Tennessee
‘God is leaving us here for some purpose’
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It’s easy to miss amid the upscale…
Nashville booms, but will it bloom?
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NASHVILLE, TENN. — I came across two “bloom where you are planted” stories in two very different neighborhoods in Middle Tennessee.
The first was just up the road from my dad’s house in Franklin — a town in Williamson County that once was the epicenter of the metro area’s population boom. Now Franklin is too expensive for many first-time home buyers. I’m pretty sure my dad’s 1,400-square-foot condo would sell for more than my four-bedroom home in Oklahoma.
Related: ‘God is leaving us here for some purpose’
I stopped by the Berry’s Chapel Church of Christ. The church’s main building dates back to the 1890s, but its members worship in the Family Life Center. Outside, I saw a sign advertising what I assumed was a Spanish-language service. But it had a word I don’t usually see on such signs — “bilingue” (“bilingual”).
A historical marker outside the main building of the Berry’s Chapel Church of Christ in Franklin, Tenn., reads: “In 1880, a group of Christians, including the Hamilton, Whitfield, and Dobson families, began to meet in the Perkins School (later called Parman School), a one-room building located at the present day junction of Spencer Creek Road and Hillsboro Pike. The first recorded baptism was Mrs. Fannie Hoskins in l885. The congregation soon outgrew the one-room schoolhouse and made plans in 1895 to build a new building on 6/10 acre of land donated by Mr. Berry Hamilton. The building, completed later that year, was built by Samuel Farnsworth with help from many in the congregation. Sarah Whitfield donated timber for the lumber. It was a frame building with handmade pews and a wood-burning stove. Baptisms were conducted în the nearby Harpeth River until 1956.”
The church serves a side of Franklin that most Tennesseans don’t see, said Preston Pratt, preaching and spiritual formations minister. Not far from the building is a community of Latinos who work in jobs related to Williamson County’s booming economy. They pour foundations, clean office complexes and landscape golf courses. Berry’s Chapel provides English classes (using the FriendSpeak program) and a variety of services at the Juntos Community Center. A women’s exercise class was scheduled there for later in the day.
Even before they started working at Juntos, church members made their worship bilingual. They sing in English and Spanish. Sermons are translated. Moving to one service in two languages “is very difficult, and was met with some resistance,” Pratt said, “but overall the Berry’s Chapel family is experiencing the blessings of unity among diversity in God’s kingdom.”
Charles A. Beaman and his wife, Ruth
About 18 miles north of Berry’s Chapel is the meeting place of the 40th Avenue Church of Christ. Charles Beaman, a lifelong educator, started ministering for the predominantly Black, West Nashville congregation in the 1990s. Williamson County was booming then. Meanwhile, brother Beaman invited people to church and they’d refuse because of the neighborhood. On occasion, they heard gunshots during Sunday night worship.
West Nashville has changed a lot in the past three decades, Beaman told me as we ate lunch at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, a trendy Nashville chain restaurant. Investors have torn down or renovated derelict buildings into high-end apartments, a rock-climbing gym and a place that offers “hot yoga.” Some longtime residents have sold their properties for considerable profit and moved away.
The millennials that have taken their place aren’t interested in church, Beaman said.
But they love gardening.
The fall garden at the 40th Avenue Church of Christ in Nashville includes plants that tend to grow well in cooler temperatures, said minister Charles Beaman. The church has three different gardens per year, the minister said.
We swung by the church building and he showed me vast swaths of chard, kale and bok choy planted next to the parking lot. It’s a community garden, and it’s got the neighborhood talking. Whenever the minister has a few minutes to tend to the plants, he inevitably engages in conversation with one of the church’s neighbors. He’s had deeper conversations with folks in the garden than he’s had with a lot of folks in the pews. The Berry’s Chapel church, I recently learned, also has a community garden.
It’s good to see our people sowing new seeds in old soil. I pray for bountiful harvests — in Franklin and West Nashville — in the new year.
ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected], and follow him on X @eriktryggestad.
