Last week, The Church on Main hosted more than 100 foster children and their foster parents for a dinner.
The event was part of the church’s plan to continue expanding services to the community as the church grows, according to Executive Pastor Elmer Blanchard.
“We had, between our volunteers, children and foster parents, well in excess of 200 people here, all for one evening of dinner and some entertainment,” he said. “It’s a respite for the parents. In the past, one church has sponsored the kids and another church has taken care of the parents, but nobody’s ever done both. This year, we said we were going to do it all and it was a smash. We will do it again.”
The event was staged partially in space the church is renovating for future use, according to Blanchard.
“We bought the property that was the Back Door restaurant,” he said. “We have totally renovated the second floor. It is open now. We opened the buildings between the two and that’s where almost 100 children were last Tuesday.”
As the church continues to grow, Blanchard said they want to help children even more. The new offerings include Trail Life USA, a Christian version of scouting.
“It was founded by some Christian leaders who left scouting,” Blanchard said. “Now they are in all 50 states and have multiple thousands of boys and men as the volunteers. Rather than being owned by a parent organization, each chapter is totally owned and run by a host church. We probably have 20-something boys involved and a lot of men who are working to see it grow. We want to be the springboard for Marion County. We’ve got the only chapter south of Jackson. What we’d like is for other churches to pick up on this and have their own scouts. It’s not RAs or anything like that. It’s an outdoor adventure themed program. Every adult has to pass a background check and every adult must sign a statement of faith. It is just for boys. There is a sister organization for girls, American Heritage Girls, which actually pre-dates Trail Life USA. Scouts provided a huge service for years, but, Christians decided to back out.”
Within the church itself, efforts to become involved in the community are continuing.
“We’re involved with the Department of Human Services and Child Protective Services,” Blanchard said. “One good example is that the folks in Youth Court are at the end of their rope. When they go there, they have to stay or they could be held in contempt of court if they aren’t there when a case is called. There aren’t facilities there for them; there’s one little bathroom and no food. So we’ve taken to carrying them snack bags and drinks when they have court so they at least have something while they are there. We are also doing a lot of outreach in the community in other ways. We work with the homeless population; we have transients that we try to get settled. We just worked with another group and put a guy into a six-month rehab program down in Mobile.”
The congregation at the downtown church continues to grow, according to Blanchard.
“We are running between 200-230 people on Sundays now,” he said. “We have more and more new faces every day.”
Blanchard serves as the executive/outreach pastor, Brian Stewart is the senior pastor, the worship leader is Jared Rainey, the student pastoris Trent Pittman, and the children’s pastors are Zach and Ashtyne Singletary.
“Our plans for the bottom floor of the former Back Door are to turn it into a restaurant/coffee shop and for that to be our welcome and fellowship area there,” he said. “It’s actually going to be open at some point. We’re working hard trying to find a place to establish some transient housing for people who are out of prison or recovering from addiction. It’s something we’re trying to establish. We want to take on more in the community. Our whole emphasis is church outside the walls.”
TCOM is not like many more traditional churches.
“What’s happening is that we’re getting more people who wouldn’t be comfortable in most places,” he said. “They are very welcome here. Every kind of background that you can imagine is coming here and worshiping Christ.”
The church is also working on a Hispanic outreach, according to Blanchard.
“We just had a young guy that come to us,” he said. “He wanted to use a room to teach English to some Spanish-speaking people. He wanted to charge them, we said, ‘why don’t we pay you, and they can come for free.’ Eventually, we’d like to have a full-fledged Hispanic church meeting.”
The church was also host to a large recital recently.
“We want the church to become a community center,” Blanchard said. “We’ve got a very unique meeting place here – for meetings and weddings and all kinds of stuff. We’d like for it to be inexpensive, yet self sustaining. We’d like people to come and use our building for all sorts of things. We want our church to be a community center and a venue for anything where they would need a large meeting space – with sound and video capability. All kinds of stuff is going on.”
The Church on Main will also host a blood drive on Jan. 21 from 11:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. in the fellowship hall.
Pictured Above: The Church on Main has expanded into a second building on Main Street. | Photo by Mark Rogers
