The vision and the community

Wise’s vision alone doesn’t pay the bills -- or his salary. Three years in, Solid Rock had run out of its startup funding from the Annual Conference. About the same time, Wise got wind that the teachers at the school where they were holding services were concerned about a lack of daycare. At least one feared she’d have to quit teaching -- a loss to the community.

In 2002, Wise created a nonprofit called Solid Foundations, modeling it on an enterprise in Louisiana. A nonprofit could engage in activities a church couldn’t do; it allowed Solid Rock to hold property, for example, before it was officially chartered as a church. And it also could do business with the school system.

So, working through Solid Foundations and funded by a $55,000, three-year grant from The Duke Endowment, the church renovated a building for a daycare. Solid Rock now has received more than $500,000 from The Duke Endowment and is one of seven partner congregations across North Carolina in the Thriving Rural Communities program, an initiative to help rural congregations and pastors.

Wise became one of the first employees of the daycare, doing administrative work and even subbing in the classroom. The first year, the daycare had nine children; by the next year it had 45. The church is proud of adhering to high standards and providing good quality daycare – two of its teachers won national awards last year.

Solid Rock now is serving more than 200 children in three centers. Solid Rock gets some funding from the state, and soon will open a fourth site to offer before- and after-school care at another school.

“A lot of our families now are members of the church. And one of the reasons is they bring their child here every day and they’re comfortable. So it’s the first step,” said childcare director Lynda Turlington.

For those who do come, Solid Rock proudly promises “church like you’ve never seen it before.” And it’s true: Few people have seen kids pedaling a tricycle up the aisle or heard the Doobie Brothers’ “Takin’ it to the Streets” during Sunday worship. The sight of daycare equipment crammed up against the sanctuary walls -- it does double-duty as a daycare site during the week -- can be a little jarring.

When Bishop Gwinn goes to Solid Rock, he often sees motorcycles parked outside. He doesn’t have a chair on the pulpit to wait his turn to preach. He sits in the front row. One week it was so jam-packed that he barely kept his balance as he stood singing, and he noticed a little boy in front of him with too-big shoes, worn backwards. But on the Sunday the church was chartered, 13 people stepped forward to be baptized.

“I was greatly taken in a positive way. That’s God’s kingdom,” Gwinn said. “That’s really the kingdom. I think I’m more in touch with who I am as a part of God’s creation when I see motorcycles and I’m crowded and I see a little boy who doesn’t know how to put his shoes on.”

Where is God moving?

The church’s entrepreneurial spirit imbues other ministries as well. “We look around and see where God’s moving,” Wise said.

Joann “MeeMee” Rice said God was moving when she wrote her first letter to an imprisoned man at the request of praise and worship leader Gene Berrier. She had never known anyone in prison before.

“If you said to me eight years ago that I would be doing this, I would have laughed in your face. How could you love a child molester? How do you love somebody who has committed murder? But you know God did. Jesus loved them,” she said. “Why do I do this? God told me to and I did it. That’s the only answer I’ve got.”

She started by writing letters to three men, and now 285 prisoners receive her twice-monthly newsletter. Two men have stayed with her after being released from jail.

“I grew up in a church and a home that were very judgmental. Very much so…I’ve been the one who didn’t want to be around those people. But I’ve [also] been on the receiving end,” she said. “When I got to Solid Rock there were people coming to that church because the churches didn’t want them, plain and simple. They might be allowed to be there, but nobody would want to be friends with them, for goodness’ sake.”