"100 YEARS FOR OAKHURST PRESBYTERIAN - WOW!"

 “100 YEARS FOR OAKHURST PRESBYTERIAN – WOW!

On September 25, 1921, some 66 people came forward in a tent meeting at the corner of East lake and Second Avenue in Decatur, Georgia, to sign a charter to become members of the newly forming church, Oakhurst Presbyterian.  In those segregated, neo-slavery days, it formed as an all-white church, and it stayed that way for 50 years, almost losing its life to its belief in white supremacy.  When the city of Atlanta took housing from Black people in the 1960’s in order to build stadia for budding professional sports teams, the people moved east and south, many coming into the Oakhurst neighborhood.  As those of us classified as “white” usually do, we fled when Black people moved into the community.  Oakhurst Presbyterian was no exception – its membership dropped from 850 to 80 over a 15 year period. With a huge building, a huge mortgage, and rapidly dwindling membership, the Presbytery gave serious effort to closing the church or forcing it to merge with another congregation.  

The first Black member joined in 1970, and the ministers and members were dedicated to developing that diversity and to keeping the church open.  Dr. Lawrence Bottoms was the senior pastor in the mid-1970’s.  He was one of the first Black ministers in the PCUS denomination to be called as senior pastor of a majority white congregation, and while he was pastor at Oakhurst, he was elected as the first and only Black Moderator of the denomination.  His leadership and ministry enabled the church to survive, along with that of the Reverend Jim Andrews, who was stated clerk of the former PCUS denomination, and later first stated clerk of the re-united PCUSA.  The other pastors, Rev. Jack Morris and Rev. Bruce Gannaway, were also powerful leaders in helping Oakhurst to develop its diversity and to keep its doors open.

Caroline and I were blessed to join in that leadership in 1983 and to stay there until she retired in 2012, and I retired in 2017.  The Presbytery leadership had given us two years of funding to try to get Oakhurst stabilized. Through God’s power and with the hard work of the members and elders and friends of Oakhurst, it worked.  Presbytery continued to fund Oakhurst through 2006, when the membership and budget had grown to a size that would sustain the church.  At that time, the Session asked Presbytery to share the funds with other congregations and ministries.  

Through Christine Caliier’s initiative to contact Sylvester Monroe of Time Magazine, we began to receive national publicity, including a full-page article in Time in April, 1995, which included these words: “Oakhurst, which has a congregation that is roughly half Black and half white, is what diversity is all about:  people of different races coming together not in the mournful, candle-bearing aftermath of some urban riot or the artificially arranged precursor to some political photo op, but because they want to be together.”  That article led to many others in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and on NPR, CNN, NBC News, CBS Radio, and the Christian Science Monitor, and others.

There were many factors in the survival and the thriving of Oakhurst, but today I want to give thanks for Caroline’s powerful, visionary, and dedicated ministry at Oakhurst.  Her leadership enabled us to make tremendous progress in two vital areas:  community ministry and Christian education.  She was a whirlwind in getting the ministry and the building open to the community, motivating people to get out of their houses to come see what all the energy and work was at the church.  She also had the vision to see that if we were to get new members who would sustain the church over the long haul, we would have to have first-rate Christian education programs, especially for families with young children.  She went to work on that and brought it into being.  Her ministry paid off on so many levels for Oakhurst, even though she never received a full-time salary until the last year before her retirement.  On the Sunday of her retirement, Inez Giles arranged for a parade of 75 children and young adults, who had grown up at Oakhurst, under Caroline’s leadership.  They came into the sanctuary and brought her flowers– a powerful moment.

Don’t take my word for it – here’s what one of the books about Oakhurst had to say about her.  The quote is  taken from “We Are the Church Together: Cultural Diversity in Congregational Life,” written in 1996 by Chuck Foster and Ted Brelsford, based on a Candler at Emory study of three diverse churches in Atlanta:

“Caroline, Oakhurst’s associate pastor, greets us also.  Caroline is strikingly friendly in this setting.  For the most part, I have seen and heard of Caroline before primarily in her capacity as minister of outreach: challenging the status quo at school board meetings; taking commissioners to task for feeble and discriminating housing policies; advocating for the community health center, drug addicted children, illiterate adults, low income parents.  This morning she is not carrying those burdens.  She seems excited and buoyant.  She is delighted to meet my family and eager to make us comfortable.”

So, thank you, Caroline!  And, thanks to so many others who made Oakhurst possible and who continue to do so.  Under the leadership of Reverend Amantha Barbee, the congregation just began a celebration of its 100 year history and visioning of its future.  Check it out sometime!