Former Central Church Of Christ Members Join Amy Grant To Mark 100th Anniversary
NASHVILLE — Their historic building awaiting sale just a block away, former members of the Central Church of Christ gathered with guests including singer Amy Grant at a downtown campus of Lipscomb University to celebrate what would have been their congregation’s 100th anniversary.
A shared legacy brought together the Central members, the university and Grant and her family: the generosity and visionary leadership of Andrew Mizell “A.M.” Burton, the singer’s great-grandfather, a deep-pocketed Lipscomb benefactor and a key founder of the Central church.
Central’s original members heard their first sermon in October 1925 in the new church building Burton helped construct. The congregation became a pioneer in urban ministry, providing in-house medical and dental care, daily lunch, clothing distribution to the poor and child care for working mothers.
Though Central’s innovative outreach flourished for decades, the congregation struggled to retain its membership later.
About eight years ago, the Central eldership — recently expanded to three elders from two by the addition of businessman Shawn Matthis — made the church a nonprofit corporation and changed its name to the Nashville Church of Christ. Soon, the leaders closed the building, and the church went online in a private service.
After members of the Burton family started asking questions, the Nashville Church of Christ sued, leading to five years of litigation. The Tennessee attorney general also investigated the Nashville Church’s administration of a missionary fund.
Those five years of legal battles concluded just weeks before the anniversary celebration, with the Burton family regaining ownership of the building, now to be sold.
The gavel’s drop still echoing, the former Central members and others — some 160 in all — met for the recent anniversary celebration at Spark, Lipscomb’s “downtown learning and development center,” as described by the university’s website.
“What we celebrate is the impact of a church,” said Scott Sager, special advisor for mission and ministry at Lipscomb. “They were the hands and the feet and the mouthpiece of Jesus to the downtown community, to the rich and the powerful and to the poor and the down and out.”
Lipscomb President Candice McQueen praised the church for its impact, reflecting on the continuing need for a redemptive presence downtown.
“For a century, this congregation has been a living example of God’s handiwork. Men and women have been doing good works together across the city for years,” McQueen said. “We need followers of Christ who, like A.M. Burton and this congregation, are willing to be a light … and to serve with both humility and grace.”
Amy Grant commented briefly on the long and winding road to regaining ownership of the building in whose construction her great-grandfather had such a pivotal role.
“This story has felt like following a breadcrumb trail,” she said. “We all wound up involved just trying to … unravel a knotted ball of yarn.”
The singer borrowed language from Robert F. Kennedy — brother of President John F. Kennedy — to describe her great-grandfather. Kennedy remarked that only a few people had been able to “bend history itself,” Grant said. A.M. Burton was one of them.
“I think … his vision and all of the congregation of Central Church of Christ … all together, all of their small portion of events changed, bent history,” Grant said. “In the total of all of our acts will be written the history of our generation. … We have to tell the story of people that have come before us.”
Andy Burton, Grant’s second cousin, looked at the Central church against the backdrop of the early 20th century.
When Central opened its doors, the nation had recently emerged from the Spanish flu pandemic, the younger Burton said. Deep social disparity was creating “a world in which many were left behind.” The Depression was looming. Facism was on the rise, deeming “a few … more worthy than the many,” Burton observed.
Into the inequity, Burton said, came Central’s generous outreach. He quoted the words from Matthew 25 that his great-grandfather and the congregation he helped found lived by: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in.”
Former Central members also reflected on what their congregation had meant to them. More than 50 former members attended.
Ford Holman, Central’s educational director from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, sketched life at the church in the 1970s.
“The decaying of downtowns in cities all across America did not spare Nashville,” Holman said.
Even families with deep roots in the congregation saw their adult children flock to suburban churches with their kids.
Many members stayed, however.
“We found people who wanted to be there. … They were dedicated to God’s word and they were dedicated to the principles of the Restoration leaders,” Holman said, referring to the 19th century movement to restore the church of the Bible.
And there was a unique source of new families: Central’s girls’ home and boys’ home, which offered safe, affordable downtown housing for young newcomers to Tennessee’s capital. After falling in love and marrying, many formerly single residents made Central their spiritual home.
The congregation’s loving welcome and its determination to serve a declining downtown, Holman said, “taught me and my wife and my three daughters the real meaning of effective Christian love. And that has never died.”
Speaking after the celebration, Lipscomb professor Jimmy McCollum described his deeply personal ties to Central.
McCollum was born into the congregation in the 1960s, baptized in the 1970s by beloved Central minister Thomas Whitfield and stayed at Central until leaving for grad school in 1993.
McCollum’s mother — who met his father while both were living in Central’s housing for young adults — hoped to attend the congregation’s 100th anniversary but died September 29, one day before Lipscomb advisor Sager emailed McCollum a tentative date for the event.
There was a “silver lining” in her loss, McCollum said.
“As expected, many former Central family members attended her visitation,” he said, adding that he asked the members to save the date. They did, and told other people.
“While we certainly missed her” at the anniversary, McCollum concluded, “I still feel like she had a special part in that day.”
For Brandon Gee, a consultant who assisted the family during its legal battles over the building, the court decisions resolving the litigation were an unexpected blessing as the anniversary celebration came together.
The legal resolution was “a culmination of everything to date,” Gee said, allowing the family and others whose lives were touched by Central “to just sort of sit back and celebrate worship and have fellowship with each other.”
The Burton family has created the A.M. Burton Matthew 25 Fund to keep alive his “guiding values” and “furnish charitable services that uplift individuals and strengthen our community,” according to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.
This article has been republished courtesy of The Christian Chronicle.
Erik Tryggestad is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org.