Key points:
- Bethany United Methodist Church outside Atlanta was faltering because it wasn't attracting enough residents of its diverse neighborhood.
- Taking advantage of grants, the church brought in a former Coca-Cola marketing executive turned preacher, who has made it his mission to connect Bethany with its neighbors.
- The congregation is still mostly white, but a visit to a recent Sunday service showed that a more diverse group is participating.
- Other churches could follow the same strategy and revitalize.
During a recent Sunday service at Bethany United Methodist Church, a child was determined to see how many bean bags he could balance on his head.
This was not in the nursery; Bethany doesn’t need one of those. And it’s not for lack of space. The 109-year-old congregation has had a nice-size complex in this Atlanta suburb for 60 years.
Here, during worship, children have a dedicated area — called the “prayground” — stage left in the front of the sanctuary where pews have been removed to make room. There are tiny tables and chairs and various toys strewn about.
The prayground is one response to conditions that affect many churches, such as aging and declining membership, a lack of young families with children, lack of diversity and even the lingering tail of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people got out of the habit of attending church.
“I think the prayground has been wonderful,” said Kristie Vance, a nurse who has been attending Bethany since she was a child. “But also it was a necessary thing because we lost a lot of people (and) we lost a lot of volunteers.
“Having the volunteers to continue with children’s church was not feasible, so this was a great solution to including the kids and welcoming families,” she said.
The Rev. Joya Abrams, senior pastor at Bethany, who is set to move this summer to a new assignment, said the children in the prayground do pick up on what goes on during the worship services and hopefully will become gradually more aware of what it all means.
Attendance at Bethany has started to rebound after plummeting because of COVID-19.
Abrams said that before the pandemic, the numbers in worship were about 167 to 170, but dropped to around 70 after in-person worship resumed. In 2023, average attendance was 83.
“So it’s increasing again, but we lost a lot of people,” she said. “From a financial perspective, it used to be about a $600,000 budget. Last year, we were around $400,000.”
When Abrams was looking for help, she said the church underwent the “Faithful Future” process offered by the North Georgia Conference. After working with a conference consultant, Abrams said they learned they needed improvement in community engagement.
To get going, Abrams applied for and won a Barnes Evaluation and Administration Team grant, which led to the Rev. Tony Phillips coming aboard as associate pastor. The grant has been renewed twice.
“When churches close and they sell the property, the money goes to the Barnes Fund,” Phillips said, “and then they reallocate it in grants to do new ministry.”
Phillips, a former global brand executive with The Coca-Cola Company, said he feels called to the multicultural church.
“In The United Methodist Church, we have a particular challenge with having a lot of churches that were started off all-white and have had trouble changing with the community,” he said.
Promoting God instead of soda
Bethany United Methodist Church owes part of its success diversifying to the Rev. Tony Phillips, a former Coca-Cola Company executive who has followed a unique career path.
A confident, personable guy and college lacrosse player, Phillips is the point man for Bethany’s community engagement.
“When I got out of school, I went into advertising,” he said. “I worked at (advertising, marketing and public relations agency) Ogilvy-Mather.”
Next, he founded a company with some friends and landed the Coca-Cola Company account, moving to Atlanta to manage it.
That was Bethany’s plight. Bringing Abrams — an African American woman — on board in 2020 was an early step. Then Phillips, also Black, was hired in 2022. The church also started a contemporary service to alternate with traditional services.
Phillips’ mandate was community outreach: Get neighbors and their children involved at the church and eventually families will get involved, the reasoning goes.
“Young parents go to church for their kids, first and foremost,” Phillips said. “They’ll choose a church that the kids love. It’s not like in the past, where parents go to church and the kids just follow along.”
Phillips started visiting with local school officials, asking how Bethany might be of assistance.
“I created a community engagement strategy, which was to have a school partnerships program,” Phillips said.
Two elementary schools and a high school expressed interest.
Phillips set up annual events to get children and their parents more aware of what Bethany could offer, focusing on holidays including Trunk or Treat for Halloween, Jingle for Joy for Christmas, an Easter egg hunt, vacation Bible school in the summer and a Back to School Bash in the fall.
“We have kids come to get ornaments (for Christmas),” he said. “They make crafts and food and we have a race. … We have a Santa’s workshop where the kids can come and get a gift for their parents for free, and then the choir performs in our sanctuary. It was packed to the hilt for Jingle for Joy.”
Research turned up that some children who depended on school programs for meals were going hungry during the summer.
“We basically package a week’s worth of breakfast and lunch and we give it to them on a weekly basis and we advertise it through the schools,” Phillips said.
“We also go to a low-income apartment complex around the corner, and we set up tents (to distribute food). And along with that, we have these prayer request cards, so you can write a prayer request and we’ll pray for you.”
Bethany launched a dinner church for the community at the high school, and also provides meals to the football and basketball teams and the marching band on game days.
As the Fellowship of Christian Athletes representative in South Cobb County, Phillips hosts an optional Bible study for the athletes during the season.
“The whole idea is to get to know people, to build relationships,” he said.
The results are evident on Sundays. The congregation is still mostly white — about 97%, Abrams conceded — but a visit to a recent Sunday service showed that a more diverse group is participating.
“The newer families haven’t joined yet and I think part of that is they’re my generation or younger, and we don’t join things,” she said.
For Lauren Booth, who grew up at Bethany, a more diverse community has in turn made her more comfortable.
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“When I’m the only gay person in a place and there’s no diversity, it’s very uncomfortable to me,” she said. “But we’re just so inclusive and so loving and diverse. Everyone really cares about their neighbor here.”
The changes didn’t go over well with everyone. Some members moved on.
“A lot of the people that are no longer here, they knew me when I was a kid,” Booth said. “They knew my little gay self, running around here as a 5-year-old. That’s not something that I chose.”
When Bethany had two women ministers before Phillips arrived, some of the men in the church didn’t care for it, said Susan Sprayberry, 79, who joined Bethany in 1968.
“They say they’d rather talk to a man,” she said. “Well we’ve been having to talk to a man all of our lives, so put on your big boy panties and deal with it.”
Newton McCurdy, a teacher and lay leader at Bethany, said losing about 20% of its members was “a good pruning.”
“Change is hard, especially when you get to be of a certain age,” McCurdy said. “Members aren’t here anymore who would stop or blockade any kind of change.”
Susan Poolos, a cradle Methodist and member of Bethany since 1990, hopes newer church attendees will eventually make the jump to membership and join a committee or two.
“I’m really hoping as new families get more comfortable that they will come into fellowship, get to know people better that they’ll want to be part of that, too.
“A few of the families already have and that’s really good. So (we’re) just giving them a little time to grow in that.”
Patterson is a UM News reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. Contact him at 615-742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free Daily or Weekly Digests.
