“I miss the building … (but) I don’t think the church is the building,” said member John Trueblood, a lifelong member of Grace United who was baptized there. “It’s the Holy Spirit that you feel.”
“The church was very insulated for a long time,” Trueblood said. “I think our attention now is to be more a part of the global community.”
Pye is not concerned at the moment about where the church is or its still-small membership, or the fact that it is still operating at a deficit. He says the congregation is growing its faith and expanding its trust in God — something toward which it has made great strides simply by moving to the Y.
If you look at how Grace First is faring in those two areas, “we’re doing well,” he said, adding: “As our faith grows, we become infectious.”
If the process ripples as Pye expects, people wanting “to feel God’s presence” will join those already strong in their faith.
That sits well with Linda Norwood, who grew up in Grace United and is now the clerk of session.
“I envision the old with the new,”and creative ministry that includes different music and fresh ideas, she said. “Charlie has brought the challenge for new things and open-mindedness.”
Pye, born and raised a Jew before joining the Presbyterian Church in the early 1990s, is so open-minded about his call to Grace United that he goes once a week to a coffee shop in Jeffersonville to “hang out,” meet people and invite them to his church.
Grace United also has a Web site, www.GraceUnitedpc.org, and distributes flyers advertising “sermons that speak to today’s problems in today’s language!”
Pye also would love to tap the growing Asian and Hispanic populations of Southern Indiana.
If the congregation were to grow to about 50 families, he said, it probably would be time to transition out of the YMCA space to a new building.
“This model will work up to about 50,” he said, but if it goes past that, “Something has to happen.”
Clearly there’s no rush. The uncertainly of the situation is what continues to energize Pye.
We don’t know what will happen, he said with a smile, and “that’s the great thing about God.”
God’s answer is always “far greater” than anything we could have imagined, he said.
“That’s sort of what happened on Easter morning.”
For more information about Grace United Presbyterian Church, call the Rev. Charlie Pye at (502) 727-9852, or email him at cpye@graceunitedpc.org. For more information about tentmaking, go to www.pcusa.org/ministers/types/tentmaking.htm
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