Fairmont Church, Knoxville, Dedicates Noah’s Ark Playground

By Mike Mills, Pastor of Fairmont Church

T.S. Eliot, the eminent American poet opined, “April is the cruelest month.” Folks at Fairmont Church would happily disagree with Mr. Eliot! April 6th was the first Sunday in a beautiful month of worship and witness to Christ through dedication of our new Noah’s Ark playground.

It took only a few months to raise the considerable funding needed to make a dream of a playground for children in our church and community a reality. The giving for the playground was generous as this small church recognized the need to follow our Lord’s command to bring the children unto Him! Volunteers from the church put together the playground; distributed the gravel and tore down an unsightly rusty basketball goal impeding the beauty of the playground’s setting. The Noah’s Ark Playground is surrounded by the beautiful dogwoods framed in East Tennessee.

Due to the hard work of playground cochairpersons Jean Brown and Jenny Redington everyone was made aware of the need for our church to show the neighborhood we are interested in recreation for children in a safe, aesthetically pleasing and welcoming environment.

Our prayer is for God to bless the use of our Noah’s Ark Playground by the children of our church and community for many years.

Love Notes

by Bill Love

April 30th through May 4th Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville worked on the final phase of its building program. They built a playground for the church and community. As in all the plans, representatives from the church met with residents in the community to let them know what the church was doing and, in this case, to invite them to participate in the construction itself alongside members.

Juli Mosley and Lou Hoop, food for workers
chairmen at Second Church, Nashville.

Second views the use of its building as an arm of its mission. More than just providing space for outside groups to use the building, Second has never built a building solely for the use of the congregation. The church relocated to its present site to be the church connection with Monroe Harding Home. In planning its educational wing, it sought a mission partner to use the building during the week and found High Hopes, a school for children with special needs. In the planning of its current addition, it sought and found Senior Citizens, Inc. During the week, Senior Citizens adult day care and Meals on Wheels programs are at Second.

The playground was conceived as a community playground (quite unlike a church in New Jersey I know which didn’t want its playground visible from the street and built it in the manse backyard where the children would throw pebbles at the pastor’s car).

Some from the community helped by working or by providing food for the workers.

Children at Second Church said, “This is just like communion.”

Among those helping were some inmates from the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office of Community Service, which uses minimum security inmates for projects for any government agency or non-profit (whether religious or not).

The inmates wore orange shirts which identified them as inmates, which caught the attention and concern of some of the neighbors.

One neighbor said he wasn’t sure it was the best use of taxpayer money, but, since they ate with us in a meal provided by volunteers, the county may have actually saved money.

It seems for some that the issue was inmates in their neighborhood. The inmates were non-violent offenders and good and skilled workers. They were also invited to come back with their families to play on the playground and attend worship.

I think if the neighbors had checked the court records they would have found that all the inmates were convicted of less serious crimes than Jesus.

I suspect, however, in Green Hills, like many of our neighborhoods, that Jesus has become so domesticated that he is no longer a real or perceived threat. The gospel has been so altered that it has become a virtual tailor-made fit for their lifestyle. It is easier to reshape the gospel to fit ourselves than it is to reshape ourselves to fit the gospel.

Of course, there is Matthew 25 and what Jesus had to say about the least of his brothers and sisters, including those in prison, and Mother Theresa’s observation that they are Christ in pathetic disguise. (I think this is true of us all. I know I am a rather pathetic disguise for Christ to wear.) And there is Paul’s call to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us.

The inmates were a part of the Christ that we had to welcome. If we and Second’s Green Hills neighbors had been able to see Christ in them, maybe all could have seen Christ more clearly as one who challenges as well as comforts us and seen them as those whom Christ befriended and whom Christ calls us to befriend.

Lib Caldwell of McCormick Seminary (and sister of Cathy Hoop, Second’s Director of Children’s Ministries, the more important designation) prayed to bless the meal when we ate together. She ended as she always does, saying, “And all the people of God say.” From those who were wearing orange shirts and those who were not, there came a resounding, “Amen.”
 

Bill Love is interim pastor at Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville.