forward a few years and our church was saving for our building and that church then did a fundraising dinner for our church. We love to help each other up here in Northern MN too 🙂 Thats what God wants us to do. Love your story and how by doing that people are realizing we love one another. Wendy
Wendy,
What an inspiring story and especially wonderful to hear that the church YOU helped turned around and helped YOU. That just makes me smile!
Now…that is the way Christians should act!
Amen!
Such a heartwarming, beautiful example of Christ in action. Thank you, Becky!
Guerrina,
I have to say, it really did warm my heart to watch the whole thing come together. So much fun to get to “do” for someone else!
What a wonderful story. Our pastor is always preaching that we are not in competing with other churches, we are going the same way, on our Wednesday prayer service other churches in our community are always prayed for. I think it is a wonderful way to worship
Praying for other churches is such a great thing to do. I’m glad your church does that and wish more churches did.
Thank you for the tears… Beautiful! I bow to unity in diversity and crossing bridges to support one another!
Eva,
Nice to see your name pop up here again!
Yes, I agree, building (and crossing) bridges is so very, very important!