Church hailed by Whiteville as example

By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff Writer

Central Baptist Church of Whiteville is being praised by city leaders for leading by example.

The church’s 135 regular members, led by Pastor David Flowers, recently completed a five-month cleanup of the church grounds, as well as neighboring overgrown lot and an old house.

The old house will be converted into a youth center by this summer, and the former Smith Funeral Home property will eventually be home to a gymnasium and classrooms. The church is planning a cookout and painting day for the near future to renovate the old home.

“It’s been a lot of work,” Flowers said. “It looked like a wilderness out there. From some angles, you couldn’t see the church.”

The church has been at the Virgil Street location for more than a decade, Flowers said. The congregation was worried about both the appearance of the overgrown property and the potential health risks of rats, snakes and other vermin.

Derelict properties have been the target of city cleanup efforts for some time, but Central Baptist had no outside help for their project.

They were not facing potential code enforcement action by the city.

The church just decided it was time to clean up the property, Flowers said, and that activity has opened the door to more outreach opportunities for the church.

“They did it with no local, state or federal money,” Mayor Dial Gray said Thursday. “They took on the project themselves, and it looks much, much better. I’d like to see more churches and organizations follow their lead; if enough of them took this kind of attitude, we wouldn’t need code enforcement in town.”

Gray and Flowers work together at Southeastern Community College, and the mayor said he mentioned the overgrown areas at the church to the pastor one day last year.

Flowers talked to his congregation, and a movement was born, he said.

“The lot has been cut down, stumped, and cleaned,” Flowers said. “We’ve even got grass coming up now so it doesn’t look so bare. It’s a whole new place compared to how it was.”

J.D. Cogdale did some of the heavier work for the church, Flowers said, but the bulk of the work was done and will be done by the congregation.

The task has been a bonding experience for the congregation, Flowers said.

“The hard work brought us closer together,” Flowers said. “When you work together on something, you share the experience.”

Flowers said the youth center and gym will give children a safe place to learn and play, without being on the streets.

“We want to provide a safe, warm welcoming place where young people know they can have fun without being in danger,” Flowers continued. “The clean-up was just the first step toward that. Eventually we want to see computer classes and other activities to help our young people improve themselves.”

“A church starts on the outside, not in the sanctuary,” he said. “To get people to come in, we have to go out to invite them, and they have to want to come inside before they can hear the word.”