Charlotte Church Hunting (Sept 2022 Update)

As new residents of Matthews, North Carolina, and the Charlotte area, we are hunting for a new church. In this post, I’ll share about four of the churches we have visited so far, and some reflections about each one. I’m also going to reflect on my own history with Christian churches, and what I remember about “church hunting” in the past.

For more background on this journey, see my December 2021 post, “Called to an Inclusive & Affirming Church.”

Searching for a new church is NOT something I have done very many times in my own life. I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, living in five different states before our family settled in Manhattan, Kansas, and found First Presbyterian Church at 801 Leavenworth. That was my home church most of my life growing up, and it was a wonderful place to learn more about God, the Bible, and gain some insights into the life of Jesus Christ. It was also the sponsor organization for my Boy Scout troop, Troop 74, led by Ray Hightower. I am thankful to be an Eagle Scout of Troop 74.

One of my most vivid memories of FPC Manhattan was from 8th grade Communicant’s class, following a Wednesday evening lesson that our pastor, Phil Gittings, had taught on “The Prodigal Son.” I stayed after class to ask him about it, because it just didn’t make any sense to me. It was not fair. It was not “just.” I couldn’t understand it. I remember Pastor Gittings mainly telling me, “That’s just the way God is.” It didn’t resolve my confusion, but that memory stayed with me. That cognitive dissidence has transformed into more understanding with the passage of time and my own life experiences as a husband, father and teacher.  FPC Manhattan certainly was (in aggregate) a great church to grow up in.

When I went to the Air Force Academy in 1988, we thankfully had chapel services, and I found great solace there during the challenges of basic training and my freshman year. Since our youngest daughter is currently attending prep school at Randolph Macon Academy as a Falcon Scholar for the Air Force Academy, I’ve been reflecting much more on my own years at USAFA. 

I sang in the Protestant choir my freshman year at USAFA, and I remember making a memorable trip up to New England and singing in the state house in New Hampshire or Vermont. But in my upper class years, my chapel attendance slackened, and I didn’t attend church much at all.

Upon graduation from the Air Force Academy, I had a choice: Go directly to pilot training or accept a Fulbright scholarship to study Latin American security issues in Mexico City. I chose the latter. In addition to attending Catholic worship services with the family of Vern Conaway, one of my Academy classmates (who were also assigned at that time to the US Embassy in Mexico City,) I found an English-speaking Protestant congregation in downtown Oklahoma City. Again, I found a sponsored Boy Scout troop at the church, for whom I served as an assistant scoutmaster that year, and my friend, Paco Araujo.

When I moved to Lubbock Texas, to start pilot training at Reese Air Force Base in the summer of 1993, I found Westminster Presbyterian Church. The church family at Westminster loved and cared for me in transformative ways, through some of the darkest and most difficult seasons of my life. Through it all, I met my wife, Shelly, in 1995 on a mission trip to Tijuana, Mexico sponsored by WPC. All three of our children were baptized at Westminster and had wonderful formative experiences in the loving congregation there. Shelly served as an elder at WPC, I served as a Sunday school teacher, and we both grew in love and fellowship as a family and as a member of the church community.

When we moved to Oklahoma City in 2006, we immediately visited First Presbyterian Church of Edmond. One of our friends at WPC Lubbock had come from that church, and on their recommendation it was the first church we visited. It also turned out to be the only church we visited, because the Sunday we first came, we met Jim and Carol Hartzog. They took us out to lunch after the service, and shared how FPC Edmond was looking for a full-time preschool ministry director. At WPC in Lubbock, Shelly served as the nursery coordinator on a volunteer basis, and then on a paid, quarter time basis. God opened the door for Shelly to enter full-time ministry at FPC Edmond, and she served as the Director of Preschool Ministries there for seven years. I eventually was ordained as a deacon at FPC Edmond, and then as an elder. I later became a Sunday school teacher, and remained active in the FPC Edmond men’s group throughout our 15 years of membership there. FPC Edmond was the church where all our children grew up, they all attended Communicant’s class, and they all experienced God‘s love through the church.

In 2021, anticipating our departure from Oklahoma and move to North Carolina, I did not expect to be church shopping. But, the Lord put it on our hearts to seek an inclusive and affirming, as well as more ethnically diverse, church, and we found Saint Augustine’s of Canterbury. Jason and Traci Elliot, who had been longtime members at FPC Edmond, had joined St Augustine‘s a couple years earlier with their son, Josh. 

At the time, I thought this church change (which was very challenging by the way, since I was in the midst my third year of adult Sunday school teaching with a dear class community at FPC Edmond we absolutely LOVED) it was primarily for the benefit of our children, who would (eventually) be on their own to find a local church, when they moved away from us. I thought this process would be instructive for them: How to look for a church, discern the Holy Spirit as well as a focus on Jesus Christ, and find a church community that could invite them into authentic worship, disciple them in their continued growth as followers of Jesus, and also be a community that could support and love them through whatever circumstances they found themselves.

Time will tell if that expectation was on target. But what I know now is that the experience of seeking and finding St Augustine‘s, Father Joe, and the wider Episcopal church community was incredibly powerful for me personally. When I served on our church session in Edmond during the time we left the PCUSA denomination and joined ECO, I was told we were doing that because the PCUSA congregations that were in the majority in General Assembly were not “Jesus focused.” I had the impression, which I admittedly did not research and check out myself, but “accepted on authority,” that these churches were more “Universalist.” Shelly and I did visit one of these churches in Santa Fe, New Mexico, back when we lived in Texas, when we were on a retreat weekend with WPC. The name of Jesus Christ was never mentioned in the sermon, and Christianity was presented as one of a multitude of pathways to finding God. Jesus was not preached as “the gate.” My understanding was that the confessing church movement within Presbyterian circles was focused on encouraging a prioritization of Biblical reading and Scriptural authority, as well as the primacy of Jesus Christ in His message of salvation by grace.

Another aspect of this departure from PCUSA to ECO involved beliefs and treatment of the LGBTQIA+ community. As a member of our session at that time, I was told that this departure was inaccurately being portrayed in the media  as an “anti-gay movement.” We were told it was not, it was rather focused on scriptural integrity and the holiness of the Bible. But as one of our children later brought to my attention through close reading of ECO policy and theology, the denomination is absolutely NOT affirming or inclusive. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that at that time, I did not seriously interrogate these issues and important beliefs for myself, I just accepted them on authority from other leaders in our church.

What I learned in the process of searching and finding a new church in Oklahoma City is that there absolutely ARE inclusive and affirming Christian churches which DO focus on Jesus and his unique and exclusive claims about eternal salvation. It is not true that every church that is inclusive and affirming of the LGBTQIA+ community is universalist.

Through my seven years of working at Casady School and being a part of the community there, I was introduced eventually (along with Shelly) to Episcopal faith traditions. The three OKC Episcopal churches we eventually found which ARE Jesus focused, Bible exalting, and inclusive as well as affirming are Saint Augustine’s of Canterbury, Grace Episcopal of Yukon, and St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Oklahoma City. This discovery was a huge “a-ha moment” for me personally, and has had a significant impact on me as well as Shelly as we search for a new church home here in North Carolina.

With this background and these recent experiences in mind, we have embarked on the journey to find a new church home and church family here in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. Both Shelly and I now love Episcopal traditions and worship, but as lifelong Presbyterians, I am drawn to want to find a Presbyterian congregation if we can. I absolutely loved teaching adult  Sunday school the last three years we were at FPC Edmond. (I had also served as an adult Sunday school teacher for awhile at WPC in Lubbock.) I feel an undeniable call on my life to integrate my affinity for technological communication, teaching, and evangelism for Jesus, and I sense my opportunities to do that are greater within the Presbyterian Church unless I would attend seminary and formally enter ministry in the Episcopal world. I do not anticipate doing that at this point. So, as of today we have visited two Episcopal churches and two Presbyterian churches in the Charlotte area. Here are a few reflections on each one.

Saint Peters Episcopal Church

Our dear friend Sarah Emily, at Saint Augustine’s back in OKC, taught school and lived in the Charlotte area for several years before moving to Oklahoma, and gave us a number of recommendations when she learned we were moving to this area. One of them was to check out Saint Peters Episcopal Church, which is an inclusive and affirming congregation, and perhaps the oldest Episcopal church in our area. I think it is kind of a “mother church” to others here, (I’m still not completely clear on how hierarchy works in Episcopal circles.) I visited Saint Peters in March 2022 when I came for my interview at PDS, and it was the first church we attended on a Sunday as a family (Shelly and I, along with Sarah and Rachel) after moving here in early August.

https://twitter.com/PocketShare/status/1502792050856583175

That Sunday we made an unlikely connection to a teacher who had taught for years at Casady, and knew many of the same longtime teachers there that we do. It was a wonderful service and a wonderful embrace by the community during the fellowship time following the service.

St John’s Episcopal Church

St John’s Episcopal was a warm and welcoming community when we visited several weeks ago, very vibrant and full considering we are still coming out of COVID. We are really missing the ritual of weekly Eucharist, and there is so much comfort and familiarity in the Episcopal traditional service. The congregation is not very diverse, however, and while they are Episcopal, there was not any “signaling” that they are inclusive or affirming in the service, or in any of their social media online. Since the Charlotte Pride Festival was at the end of August, it was pretty obvious to see which churches are inclusive and which are not. Most made no mention of Pride. 

St John’s could be a very comfortable congregation to be a part of, but I suspect it may be a “don’t ask, don’t tell” community when it comes to LGBTQ+ folks and issues. We really like this church, and because of those factors (lack of an overt commitment to ethnic diversity and inclusivity) I’m not sure we’ll be back.

Caldwell Presbyterian Church

Caldwell Presbyterian in downtown Charlotte is a very unique congregation and one whose services I watched online this summer before we moved. They are explicitly committed to racial diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. The first Sunday Shelly and I attended, the primary pastor was still on sabbatical, and they had a guest pastor who was excellent but was probably the most liberal and progressive Christian pastor I have ever heard. I have actually studied critical pedagogy quite a bit, as part of my PhD program at Texas Tech. I studied the philosophy and pedagogy of Paulo Freire, author of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” for an entire semester. The liturgy and sermon that Sunday was strongly influenced by both feminist and Afro-theology (if I am saying that correctly) and it was extremely different from anything Shelly and I had ever experienced in church. But nothing that was said was anything we really disagreed with, and it was Jesus focused. We found the worship experience overall to be refreshing and Jesus-focused, and the story of the church is extremely compelling.

That first Sunday we visited Caldwell we stayed afterwards for fellowship and refreshment time, and learned from some longtime members the church’s story of “resurrection and rebirth.” The congregation had dwindled to only about 10 or 12 members, but on the Sunday the pastor announced they would be closing, some visitors asked if they could join. They were challenged to bring friends, and the next Sunday they did. The church was “reborn” thanks to the hard work of a small group of people, who decided to redefine the church with its present focus: ethnic diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. It is also focused on sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is not Universalist. This is a very unique and special church.

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Of the four churches we visited initially, Trinity Presbyterian Church felt the most comfortable and familiar. One of the teachers at my school, Brian Fields, had mentioned it during a lunch conversation, and also mentioned that he was part of a committee in the church that is seeking to establish a new vision statement and focus for the church. The church is physically a very large building, but the congregation has dwindled over time, especially during COVID. Shelly and I attended Sunday school a couple weeks ago prior to service, and absolutely loved getting to connect with many people and have some great conversations. We also learned about an upcoming Church retreat to Montreat, which is the mountain camp in Asheville which Shelly attended three summers growing up, and is part of the reason we moved to North Carolina in the first place. The service was good, and remarkably, the sweet man sitting right in front of us during service is the father of my principal, Lee Tappy. We had good connections with many church members at Trinity, and felt very positive about the church overall. I know we are going to go back, and Trinity is on our short list of churches to possibly join here in the Charlotte area.

So today for church, we were faced with the question: Do we visit a new church, or revisit one of these four? Our next-door neighbors have invited us to visit their Baptist church, and I think we will do that one Sunday, but I don’t think any Baptist churches are inclusive or affirming, so it is unlikely we would join. But it will be nice to visit and we really like these neighbors.

I have also found First United Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, which is an historically African-American congregation. I have watched part of their services online and read some of the writings of their pastor. Interestingly, the church does not have anything about its theology or beliefs on its public website. Again, there is no signaling of inclusivity, so I am doubtful this is the church for us. But I love the history and the vibrant worship of the congregation, so it is tempting to visit, and we still might.

https://twitter.com/wfryer/status/1568920467687473153

Myers Park Presbyterian is the largest flagship Presbyterian Church in our area, I think, and while it is tempting to visit, both Shelly and I are pretty convinced we want a smaller church. So that rules out Myers Park.

Last week I also learned about a new church that has just launched this weekend, Doxa Deo Charlotte. (Formerly Ridge Church.) It is non-denominational, and for the little I have learned about it so far, reminds me of Life Church back in Oklahoma City. Again, it seems like a larger congregation than what we are looking for, and there is no indication of inclusivity in their social media or on their website. But it was still interesting to learn about. They are the sponsors of a co-working facility that I will be using in about a month for a digital storytelling workshop, and I think that kind of community engagement is wonderful and laudable.

This weekend, Shelly and I ventured up to Hickory on Friday night and Saturday for some furniture shopping, We got back Saturday night for dinner with some friends and to be ready for church on Sunday. We decided to attend Caldwell Presbyterian again today, and their main pastor, John Cleghorn, was back in the pulpit. They baptized two children today, and had a special ceremony of thanks for many of the church members as well as staff who helped sustain their operations during Pastor John’s sabbatical this summer. It was an absolutely wonderful, spirit filled worship service, with a congregation that was diverse in every way. Sarah attended with us.

We love the commitment of the Caldwell congregation to ethnic diversity, inclusivity, and to serving the needs of the poor in our community. They are in the process of converting their historic education building into a multi-unit housing space for the “houseless” in the area. I have loved learning more about their mission from their blog, including this recent article Pastor John wrote in Presbyterian Outlook magazine, “Churches use property and resources to care for the houseless.”

So, that’s a lengthy share about our church hunting in Charlotte so far. I am energized and thankful for this opportunity to discern God‘s will for our family, and I can’t say for sure today what church we will join. But there are many good options, and I am so thankful to continue on this journey together with Shelly and Sarah.

(I also cross-posted this to Medium)

Narrated SketchNotes on Romans 14 & Luke 14

Today was my first day at our church to use the iPad app Procreate to create sketchnotes of both our Sunday School lesson and today’s sermon by our senior pastor, Mateen Elass. My friend Carol Anne McGuire (@rockourworld) is an avid sketchnoter each Sunday of sermons at her church in California, and I’m very inspired by her work. She posts all her sketchnotes (for sermons and other presentations) to this Flickr album.

I’ve been a fan of the iPad app “Brushes” for years, and created my own sketchnotes for my eBook single and book chapter on “visual notetaking” back in 2013. Unfortunately, however, when Brushes went to verson 3 it was a functional downgrade. The interface got worse, and the ability to export stopmotion-style animations of drawings as shareable videos was also eliminated. As a result, I’ve been on a quest to find a new iPad app to replace Brushes. Carol Anne recommended Procreate, and my initial experiences with the app today were superb. I really like it and look forward to learning how to use it more effectively.

Keep in mind, before I show you my creations today, that the goal of “sketchnoting” is NOT to create great or compelling art. The purpose is to more deeply process the ideas the sketchnoter is hearing, seeing and experiencing, and create a visual product which can be used later to “re-tell” the main ideas and points of the presentation. Sketchnotes are also handy to visually represent key ideas and share them on social media, which is critically important in our “attention economy.” Today I not only used Procreate to create and export static images of my sermon sketchnotes, but I also used it to export video versions which I later narrated using iMovie for iPad. I’ve taught my 4th and 5th grade STEM students the past couple of months how to use iMovie for iPad to narrated the Lego Stopmotion movies they’ve created in our Maker Studio, and those positive experiences led me to try narrating my sketchnotes today. For more information, links and resources about sketchnoting or creating “visual notes,” please see the visual notetaking page of Mapping Media to the Curriculum.

Our couples Sunday school class lesson today focused on Romans 14. Here’s my VERY child-like sketchnote. As a partial disclaimer, understand I forgot my stylus at home today so these visuals were drawn with my finger!

Sketch note about Romans 14 in Sunday Sc by Wesley Fryer, on Flickr
Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License   by  Wesley Fryer 

Here is the 14 second narrated version of that sketchnote on Romans 14:

I also shared a few tweets on my @eyesrightblog Twitter channel during Sunday school class.

Here’s my sketchnote of Mateen Elass‘s sermon this morning, which focused on Luke 14:25-34.

Sketchnote about Luke 14 by Wesley Fryer, on Flickr
Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License   by  Wesley Fryer 

Here is my 30 second narrated version:

I love sketchnoting, even though I’m not YET very good at it. I know I’ll get better with more practice! I added both of today’s sketchnotes to my Flickr set for Sketchnotes / Visual Notes. I can’t wait till next Sunday when I’ll have more opportunities to practice! Hopefully I’ll also remember to bring a stylus. 🙂

From Foyer to Kitchen by Andy Stanley

These are my notes from a DVD message titled “From Foyer to Kitchen” by Andy Stanley. We watched this today at our Session retreat for First Presbyterian Church of Edmond, Oklahoma. This video is 6-8 years old (no longer available on Amazon) and there are several things Andy’s team has modified since. This post has a video of Andy talking about these ideas, similar to what we watched on today’s DVD.

We believe the local church should be irresistible
– children and parents should wake up on Sunday morning and say, “We want to go to church.”

We believe people who are NOT believers YET should be able to attend on Sunday morning, and want to go back the next week and check it out
– in the Gospels, Jesus was irresistible
– he wasn’t someone you could ignore or marginalize
– the Church is the Body of Christ
– our local church and yours should reflect that same thing in society

Story of explaining in Atlanta, GA
– we need more relevant environments where believers and non-believers can connect to each other and connect to our heavenly Father

This drove us to start Northpoint Community Church
– started with 6 staff
– hammered out mission statement: “Lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ”
– that was our version of saying the “Great Commission”
– 3 components or pursuits:
-1 pursue intimacy with God
-2 community with insiders / believers
-3 influence with others outside the faith

Generally discipleship or spiritual growth has been relegated to a series of classes
– it meant “how much Bible do you know” (verses)

Our goal for people wasn’t an amount of knowledge or number of classes you’d attended, but the degree to which people are engaged in these 3 pursuits

Our strategy recognized we can’t MAKE someone do any of these things

All of us in the group who valued these three pursuits realized we developed those passions and routines was ENVIRONMENT
– relevant environment

We decided if we created those environments, trained people to lead in those environments, and …

Mission: Lead People
Strategy: Creating environments where participants are encouraged and equipped to [engage in those 3 pursuits]

We named the 3 environments for rooms in the house
1- Foyer
2- Living Room
3- Kitchen

These environments do three different things

Foyer environment: Where we expect GUESTS

When guests are in your home, things are different: There are things you DO talk about, and things you don’t
– you change who you are as a family or what you believe, but you tailor the environment for the guest so they feel welcome and want to come back
– we decided we needed to create some safe “foyer” environments to help guests feel welcome

Living Room environment: people start to connect as friends

middle circle (we found) is the most difficult/challenging
– everyone talks about getting people into small groups
– we have constantly updated the transition part in the living room, when people

Life for our family happens in the kitchen
– this is our ultimate small group environment
– that is where life happens
– in the foyer you feel like a guest
– in the living room you start to make connections
– in the kitchen community with insiders happens

We want everyone at the kitchen table

For adults we have 3 kinds of small groups: (that’s the only one that meets on Sunday mornings at our church)
1- starting point small groups: open group
2- starter groups: we call it “dating” – it lasts 6 weeks, gives people a taste of group life, if they want to move on together they can – targeted group
3- community groups: meet for 12 to 18 months, then they reform (they are closed groups)

We’ve discovered community doesn’t happen in an unpredictable environment
– life on life doesn’t happen in an environment where trust is uncertain

Every small group comes to an end: either a happy end or a small end
– people may go forward and multiple
– people may decide they never want to be in another group

Life happens within the church when we are focused together

Our focus to evaluate all new PROGRAMS: Does this help us move people from the foyer, to the living room, to the kitchen?
– we try to “add steps, not programs”
– need to fill in gaps, help people move toward growth…

“Your church strategy is perfectly designed to get the results you’re getting”
– so if you want to see change, to become an irresistible church, then discover what your strategy is and change it so you can talk about it intelligently so people understand what you are doing and how you do it

Question: Are your ENVIRONMENTS accomplishing the mission

3 takeaways:

  1. Would you go home and spend time clarifying your purpose / mission? What is the WIN we are wanting to celebrate?
  2. Would you go home and think through what it would take to develop a strategy? Can you put it in terms you can explain to your people? (This creates amazing synergy)
  3. Focus your environments

“Everybody wants to give their time and energy to something they understand” (you need to clarify your strategy w different terms)

1st BlastCast Podcast of 2011

Update 26 Dec 2014: Unfortunately the website Cinchcast went offline and I didn’t backup our podcasts there, so this recording has been lost. 🙁

Today our fifth graders recorded a short audio podcast about some of the themes and topics we’ve been discussing in Sunday School this year since the Christmas holidays. The audio recording is just over three minutes long.Several photos of our work this morning planning our podcast are available.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Lesson plan on my iPhone

Our fifth grade Sunday school class has been using the Grapple curriculum from Group Publishing this year. I have been pretty pleased with the curriculum topics and activities. Generally when I have taught a lesson (we have several co-teachers so we rotate the lesson leadership periodically) I’ve brought in a projector and speakers so I could show videos, use Google Earth, and sometimes share a slideshow. This morning it would have been nice to have the projector and computer to use, but I didn’t want to take the time required to get everything setup. I did, however, need a copy of my lesson plan to bring with me and use, which is in PDF format, but I didn’t want to print out a hard copy or bring my laptop to church.

To bring my lesson plan with me, I turned to readdle, a website developed for the iPhone offering free and commercial hosted services for mobile document access on the iPhone. In less than ten minutes, I setup a free account on readdle, downloaded my lesson plan PDF file from the Grapple website, uploaded the lesson plan to my readdle site, and was able to login and pull up my lesson plan on my iPhone. I was thrilled! No need to print out the lesson plan… I was able to refer to it prior to and during my lesson without any problem. Our classroom is on the ground floor of our church and for some reason the cellular network coverage there is very poor. WiFi is not available, but this was not a problem, since I loaded up the document using readdle in the iPhone’s Safari web browser earlier. Because I didn’t close Safari, the document remained open and accessible even though I did not have access to an EDGE network connection or WiFi connection in my classroom. My free account on readdle permits me to upload up to 50 MB of documents, which is very generous, and if documents are not needed I can delete them to free up more webspace. The website let me create an organizational folder for my Sunday School documents. I’m looking forward to using this website to “bring other documents” with me to other meetings in other contexts of my life.

Thematically I have been very pleased with Grapple this year, but I have found the online interactive potential of the website to be very wanting. The interactive elements are basically limited to a text-based bulletin board (I think they use phpBB) and our students have not been able to really practice much Internet safety in creating a website with a profile, like social networking sites permit. My thought for next year (I am going to co-teach 5th grade again) is to setup a Moodle course that we can use for discussions and interactions in between our classes, and invite students to setup accounts on Imbee.com to have fun, learn about safe social networking, and extend our conversations beyond class times. I’ve wanted to utilize Imbee with students for several years now but have not had an opportunity– I think next year we’ll use it and learn together about how Imbee can help learners of all ages practice via experiences safe online social networking.