ORPHANS, WIDOWS AND "STINKY" PEOPLE:
PASTORING ON THE CARE CAMPUS

Denise Morris

By Denise Morris, Sevierville, Tennessee

Denise and her husband, Philip, Jr., pastor the Parkway Church of God in Sevierville, Tennessee.

We live in the #2 tourist destination in America: Sevierville/Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, Tennessee. And we pastor the church located on the Church of God Care Campus, Parkway Church of God. On our campus we have the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home, the Iris Vest Widows Ministry Center, Operation Compassion Warehouse and Just for Kids Learning Center.

My family and I moved to Sevierville in February of 2002. We were full of expectation as to the possibilities of our church. And the possibilities are still endless! However, as with every dream, there comes a good dose of reality; and reality is good because it helps you to realize how small you are and how big God is! Let me draw a mental picture for you of our challenges, and then testify to how big God is.

First of all, our church is not just a church for the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home. Many people do not realize that. We have over 200 regular attendees at Parkway, with about half being from the home. The other half is people who live and work in our community. Our church is still very committed, however, to our original vision: to be a place of hope and healing to the children and staff of the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home.

You can imagine the challenges we face in our weekly Sunday morning worship service. Every church has them, and every minister of music in America faces the challenge of the fine line between incorporating the old music along with the new. However, this challenge is multiplied greatly when you house a children’s home and a widow’s center on your campus! Most of the children at the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home do not have the church background or maturity (as with most teens) to even try to embrace the older music. So there is the potential for a great divide amongst musical preferences in our church.

Then add to that the fact that most of the children who come to the home are completely unchurched, much less Pentecostal. You should see the look on their faces the first time the Holy Spirit gives a message in tongues! These kids do not know how to act in church; the “take-for-granted” rules that you and I have grown up with are foreign to them. I watched in a youth service one night as one of our very troubled teens raised his hands in worship and “spoke in tongues” only to get the attention of his “way-too-cool” cottage-mates. Only last week, the church janitor and I found vulgar and promiscuous notes that had been stuffed in the church chairs during the previous weeks’ services. These problems are experienced probably in every church; they are just compounded in ours! So, in an effort to remedy this situation, we have started a six-week “intro to church and God” kind of class for our new residents at the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home. We’ve just finished our first six-week course, and it seems to have gone very well.

Then there is the constant “surveillance” of the kids who live on campus. We’ve had a few home children try to “make and break and run for it” during our regularly scheduled youth service. Our youth pastor and youth workers are then running after them, sometimes catching them, sometimes not; sometimes wrestling them to the ground in an effort to keep them from doing something stupid—all while the rest of us watch and wait. Never a dull moment in our youth group, that’s for sure!

Some of the campus children, thankfully, have accepted the Lord as their Savior and are involved in various areas of our youth ministry. They are still, however, working through their problems and addictions and some require consistent monitoring. There is a lot of red-tape concerning these kids. If you want to work with these children in any capacity, you have to fill out a little paperwork and be approved to work with them. If you want to take one of the kids out to lunch on Sunday, you have to fill out the necessary paperwork just so they can ride in your car.

I had to be fingerprinted in order to work with them. What’s a little funny is that even the widows have to be fingerprinted in order to work with the children! I can only imagine that some of the widows never dreamed they would ever have to be fingerprinted! We had a very successful youth summer tour last summer with our ensemble and drama team, but you would not believe the “hoops” I had to jump through to take a DCS (Department of Child Services) student across state lines. Maybe your church has one of these students in your youth group; we have an abundance!

As mentioned, some of the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home residents are involved in our youth ministries. An additional hurdle we experience is that many of them go home on the weekends for home visits. They also (those who have homes to go to) are gone for two weeks at Christmas and again the first part of June. This makes it difficult at times for those of us planning ministry activities for these teens. We never know who will actually be present for a youth ensemble or drama performance on a particular Sunday morning. There are ways we have of communicating this with the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home staff, but as with all kids, sometimes the communication doesn’t get home to the houseparents. Our youth pastor, who is also employed by the home as the activities director, attends weekly house parent meetings to better understand what is happening on campus and to better understand some of the “stuff” the houseparents deal with on a daily basis.

Then we have the houseparents: saints of God in my book! They have been spit upon, kicked, cursed and several have had to lay their reputations on the line—all because they love these kids. Some of these troubled teens will tell vicious lies about their houseparent in an effort to get out of the home. These houseparents remain so faithful. But they are a needy group of soldiers; they are in need of rest, friendship, spiritual renewal and encouragement. Many of them have their own children, and many times they have to put the needs of their children second to the constant needs of the home residents. Normal “parents” might be able to help teach a Sunday school class or work in the church in some way; most of our houseparents have to stay in such close proximity to their “kids” that we often experience a shortage of workers in our church. So, we have an abundance of children, and a shortage of workers. Not an equal equation in my book!

I’ve had several houseparents tell me that they have no life outside of the home. During the school year, when the children are in school, one would think that the houseparents would have some time to themselves. Not so! They have so many hours of state-mandated training seminars and workshops that they have to fulfill each year. Not to mention meetings about the children they are caring for, and how to better handle each individual situation with care and expertise. They have mountains of paperwork, literally, to fill out on each child every day and they have to keep track of how much individual medicine is dispersed to each child daily. I could not do the work that these wonderful houseparents are doing. My husband and I pray daily for God to show us how to minister to these wonderful people who have sacrificed so much on behalf of these needy children. We are still in search of effective ways to help our houseparents.

The widows are an altogether different story. Several of them have actually been pastors or pastors’ wives; some are not of a Church of God/Pentecostal background. They have been such an incredible blessing to our church. But, again, we’re trying to minister to several who are from all kinds of different backgrounds, different denominations and different parts of the country. Personally, the hardest thing about the widows and the teens living on our campus is that so many of them have to leave, and it rips my heart out every time one of them leaves.

We have widows who eventually leave because their health deteriorates, and they have to go into some kind of assisted or permanent care. This is especially hard because I know that this may be the last time I will ever see them. It’s the same with the teens. And as the teens come and go, we wonder if they will be going into the kind of environment that will nurture any kind of spiritual growth which they may have experienced, or will they go right back to the abusive or unhealthy environment which sent them to the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home in the first place. The same is true of houseparents who will eventually leave and pursue other avenues; it seems that there are always people I love deeply leaving our campus. And for a pastor’s wife who gets very involved in the lives of her congregants, that is very painful for me.

Our church partners with the Smoky Mountain Area Rescue Mission to operate a weekly soup kitchen out of our fellowship hall. We started out a year ago feeding about 30 people each week; at present, we feed about 80 each week. This area of our church is such a blessing, but as you can imagine, it doesn’t come without its drawbacks. When you start ministering to the poor and unchurched, you get a whole new set of problems. These people are not the “cream of the crop” of society! Our fellowship hall reeks with the smell of cigarette smoke each week after our soup kitchen dinner. We have to keep the church classrooms locked. We provide the use of our church restrooms to those who attend our soup kitchen, but we have hall monitors to make sure they come right back to the fellowship hall and do not wander around the campus. Because we are on the campus of the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home, and because some of our soup kitchen “attendees” have served time in jail, the helpers in the soup kitchen are constantly monitoring the whereabouts of each “attendee.”

In theory, ministering to the “down-and-out” may seem like a heavenly thing to do; we get all caught up in the “what would Jesus do?” mentality and often glorify this kind of ministry. But in reality, it’s hard work with people who are nothing like me. Let’s be real: they stink of body odor and cigarettes, some are in and out of jail, some have lived this lifestyle for so long that they are a kind of professional con-artist when it comes to getting people to help them. Some of them are dirty and many have multiple kinds of substance abuse. Many were abused as children, and many are abused wives. They are the lowest rung on the ladder of society. But they are the ones that Jesus would be hanging out with if He where here. This ministry is in no way glamorous; just biblical. So many churches pretend that they want to help these kinds of people—and we have good intentions. But when it comes right down to it, it bothers us to be around them. I have been this way myself, at times. But I keep trying to be what Jesus wants me to be, which is often nothing like the way I want “me” to be. Getting in the trenches with these people is not pretty or even rewarding, at times. But it is religion that is pure, according to James 1:27.

I’ve tried to paint a very realistic picture of our church congregation. Now let me share the blessings of being on our campus! And I’m not just talking about the area tourist discounts we receive because we are part of the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home! I will say that the community in which we live is so supportive of our campus. The administration of the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home has worked so hard to establish positive relationships within our community and the community has responded with open arms. Many of the local vendors will let the children and staff of the home attend their events at little or no cost. The local judges who have to deal with our juvenile offenders show so much compassion and heart with our teens. We even have one local judge who serves in our soup kitchen on a regular basis. We are indeed blessed to live in our community. Wherever I go, if I mention that I am a part of the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home, I am received with open arms. The community support may not seem that paramount, but it is essential and we could not operate without it.

The sweetest thing ever is when we see one of the kids from the home give their life over to the Lord. It does happen, and we see a broken life totally transformed! Some of the children are with us for several years and it is so rewarding to watch them grow and mature in their faith. And many of the kids who came to us not knowing how to behave in church, are now ministering in church in drama, youth ensemble or the adult choir. Last year on our youth summer ministry tour, we were able to take the children to Disney World. Some of them thought that they would never have the opportunity to go to Disney World. One girl had never been out of Knox County, TN, except to come to the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home in Sevier County! A few of the girls from the home were privileged to stay in a mansion of a home one night on tour. They called me that night (from one of the chaperones cell phones) to tell me about the marble floors, crystal chandeliers, gated entry to the home, and massive swimming pool. For me, giving these kids these kinds of experiences is such a thrill.

Our widows are such a blessing to our entire campus. I love having many of them as a part of our church. They are such worshippers in our services and are such encouragers to my husband and me. Each widow is assigned as a “grandmother” to one of the cottages, resulting in each cottage having two “grandmas.” For the past two years, the kids in each cottage have paid their own money in order to send their “grandma” to our ladies Valentine’s banquet. Once, I had a child who had gotten into some trouble and was required to have someone walk them back to their cottage after our drama rehearsal. The child’s houseparents were tied up with some trouble in their cottage, so the child’s “grandma” came to the entire rehearsal (and really enjoyed herself!) and then escorted the student home. There is example after example that I could give you of this kind of thing. The widows on our campus have not come here to retire; they have come here to minister! What an incredibly huge blessing!

And even though it is hard to watch as some of the children, widows and houseparents leave the campus for whatever reason, the truth is that all of our lives, especially mine, have been so enriched for having known them. I try not to think of it in terms of how many people I miss, but how blessed I am to get to know so many awesome children, widows and houseparents!

Our community people are such a blessing to our campus and to our church. They come in to our church with their shirtsleeves rolled up and ready to work. They bless our church and my family in so many ways. They take care of my children as if they were their own; they make sure the pastor’s family is taken care of. If there is a need in our church, our community people do their best to take care of it. Our community congregants get involved in the life of our home kids, take them into their homes, pray with them in the altar, feed the entire staff and children of the home in their restaurants, even take them “skidoo-ing” on the lake! If it weren’t for our community people, our church would just be a chapel for the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home, and there is nothing wrong with that. But, thanks to our community people, we are able to provide a thriving, growing and exciting environment for the Care Campus to attend and to be involved in.

After a year of operating the soup kitchen, we are finally beginning to see some spiritual results. It has taken a year of loving and serving these people with NO spiritual results, just planting “seed.” But we are now seeing some of our soup kitchen attendees pray right there in the soup kitchen! We are seeing them in the altar at church, giving their all to the Lord! Thank you, Jesus!

In conclusion, in many ways our church is just like every other church. And in many ways, it is so different from any other church. One thing is for sure, and that is that God is faithful. He is faithful to these children who have been dealt a bad hand in life or have made wrong decisions and are suffering the consequences; He is faithful to our widows who, in the later years of life are making an incredible impact on desperate teenagers; He is faithful to the “down and out” of society by sending a few people who are determined to show God’s love regardless of their social status. And He is faithful to a little church, a handful of people, who truly want to follow James 1:27. I believe that, as the old song says, “little is much when God is in it” and that nothing is impossible when it is surrendered with a pure heart to a faithful God.

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