Archive: Miracle on Bailey Ave.

By David Hampton

When all other churches were moving away from the increasingly impoverished downtown Jackson, Mississippi area, Wells UMC stayed. Now a miracle is happening among the drugs, gangs, and poverty.

Ask the Rev. Keith Tonkel about Wells United Methodist Church, and he will tell you about people, not programs or membership numbers.  “We had a Sunday school class at one time that had a psychiatrist and two physicians in it and about eight or ten others being taught by a black man with a second-grade education, but who had so much street knowledge that he just kept the class spellbound,” he said.  He will describe the two women who helped one another to the communion altar—one blind who needed guidance and one injured who needed the blind woman’s help to walk. “Boy, if that’s not a memorable, touching illustration of what ministry is about!” Tonkel said.

Ask any of its people about Wells, and they will tell you about their pastor, Keith Tonkel, who nurtured the dying church in Jackson, Mississippi, into a strong family of Christian believers that ministers to an inner-city community.  Wells Church stands in the same place it has stood for 63 years, sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a hurting world. That world is just hurting a little more and a little closer to Wells these days. The problems of poverty, gang activity and drugs plague the area. Once a thriving, middle-class neighborhood, the Bailey Avenue area of Jackson is now mostly made up of poor black and elderly white families. But while other churches in the inner-city areas in Jackson have closed or moved to the suburbs, Wells has decided to stay.

The city’s changes had taken their toll when Tonkel arrived in 1969. There were 11 in the congregation when he first stood behind the pulpit.

He recalls how the congregation was challenged, and he rose to the call of staying and ministering to the neighborhood even though that decision was controversial during the civil rights struggles of the time.

“I remember one of the older members saying, ‘Well, if it’s scriptural and if it’s of God we dare not stand against it; we need to do it,’” Tonkel said.

There are about 450 active members now, most of whom commute from other parts of the city and the suburbs. In addition to its long-time members, Wells attracts students, young professionals and a diverse group of individuals from various denominational backgrounds who are drawn to its openness and evangelical fervor.

Tonkel plays down his part and even the “inner-city magnet” label.

“A church must have vitality whether it is inner-city or not,” he says. “A lot of people are just looking for a church that is alive.” Tonkel calls the most significant ministry of the church a “ministry of being.”

“That’s the toughest thing to communicate,” he says. “Because what our congregation is, both first and foremost, is a being. It’s a creature; it’s a personality; it’s a spirit. It has to do directly with the Holy Spirit’s creation of the Spirit of Christ in the church. You’ll have people who are not Christians walk into this place and say, ‘What is it about this place?’

“What it is, is what I call the overflow of the Spirit’s presence. I call it that because I don’t have anything better to call it, and I don’t even understand it myself except to say, ‘Thank you Lord.’ But the being of the church creates that kind of thing.”

Tonkel says the “doing of the church follows the being.”

The “doing” of Wells Church includes traditional educational and support roles for its members as well as several social-outreach ministries aimed at meeting human needs in the community.

While most churches have small boards and councils, Wells’ Council on Ministries is made up of more than 30 people. In addition to planning and initiating church programs, it encourages individual ministries. Some small ministries launched by individuals have flourished into broader church programs:

• Visiting a local nursing home to play dominoes has resulted in a church-wide ministry to the elderly. The most ambitious program is a community group home called “Wellshouse.” It has been designed to provide support and a family atmosphere for the elderly. It will also be a pilot program to show small churches how to establish services to meet the unique needs of the elderly. Wellshouse, originally a Methodist children’s home for boys, has eight bedrooms, a full kitchen and a garden—perfect for this program. After three years of planning and prayer, it will open this fall.
• A small church festival to raise money for community needs has grown into an annual city event. The festival, called “Wellsfest,” is designed to provide an alcohol-free, outdoor event in which families can enjoy music (secular and gospel) by well-known groups.

Money raised from food booths and children’s games last year went to fund neighborhood programs to combat gang problems. This year’s Wellsfest monies will go to a residential alcohol treatment center for teenagers.

• While Sunday school meets, a Christian fellowship for alcohol and chemically dependent persons gathers in a small building behind the church. The “James Club” ministry provides support, prayer and a 12-step program for alcoholics. Some join in the church life and some prefer to remain anonymous, but all find love and support.
• An independent social service agency, “Operation Shoestring,” was founded by Wells 20 years ago and is now a primary provider of neighborhood human development and child-care programs in the area. Church members serve on the Shoestring board and participate in programs such as tutoring and an annual Bible school educational camp for neighborhood children.
• Other ministries include teaching at local jails, conducting Sunday school at the veterans’ hospitals, writing families listed in the obituary columns and cooking meals for AIDS patients at a local hospice. Individuals carry on numerous other projects, some of which, Tonkel jokes, he doesn’t even know about.

Tonkel sees his role as a teacher and developer of the lay ministry.

“I try to call forth or lift up persons whose gifts represent true ministry, so I can move a little in the background maintaining myself as a resource person, pastor and teacher,” he says.

The church services at Wells celebrate the worship of God in an open and joyous manner. There might be a prayer of healing with laying on of hands or a song to celebrate someone’s birthday, anniversary or even the fact that a chemically dependent member has been sober for a year.

The music can range from Beethoven to Woody Guthrie. The sermon might quote Martin Luther or Martin Luther King Jr. The text is clearly the Bible.

Tonkel says he always tests a sermon by asking himself if it relates to anything real.

“At this particular time I think God speaks through the story, the narrative. I attempt to attach that message to the particular needs of the congregation—not something that is wonderful and memorable, but most of all a message of love that serves the needs of the congregation at that particular time.”

Tonkel has a national reputation and has turned down opportunities to serve larger and more prestigious churches.

“I really believe, in my own heart, that the Spirit of Christ calls us into a lot of situations that don’t measure success in the world’s terms,” Tonkel said. “I think that success is measured most in terms of faithfulness to what you perceive to be His call.”

It is rare for any Methodist minister to be assigned to a church for 20 years, but the church leadership has recognized Tonkel’ s unique talents and considers them necessary in this inner-city magnet church.

The Wells people know this too.

“It would have taken a miracle for this church to survive the way it has survived, and I think Keith Tonkel is a miracle,” says Matt Friedeman, associate pastor and a professor at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson. “He has, in tum, helped the laity work miracles.”

Tonkel stresses that Wells is “inclusive” and has a reputation of openness that is important to its “ministry of presence” in the neighborhood.

“We are open to all, with a strong hospitality spirit, motivated by agape love as we understand it,” he says.

The church is one of a handful of integrated churches in the Jackson area.

“But you know most of the difficult integration is not so much black and white as it is the educated and the uneducated, the persons who have good jobs and the persons who don’t, the persons who are sick and downright obnoxious as well as the persons who are easy to get along with. But the whole point is—and I have a very strong conviction about this—that most churches do not promote growth because everybody thinks alike, looks alike, acts alike, lives life alike. In a church like this you’ve really got to test the spirits to see if they be of God, and let the Gospel speak to a broad range of people.”

Tonkel’s wife, Pat, says the diversity means that Wells’ people grow and depend on one another more.

“Whenever I’ve been weak there has been somebody else who has been strong,” she says.

Others who come to Wells Church apparently feel the same way. A recent church survey asked members if they felt others would be of help in time of trouble, crisis or illness.

The response? 100 percent—yes.

“We represent what we understand to be the biblical ethic,” Tonkel says. “But we believe our ministry is to accept, love and present the Gospel so that any life change is a direct result of Christ’s work. There is no redemption except from Him.”

David Hampton is editorial director for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.