From the Archives: 2009

Written by Jonathan Yarboro

Growing up my mom took me to church every Sunday and Wednesday but my dad very rarely came with us.  My mom explained that my dad “didn’t believe in Jesus the same way we did.”  Since that was the only thing I knew, it seemed normal to me at the time.  

My dad owned an X-rated drive-in movie theater.  I guess that was strange enough, but then they sent me to a Christian school.  Because of Dad’s reputation, the other families kept our family at arm’s length.  On the surface things were fine, but parents didn’t want their kids coming to our house, and dads didn’t want their daughters dating me.  I always felt like a second-class citizen.  

My experiences with Christians weren’t all bad, though. When I was in elementary school my dad moved out for a while.  At the Baptist church I attended, I was involved in a mission education program called RAs.  It was during that time that some of the men who were RA leaders really stepped up and became good role models for me—like helping me with mission projects since my dad wasn’t around.  

After about a year my mom and dad got back together.  In spite of my dad’s line of work, he wasn’t all bad.  He was actually very generous.  I remember Dad taking food and Christmas gifts to a huge amount of less fortunate people, and every time he did something like that he was adamant that it was anonymous.

Dad also had a drug habit.  Eventually, his dependence on crack cocaine spun out of control and he ended up in rehab.  That was a turning point in his life, however, because that is when he became a Christian.  Later, when he was helping with the prayer ministry at our church and didn’t know where to start, he pulled out this really worn and tattered prayer card thinking, “This poor sap must need a lot of prayers.”  When he discovered his name on the card with all these signatures, he realized how many prayers had been lifted on his behalf.  

At a youth retreat when I was a senior in high school I experienced what is often referred to as the “call to ministry.”  After high school, I went to Campbell University in Buies Creek.  My freshman year I was driving home to Shelby for fall break when God gave me a message to preach, outline and all.  I knew I was supposed to preach this message, but I argued with God about it because I didn’t have any place to preach.  However, on the first day back on campus after the break, I was asked if I would preach at an outreach team event 2 weeks later.  I preached that message God mysteriously gave me.  It was through that experience that my call was really confirmed.  I knew I couldn’t do anything else.  

During college, I took a job at a local church doing youth ministry.  Across the street from the church building was some low-income housing.  I found my previous experience of rejection at the hands of Christians influenced my view of ministry and I began to reach out to neighborhood kids across the street.  That wasn’t very well received by the church members.  Those weren’t the ‘right kind of kids.”  Things got really tense and nasty and it wasn’t long before I moved on to another church, but not before this “insider-outsider” notion was strongly reinforced.

I stayed at my second church for 7 years, through graduation, graduate school and marriage to my high school sweetheart, Felicia.  This church was very supportive of my ministry to those often rejected by the church, and consequently, I felt liberated and empowered to push farther outside the walls of the church.

From there I went to a large church in Florida where I initiated a lot of ministry to kids who many would describe as punks and goths.  It was here that I began to develop my ministry philosophy of taking the church outside the church building.  We were reaching kids and young adults from all kinds of backgrounds through these home groups we started.

God then led me back to North Carolina, to Boone, where I started a church in which we hoped to build on the idea of decentralized home groups.  Due to a number of mitigating circumstances it never really got going, certainly not sufficient to support my family.  Before long I needed a job and at the same time, the North Carolina Baptist State Convention needed a Baptist Campus Ministries director at Appalachian State.  I never had a real positive image of App State as a school or campus ministry as a profession but God has a way of challenging your biases. I became the BCM director at App State and disbanded the church I had started.

I would never have thought that a college campus would provide the fertile ground for my decentralized concept of the church but that is exactly what happened.  Today, Baptist Campus Ministry at App State consists of a network of groups made up of “outsiders,” non-Christian students, Buddhists, Pagans, atheists, agnostics, Wiccans Jews and some really far-out people.  They meet all over campus and are led by a multitude of student missionaries we train and send out.  New communities are starting up all the time.  The concept of the decentralized church I brought with me to Boone is alive and well on the App State campus, and the passion I have for those who have been made to feel like second-class citizens has led to more opportunities for ministry than I could have ever imagined.