North Carolina

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Christmas in the mountains of North Carolina: Leaning into faith after the flood

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Christmas in the mountains of North Carolina: Leaning into faith after the flood

Christmas is a good news, bad news situation in Pensacola, a tiny community in the Cane River Valley high in the mountains of North Carolina.

The good news is that Hurricane Helene flooding -- which washed away almost everything at the town's crossroads -- was followed by waves of volunteers and relief shipments from churches, nonprofits and businesses large and small. Most of the Laurel Branch Baptist Church survived, in part because a bus-sized RV was swept into the front of the sanctuary, which diverted some of the raging floodwaters.

The bad news? While conditions are improving, many face Christmas in badly damaged houses, loaned mobile homes or worse. It's hard to put a Christmas tree inside a tent. And what happens if early snows and winds cripple the patched-up power lines?

"We've got people giving us Christmas on top of Christmas on top of Christmas. That's not the issue. We appreciate the generosity, but we have problems that are bigger than presents under a tree," said the Rev. Bradley Boone, pastor of Concord Baptist Church in nearby Burnsville. That's the county seat of rugged Yancey County, the location of Mount Mitchell -- the tallest peak east of the Mississippi River.

Pensacola is just one of many battered small towns along the matrix of rivers and creeks cut into the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Recent AccuWeather estimates for Helene damages have approached $250 billion. North Carolina lost at least 100 state bridges and more than 5,000 privately owned bridges.

The Boone roots run deep in the Cane River Valley, since he's in the seventh generation of a family tree topped by the legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone and his brothers. Pastor Boone is a veteran leader in the Pensacola Volunteer Fire Department, which was the hub for rescue work during and after Helene, as well as the ongoing relief efforts.

Boone's own home was damaged by one of the 2,000 landslides in the North Carolina mountains. The road to his house looked like it had been bombed.

Pensacola is part of my own story, since I have three decades of ties there with family, friends and neighbors.

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So your praise band is rockin' -- but why has the congregation stopped singing?

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So your praise band is rockin' -- but why has the congregation stopped singing?

Anyone who has visited a shopping mall understands the Big Idea behind a food court.

"If you want Mexican food, you go here. … If you want pizza, you go over there," said Kenny Lamm, the worship ministry strategist for the Southern Baptist state convention in North Carolina. "Then we sit together and eat whatever we want. …

“The question is whether a food-court approach works if you are seeking unity while leading worship in a church."

In the latest wrinkle in what researchers have long called the "worship wars," some church leaders are asking a blunt question about the decision to trade traditional hymnals for contemporary Christian music. That question: Has the typical Sunday service become a semi-professional concert instead of a communal worship experience for all believers?

As part of his work, Lamm hears from many pastors, musicians and church members. One recent letter -- which he posted while keeping the writer anonymous -- combined many hot-button issues in this debate.

After four weeks of visiting a church, the writer noted that he was constantly distracted during worship by "haze machines," "programmable lights that blind the audience," concert-level darkness in the auditorium, as well as musicians wearing "ball caps," skinny jeans, "Chuck Taylor" tennis shoes and other "stage" apparel.

Many of the new songs seemed to confuse the congregation.

"The melody is unmemorable. Very few in the audience seem to know the songs either; indeed as we looked around during one of the songs, we did not see one person singing -- not one," noted this visitor. "Some of the songs are so high I cannot sing them. I wish the leaders would consider the average singer! … Why does just about every praise and worship song go up an octave and double in volume halfway through, then die back down at the end?"

Concerning volume levels, he added: "Driving home, my wife indicated that the excessive loudness was starting to cause some serious anxiety. Having earplugs available in the lobby is a sure sign there might be a problem."

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Memory eternal: Billy Graham

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Memory eternal: Billy Graham

Oklahoma was shrouded in grief after the deaths of 168 people -- including 19 children -- in a homegrown terrorism attack at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

President Bill Clinton spoke at the memorial service. So did Gov. Frank Keating. But everyone knew who would deliver the sermon and face the hard questions.

That was a job for the Rev. Billy Graham.

"The Bible says … there is a devil, that Satan is very real and he has great power," said Graham, focusing on the 9,000 mourners in the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds Arena. "It also tells us that evil is real and that the human heart is capable of almost limitless evil when it is cut off from God and from the moral law.

 "The prophet Jeremiah said, 'The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?' That is your heart and my heart without God. … I pray that you will not let bitterness and poison creep into your soul, but that you will turn in faith and trust in God even if we cannot understand.  It is better to face something like this with God than without Him."

Graham didn't end those 1995 remarks with an "altar call," urging sinners to come forward and make a profession of faith. But he could have -- even with the president of the United States in the front row.

Then again, Clinton was from the South and attended Graham's 1959 crusade in Little Rock, Ark. The young Clinton was so impressed by the preacher's message, and his refusal to bow to segregationists, that he began sending part of his weekly allowance to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

In the wake of his death this week, at age 99, diplomats, scholars and journalists will struggle to describe Graham's impact via preaching, television, radio, books and other writings. It's hard enough to do the math when discussing his 417 crusades in 185 countries, along with countless other gatherings ranging from presidential inaugurations to tiny youth rallies after his 1938 ordination as a Southern Baptist preacher.

To be blunt, it can be argued that Graham spoke -- in person -- to more people than any other leader in world history.