Journey UMC

On Friday, November 7, I was privileged to interview Rev. Mike Davis, pastor of Journey UMC, a recent church plant in Amelia County, Virginia. He provided me with a plentiful supply of information regarding his call to ministry and the history of Journey. This information was fascinating for me and also helpful for me in understanding the process and context of rural church planting.

 Vision

This vision of Journey UMC in Amelia, VA, is to be a thriving, regional church of 500 people. They expect to make a long-lasting impact on the physical and spiritual needs of Amelia County. “We are more concerned about the them,” says Pastor Mike Davis, “than the ‘us’ on the inside of the church. Most churches are more concerned about the ‘us’ than the ‘them.’”Regarding Journey’s vision to meet physical needs and to evangelize, Mike also explains that Journey Church has a vision of opening up a diner in Amelia County as a way to both provide social space and space for evangelism to happen.

One piece of Mike’s vision which had to be reformed was his vision of physical and spiritual impact being made through weekly small groups. Toward the beginning of this church plant, Mike had a vision of numerous small groups meeting in people’s homes throughout the county. However, he explains, this is something that is completely foreign to the religious understanding of this community context.

Community Context

“People are not going to gather unless it’s on Sunday mornings,” Mike says. Or if he proposes several gatherings throughout the week, there is a misunderstanding that everyone must go to all of them. The rural context of Amelia County is much different, he says, than the contexts they train people for in church planting school.

The community context of Journey UMC is Amelia County, a rural county of about 15,000 individuals. Jobs are few and far between, contributing to high rate of unemployment and a high volume of commuters. It is one of the poorest counties in the state. There are food banks in the county, but their resources are thin. Alcoholism, according to Mike, is a huge problem in the county. There is homelessness, although it’s a different form of homelessness than that experienced in cities. All of this is missional inspiration for Journey UMC and its counterpart, the Amelia Thrift Store.

The more immediate context of Journey UMC is that it meets in a machine shop adjacent to the Amelia Thrift Store off of Highway 360 in the western part of the county. This location places specific limitations on the church, of which Mike is not necessarily a fan. The geographical location means minimal exposure to eastward-bound commuters, and the machine shop worship has made for a disproportionately high number of men involved in Journey. It’s simple and conducive to organic worship, but “the facility can turn people away” because it’s not visually appealing or attractive to families who may want more appropriate bathrooms.

Because Journey is a missional church in a poor area, Mike names financial struggle as the biggest challenge for Journey. They work hard to embrace and connect with the down-and-out. They’ve attracted a large youth demographic. They give in enormous ways with time, goods, and money to their community. But none of this doesn’t necessarily translates into much giving for the sustenance of the church itself.

Furthermore, aspects of the community context around Journey are literally pride and prejudice. Mike has been utterly unsuccessful in convincing Journey’s members to do any kind of fund-raising because they do not want to ask for funds. On the other end, people in Amelia County are often resistant to accept the kind of physical or monetary help Journey provides. In regards to prejudice, Mike says that he’s seen the mixing of races at Journey’s worship services turn people away.

Pastor Mike Davis

Mike had a career previous to responding to God’s call. He worked in the business realm for 25 years. He started his own mail order retail business in 1979 and made his way through life buying and selling businesses. That, he says, “was what prepared me to do church planting.” During this time, he was very active in his home church, doing “every office you could have.”

Mike first heard his call when he was 45 years old. Previously his goal had been “to be comfortable and be able to buy whatever he wanted.” And at 45, he felt like he achieved that. That’s when God spoke to him, and he knew that God was calling him to leave success for the uncertainty of ministry. He subsequently served at small churches for thirteen years.

In 2008, Mike was serving a 3 point charge in the Farmville district. His district superintendent had a vision of starting a church in the district. The DS called Mike and told him of the vision and selected him to go to a church planter training event in Richmond. By the end of the 3 days, he says, “30 out of 300 knew they were church planters, and I was one of those 30.” So he went further into the planting process and was ultimately selected to be a church planter in the Virginia Conference. “I am probably the oldest they selected,” he says. He didn’t fit “the profile” of what a church planter should look like.

However, one of the things they look for, Mike says, is “Can you start things and make them work?” And his background spoke volumes to that. He brings the gifts of business acumen and musical talent to the table (he was a music major in college). Mike’s work is driven by the spirit of Jeremiah 29:11: “God has a plan for us all. When I was sent here, I didn’t know where Amelia was. But we’re following the plan God has set for us, even if it doesn’t seem to be moving fast enough for me.”

History of Journey UMC

In the fall of 2008, Mike initiated studies of Bishop Robert Schnase’s Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations with his three charge placements. Two of the churches were interested and went through the study. One, the North Amelia charge moved beyond the study. “Mission aspect was what people latched onto.” They initially started with a list of twenty-six projects and narrowed it down to a thrift store, the profits of which they could give back to community. The thrift store was launched in 2009 through the help of the twelve members of Mike’s North Amelia study group.

After the store had been open a year, Mike again challenged his three churches to consider “where you’re gonna be in 5 years.” The people at North Amelia said the church would be closed, but that they want to do something about it. They wanted to move and be a church of 500 people (30 were going there at the time, with about 20 of them were leadership). They made a plan to close the church and start a new church, Journey UMC.

That original leadership team went with Mike on a journey of gradually developing into a new church, resulting in “unbelievable drama” with other churches around, but especially in regard to the old North Amelia charge, which was dramatically resuscitated by community members. The other four UMC churches in the county “had a complete fit that we were going to open up a new church.” They said they didn’t need another church in Amelia County. And Mike agreed, as long as that meant “just another church.” But he and his team envisioned doing things differently.

Mike describes the development of Journey as going from a group of religious people becoming a church somewhat unwittingly. Journey was approved as a church plant in June, 2011, and had its first worship service soon after in December, 2011. Mike began by meeting with his core team every week at his house for study and fellowship. They recruited, and they did mission work together through the Thrift Store. He was under the impression that he should begin with small gatherings before moving on to a full worship gathering. But what happened was that everyone would show up at his Sunday gathering and no one would show up at his Wednesday gathering. Then he was challenged by his DS, who said Mike was basically doing church if he would just add music to the mix. So they found a location to worship and formally became Journey UMC.

Today they worship in a contemporary style, they have various missional groups, and they have a couple small groups.  They have given $130,000 back into the community through food banks and other community organizations. They have myriad of programs to help people in need such a Journey Meals, a backpack program which provides meals for kids; Homework Buddies, where mentors from the church help kids with their homework; Hands-to-Hearts, which leaves meals at people’s houses; and many more. Talking to Mike, it’s clear that he could talk forever about these programs and the good they are doing in the community.

Journey has 50 members, and it has an attendance in the 60’s “on a good Sunday.” They also have a Celebrate Recovery service, which averages about 25. They are the 4th largest church, out of 59 in the district. And Mike says they have not hit their critical mass yet. One-third of the attendance is under the age of 18. The other two-thirds are largely made up of young families, so he also says “the money just isn’t there.”

The church started out with a $100,000 grant from the conference, which includes money for Mike’s salary. This will phase out completely in January. Mike notes, however, that he and Journey have the strong support of the bishop and district superintendent, which means a lot. While their training was not always helpful, the Virginia Conference has been incredibly understanding about Mike’s context and how it is different from that of most church plants.

In terms of sustainability in leadership, Mike developed a leadership team for mission work early on. He tries to put as much of the leadership training as he can into the people are already doing the missional work. He also recently started a leadership team focused on other aspects of the church, such as worship. Ten of them are from the twelve he originally started with, and he says he is “trying to put more leadership into their hands as things go.”

Critical assessment

As I close out the interview, I ask Mike what would have done defiantly in his work with Journey. His answer surprises me:

I’ve asked myself that a lot of times. I guess knowing what I know today, I would have started in a better facility than I’m in. That may have made it to where all of this didn’t happen, but I think we have lost a lot of potential by the location that we’re in, physically, geographically.

They have a very low rent, he says, but they also feel somewhat trapped because there are no other buildings for them to move into in Amelia County. They would have to build their own, whereas he assumed there would be someplace to go when it came time to move.

            I also ask what he would do exactly the same. This answer does not surprise me:

It has been a struggle to keep the contemporary church; the church that has the band that plays loud music, that’s different from every other church. How we were established was to do that. That’s something that I hope will never change at Journey. I’ve done a lot of studying on worship practices. All the little churches worship the same way. None of that is bad. What is bad is how many young people are in those churches. If that’s not home for them, what will be?...That’s been my whole premise with how we worship.

Mike notes that everyone but one person at Journey is younger than himself. He says that the missional work of Journey is changing their community and “bringing to Christ the generations that we have missed.”

            As a present student of church planting, and as a worker in a current church plant, I deeply appreciate Mike’s insights. His experience at Journey gives me some much needed perspective on rural church planting and it highlights for me the importance of listening to one’s context and understanding that the methods one has been taught will not necessarily fit that context. I am forewarned by his recounting of Journey’s facility-struggles, but I am relieved by Mike’s good relationship with his conference. Furthermore, the missional strategy employed by Mike and Journey church set a precedent for future church planters who may be interested both in planting churches that reach new demographics and planting churches that reach the physical needs of a rural community.