Pictured: Looking up atop Rich Mountain, near Boone, North Carolina
A couple years ago, my partner’s parents purchased a small little trailer tucked away at the top of one of the many mountain ranges encircling Boone. The work they’ve done to transform this dilapidated structure, if you could have even called it a “structure” then, has been nothing short of heroic. On our first trip up, I immediately noticed the small, country Baptist church sitting in the middle of this small community the locals call Rich Mountain. The sight of it took me back to my childhood.
When I was very young, my grandfather bought a big swath of property on a mountain called Sugarloaf, in Lambsburg, Virginia. He owned so much of that mountain, or so it seemed to us kids, that it was only fitting we were the ones who got to rename it. At the bottom of that so-called “Comer Mountain” sat a little country church and an old abandoned elementary school the county would later let the locals turn into a community center. Those two landmarks joined together to form a triad with a small post office, lined out front with a few newspaper boxes carrying news from Galax, Mt. Airy, and Winston-Salem. Attached to the post office was a little hair salon, sometimes open but very often seemingly closed. A church, a school, post office, and a little bit of so-called retail formed a little embryonic downtown, of sorts.
Nearly 10 miles past Boone and up on Rich Mountain, there is no post office. The nearest elementary school is five miles away. There’s no retail, no newspaper boxes, no central gathering point. This small community comprised of long-settled, close-knit families can’t even claim its own name, sharing it with another more well-known peak some 15 miles away.
But Rich Mountain does have one thing — that little country church. I knew I had to visit Rich Mountain Baptist Church from the first moment I saw it. You see, I’ve spent far more Sundays of my life inside a church than outside one. Even as a kid at Grandpa’s piece of mountain in Virginia, I’d ride my bike down the gravel road to worship at Lambsburg Christian Church. If this place near Boone was ever going to be regular weekend getaway for me, I knew I needed to find a little church home away from home. Online worship can only carry me so far; it’s the very real, very in-person Christian fellowship I’ve known my whole life that means the most to me.
But, still, two years later, a visit to Rich Mountain Baptist seemed elusive. Wes isn’t much the church-going kind, and I just could not find it in myself to go alone — and for good reason. So many bad and traumatic memories from my childhood church in Winston-Salem made me wonder if this unknown congregation would be a place where I could worship safely — where I could walk in, sing hymns, pray, and hear the Good News proclaimed. Many preachers, too often throughout my life, have instead delivered words of hate masquerading as a pulpit message.
Wes and I travelled up to Rich Mountain last Friday to spend the Labor Day weekend with his parents. It was entirely on a whim that I mentioned how much I wanted to be in church this particular weekend. My heart swelled when Wes’s dad, Grant, replied that he, too, had planned on going to church this weekend. The parish Wes’s parents attended up here was 40 minutes away. Going to Rich Mountain Baptist, he said, would be so much easier. I finally had a church-going wingman.
Grant grew up Baptist — coincidently baptized in the same Charlotte church I now call home — so he was as equally intrigued by this little church in Rich Mountain. We determined to make a plan to wake up that Sunday and venture down the gravel road for church, happy we were in town for one of the only two Sundays each month this hilltop church hosted a preacher.
Friday turned to Saturday. We sat next to the fire that evening joking: “When we go to church tomorrow, I’m not gay and you’re not Catholic,” I said to Grant. We awoke Sunday morning, drank our coffee, and got ready. My heart was a little weak, my palms a little sweaty. I honestly had no idea what to expect. For a moment, I considered changing plans. “We’re either going to be pleasantly surprised and hear a message of love, or be faced with an hour-long, fire-and-brimstone sermon,” I told Grant, as Wes and his mom listened. “What if we just go down to First Baptist in Boone?”
I hemmed and hawed a little bit more, but we decided to give Rich Mountain Baptist a chance. If we didn’t like it or the sermon went too long, we could just leave, we figured.
When we finally pulled into the parking lot, a little dog from the house across the street ran over to greet us. We got out of the truck and Grant knelt down to pat the pup on its head. On the steps of the church stood a man smoking the last bits of a cigarette. “Good morning! Happy to see you. Welcome,” he said. We opened the door and heard the faint sound of a piano. As we walked in, the small congregation of little more than a dozen or so folks were listening to a choir of five singing a hymn I didn’t quite recognize. We took our seats as a couple folks nodded their heads and gently waved their hands to say hello.
One man, much older and with whiter hair than every other man there, was also the only one dressed in a suit and tie. He sat in the front pew. I imagined him to be the preacher, proven right as he arose after the small choir finished their hymn and headed back to their seats in the pews. Aided by a cane, he walked slowly up to the pulpit, center in the room, and flanked by the American flag on his right and Christian flag to his left.
He smiled. Said hello. Nodded his head toward Grant and me. Wiping the side of his mouth with a handkerchief — as he’d do several other times that morning — he continued slowly and seemingly out of breath, “It’s good to see y’all this morning. I hope your week has been good. I have a little message prepared for ya. Ain’t it good to be in God’s house this morning?”
He had us all turn our Bibles to Psalm 1. I reached for the Bible in the pew rack in front of me — a King James Version.
He began reading, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful…” continuing until the end… “For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
The moment of truth had arrived.
Fire and brimstone? No. This was pleasantly surprised. My body seemed to let out a deep breath of release.
For the next 15 minutes, I sat and listened to a sweet message of love, forgiveness, tenderness, and care.
“I’m not preaching at y’all, this morning,” the preacher said. “This is more about me than you. I thought a lot about my own shortcomings as I prepared this message for y’all. I’m as much a sinner as any man. But I know I’m blessed. I’m blessed because I’m a child of God. And you are, too.”
The sermon ended, and it just so happened that we had stumbled into a Sunday service when this little Baptist church had prepared to serve communion. Despite how uplifting the sermon had been, I dreaded what might come next, having been raised in a closed-communion church, sitting next to a Baptist-turned-Catholic, and having spent most of my life now in open-communion churches.
And, yet again, I was pleasantly surprised. The preacher called the deacons — all three of them — up to the front. The preacher administered the elements and had the deacons pray over them before they were served, including to Grant and me.
“Has everyone been served,” the preacher asked, reiterating again, “No one’s been left out? Good.”
He motioned the deacons back up front, as he began reciting from memory, “On the night our Lord was betrayed…”
The service ended in prayer, as any church service ought, and the preacher then immediately motioned toward Grant and me: “I want to thank all y’all for being here today, including our two visitors. We’re glad y’all came.” The small congregation nodded along, with a couple “amens” thrown in. A few members asked to speak, sharing their final prayer requests and praises before the preacher dismissed us.
Folks began to shift around, turn to shake each other’s hands, and a couple neighbors who recognized Grant — though we hadn’t noticed them before — came up to shake his hand and meet me. My fears about exclusion, because I’m gay or because of Grant’s Catholicism, melted away; these neighbors already knew all this. Grant asked about the offering; they’d already collected it during Sunday School, the neighbor said, and she waved his wallet away. “We’re just glad you came,” she said.
We all walked outside on the steps of the church, commencing another 20 minutes of conversation as we caught up on the latest community news and talked about the App State football game the day prior.
Grant and I headed back to the truck, windows rolled down as we headed back down the gravel road toward the trailer.
“That was really good,” he said. “Pleasantly surprised, right.”
I agreed, and Grant remarked on how the little dry pieces of bread and individual cups of grape juice reminded him of communion at his former and my now-home church.
There’s a lot of talk these days about how the church is dying. How church membership or attendance is getting so small. How hateful the church is getting. How irrelevant it is. But, on a whim — and perhaps a hope — I was called to visit a small country church. I found no death and no dying. Instead, I saw a small congregation of people who love each other and our God. I found no hate. Instead, I found a surprisingly open communion and community. Here, church was entirely relevant — a fellowship of friends and family who had gathered to share their week’s worth of joys and sorrows. Do I think these fellow Christians and I would agree on all our beliefs? No. Of course not, and I would never expect us to. I’d be disappointed if we did. We’re Baptists, after all! We never agree. But did I find welcome in a place that my past experiences and the world had told me I’d never be welcome? Yeah. I did. I’m so glad I did.
More importantly, though, I’m entirely grateful that God allowed me to see a vision of a different kind of faith community than one to which I’ve become so accustomed in the city. At Rich Mountain, there are no big columns. No big pipe organ. The only person in a suit and tie was the preacher. Every single person knew every other person’s name. As guests, we shook the hand of nearly every other believer in that room before we exited the doors.
On a whim, I took a little step into a church community that reminded me that faith doesn’t have to be complicated or ostentatious. It can — and it should — be simple. “How are you doing? Has your week gone well? Do you know you are blessed because you’re a child of God?”
Thanks be to God, and thanks be to the people of Rich Mountain Baptist Church, and to all the people of small churches everywhere who show kindness and welcome, and preach the Good News. Thanks for such a little, but oh-so-powerful reminder of the greatness and goodness of our God’s love shown through the tender, welcoming actions of God’s people.
