By Christa Sfameni

I was asked recently, as a lay person, to speak about the life that I and other members of First Baptist Church of Tucker share together.  Standing on the corner of LaVista Rd. and Main St. in Tucker, Ga., our church is like many churches these days.  Numbers are down, giving is down, but we work with what we have to make the biggest impact in our community.

I’ve been a member at FBC Tucker for 15 years. In the last five years, we’ve had a shift in thinking.  When you say the word, “church,” you think of the building.  But Christians also think of the word “church” as the people of the church – the membership and the people we serve.  And in that area, our church has grown dramatically during these last few years.

We have formed partnerships with local schools – we participate in a “Snack Sack” program to provide food for the weekend to school kids that might otherwise go hungry.  This happened soon after we became aware of local school cafeterias being broken into.  One of our buildings houses the DeKalb County Habitat for Humanity offices as well as NETworks, a group of churches, groups, businesses and individuals committed to assist in meeting urgent needs related especially to housing and utilities. We have a thriving senior adult ministry.

We have a 20-something group (that’s what they’re calling themselves) that are focused on being more involved in the community. Our church is located right across the street from Tucker High School. The 20-something group began Friday night tailgates, open to the community, at our church during football season.  We have been an encourager church for CBF field personnel.  And each February, we hold a Valentine Parents Night Out that has been very successful – more than 50 members of our church are involved each year in volunteering to offer free child care with dinner and activities for community children.  The children love it and parents can have a nice Valentine meal without the kids, although we’ve heard from some parents that they use this time to go to Wal-Mart or even just to take a nap.  It’s our Valentine to the community.

I have found a place to invest in our church with our Randolph Special Needs Division.  I’m one of the teachers of a group of developmentally disabled adults, named for the Randolph family that began the program in 1978 – 37 years ago, for a single family that had a need.  Now we have more than 40 members.  Many of our members live in group homes, although some live at home with their families.  We have all levels of functionality – some highly verbal and able to care for themselves, some that need one-on-one assistance for most everything and all levels in between.  But everyone gets their chance to shine in our class.

Each Sunday morning, we meet in our classroom.  Folks begin arriving early and look forward to their coffee and doughnut holes.  I’m amazed at the caregivers who help bathe them, feed them, get them dressed, in the van and to Sunday School each week.  And we have an arts and crafts table where one of our teachers, a former Kindergarten teacher, supervises their projects.  Some of our men don’t want to participate in arts and crafts, so we have “the men’s table” where they sit with some of our teachers and discuss the current events – usually having to do with what they did during the week, telling stories and laughing together – sometimes drawing pictures to illustrate whatever is on their minds.

Then – we sing.  Each person has their own time center stage singing a  song of their choice.  This past Sunday, we sang everything from “Amazing Grace” and “You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog” to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”  That’s a favorite for one of our ladies.  It’ll be the middle of July and you ask what she wants to sing and she shouts with joy, “RUDOLPH!”  The class keeps growing – it’s the largest Sunday school class in our church.  We moved into a new space a couple of years ago and we’ve already out grown that space.  Our hope is to grow this ministry to include more members and start a children’s class.

Last year, we went through some congregational coaching and we’ve focused our efforts on three areas over the following year and a half.  Our vision is to partner with local schools, train members to become neighborhood missionaries and to grow our Randolph Special Needs ministry to include more members and children, too. As you can tell, we’ve made great strides in these areas.  Our church – the members and the people of the community we minister to – are working together and growing in the spirit as we look for the path God has laid for us.

I hope you will not be discouraged about the future of the church.  We refer to our students and young adults as the future of the church, and they most certainly are.  But they’re also the Now of the church.  And so am I.  And so are you.  Together, with God’s guidance, we work on and plan for a bright future.

Christa Sfameni is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s ministries associate. This post was presented at CBFDay at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta, Ga.