Pastor Thirland McKissic reclined behind the desk in his new office, his burly forearms folded below a wide smile with a single chipped tooth. A week-and-a-half had passed since McKissic and his congregation at New Fellowship Baptist Church moved into their new home, at 3706 South Cherry Street near the intersection of 37th Avenue.
Across from him sat Mike Manning, a missionary for the Harmony Baptist Association. The HBA is a group of 41 Southern Baptist Churches, including New Fellowship, across four Arkansas counties that coordinate activities and resources.
The two men were discussing welcome news. McKissic’s growing congregation recently moved into the church formerly occupied by Forrest Park Baptist Church. On Sunday, June 25, New Fellowship will hold its second worship service in the facility, which includes a sanctuary and several other rooms. Forrest Park’s former members will be present for a 3 p.m. celebration with the theme, “Passing the Baton for God’s Kingdom Purposes.”
The celebration is notable for several reasons. Churches periodically shut down for various reasons, according to Tim Wicker, a member of the church planting team at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention in Little Rock. Some then sell the property and give the proceeds to mission groups. Some try to merge with another congregation.
“And then we see this sometimes,” Wicker said. “Where a church says, ‘Hey, this community no longer looks like us. We’re at a point of closure. Let’s find somebody that’s in our family that could grow from this.’”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Forrest Park’s congregation was aging and predominantly white, while New Fellowship is younger and mostly African-American. The change matches a general demographic trend in Pine Bluff, which as of the 2010 U.S. Census was 76 percent African-American and 21 percent white. It’s possible such transitions could occur more frequently in coming years, if predominantly white churches in neighborhoods increasingly occupied by African-American residents struggle to find new members.
A long road
“There’s nothing negative about this,” McKissic cautioned, when asked about the transition. God had recently put something on his heart, he said, had given him a sense that after several years of searching for a facility of the church’s own, something was going to happen.
McKissic formed New Fellowship in 2008, worshipping in a storefront at 801 West 6th Avenue. For the last eight years, the church rented a sanctuary at Immanuel Baptist Church on 17th Avenue. The cavernous campus, from which future Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee shot to prominence in the 1980s, has a second sanctuary built in 1954 where its own congregation worships, says its pastor, Don Taylor.
The arrangement was unique. Two congregations, worshipping side-by-side. McKissic’s, mostly young and African-American, next to the mostly white, retirement-age Immanuel members. About 1,000 attended Immanuel during Huckabee’s time in the pulpit, and Huckabee regularly broadcast from a TV studio he had installed.
In following decades, the size of Immanuel’s congregation ranged from between 500 and 700 people, Taylor said. Then, in 2003, a contentious dispute within the church led to the departure of 100 families. Subsequent animosity resulted in the departure of more members, until there were very few left. Those that remained had been members for 50 or 60 years, and wanted to see the church survive.
Now the congregation numbers fewer than 50 people, with an average age of about 65, Taylor said. Together they manage a facility of more than 70,000 square feet, which is larger than a football field and not far shy of two acres.
“I have walked the streets of Pine Bluff,” Taylor said. “I’ve knocked on more than 1,000 doors, trying to ask [people] if they’re going to church. If not, asking why not, trying to get them interested. That’s what it’s going to take. And if we don’t, in 10 years the church will not be Immanuel Baptist Church. It’ll be something else.”
New Fellowship and Immanuel occasionally shared meals and worshipped together, Taylor said, and Immanuel let New Fellowship use its baptistery, a pool used for the full-immersion baptisms that are a feature of the Southern Baptist Church.
After he felt the message from God that something was about to happen, McKissic approached Taylor with the idea of merging the two congregations. Taylor brought it to his congregation, but his members weren’t sure of the idea. New Fellowship uses loud worship music, even including hip-hop. Immanuel typically sings hymns, led by a choir.
“Obviously a step that big, you want to be careful and not go too fast,” Taylor said.
The differences may seem trivial, but in matters of worship and fellowship, multiple people spoken to for this story said they mean a lot. Older members may desire a church that offers classes targeted to seniors, while the familiar, pleasant hymns of an older generation can struggle to break through to adolescents brought up on hip-hop.
“You say, ‘If it’s good enough for me, then it’s good enough for them,’” says McKissic, who was brought up on anthems and gospel, and went through his own struggle to accept new forms of worship music. Eventually, he concluded, “there’s some rap that reaches people, and people get saved.”
A new opportunity
While Immanuel was contemplating the merger, McKissic received the call from Manning, alerting him the Forrest Park’s church could potentially become available. Forrest Park originated in the early 1950s as a mission church out of First Baptist Pine Bluff, according to Len King, the former music director at Forrest Park. In recent years it was plagued by declining membership, and struggled to retain a succession of pastors. Not long after the church’s last pastor left in December, they called in Manning to consider what to do next.
The options were stark. They could keep going, with a congregation of roughly 15 and an average age of about 70, and try to bring in another pastor. They could merge with another church. Or they could sell or donate the property.
Manning mentioned McKissic, and his efforts to find New Fellowship a permanent home. Leaders from both churches met over the course of several months, and eventually Forrest Park’s leaders and its congregation grew comfortable with the idea of turning over the property.
“It fit several things that we wanted to see happen,” King said. “Of course, first one was it could stay a church building. The other was, it was going to a church that was in need of space, and was an active and growing church. And then it also fit the neighborhood that we’re in.”
The demographics of the area surrounding Forrest Park have changed from predominantly white from predominantly African-American in recent decades, mirroring the broader demographic trend in Pine Bluff. While King is quick to say that race was not much of a factor in the decision, they did reason that New Fellowship, as a predominantly African-American church, might have more success in reaching unsaved souls.
“I see articles saying Sunday is the most segregated day of the week,” said King, who acknowledged that differing styles of worship and comfort level may contribute to where people go to church. “We talked about [race] occasionally, but it was never a big subject for us. We knocked on doors. We knew the neighborhood was changing. [We thought a] church that matches the neighborhood would have a better chance of making an impact.”
To merge or not to merge
Forrest Park Baptist Church held its last service May 28. Since they didn’t have a full-time pastor, the congregation arranged for a retired missionary to lead the service. King described the experience as “difficult” and “emotional.”
“We weren’t really trying to say goodbye or anything,” he said. “It was just the last time we were going to meet together there on a Sunday morning.”
McKissic’s brother, Pastor Dwight McKissic of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, was a guest last week on a National Public Radio show to discuss the Southern Baptist Convention’s recent vote to denounce alt-right white supremacy. He said that he planned to attend the ceremony Sunday in Pine Bluff with a white church donating its facility to an African-American church. The ceremony was welcome news, Dwight McKissic said, but he wished the two congregations would merge.
“He said it was a great thing, but it would have been even better if they came together,” Thirland McKissic said, before adding that he was not interested in forcing people to do anything. “You can’t make somebody unify. It’s a God thing. He said he came to save the lost, period. No race, whatever. Jesus came and gave us life for the lost, and that’s what we’re about. Everybody is welcome.
“Until that happens, the world is not gonna be what he wants it to be anyway. We’ve got a ways to go, but we can get there.”
In the meantime, one church’s gift has given another church new life.
“It’s a cycle, but there’s still souls to be saved,” McKissic said.
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