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Dan Kegley/“I feel like Jerry Falwell,” Victor Johnsey, senior pastor of Main Street Mission, said as he stood in a pulpit donated along with pews and an altar rail to the church last month.

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Church receives furniture donation

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Just seven months shy of its 10th anniversary, Main Street Mission is looking more like a church these days. When its senior pastor, Victor Johnsey, walks through the front door, what he sees makes him smile.
He sees pews in the place of chairs in this storefront house of worship. There’s an altar rail and a matching pulpit where he stood and said, “I feel like Jerry Falwell.”
These are real church furnishings for a group of faithful who are the real church, with a number of community-benefitting ministries in addition to regular worship services.
The worship furnishings’ story began seven weeks ago with a call from a man in Abingdon who was interested in selling them, Johnsey said. After some deliberations, Johnsey called him back to say his church couldn’t meet the man’s terms.
A month passed, and the man called again about the pulpit, pews and altar rail. “He said the Lord wanted us to have them,” Johnsey said, and that’s how the man wanted the contribution credited.
That was not the end of the tale of good fortune.
“We got an unexpected donation for renting a U-Haul truck,” Johnsey said, and he and son and junior pastor Allen “went to Abingdon and loaded them up,” the elder Johnsey said.
“When we got back, we were whupped,” he said, and for a few moments the men considered storing the furnishings. But with the help of two 10-year-old nephews who cleared out the old chairs, the Johnseys put pews, pulpit and rail in place, all on Saturday. The next day, worship services were held in the more church-like space.
“We’re just tickled,” Johnsey said. “When I walk through the door, it just makes me smile.”
Those pews accommodate the 30 to 35 people Johnsey said attend worship on an average Sunday. Main Street Mission doesn’t emphasize membership, but focuses on welcoming all who arrive for services.
“I don’t push membership,” he said, “as much as letting people come and feel at home.”
Like its name suggests, the church is about mission and operates programs of good works in the community like a clothes closet and the food pantry that serves Marion in partnership with Second Harvest Food Bank and the Food Lion grocery store chain.
The clothes closet accepts donations of apparel for reuse by people in need, but that ministry doesn’t stop there. It takes contributions of furniture as household goods as well, items Johnsey said do not remain long in inventory.
“Furniture is in and right out again,” he said, a reflection of the need in the community, including that experienced by those whose homes have burned.
“We try our best to be obedient to God and help people in the community,” Johnsey said. “The Lord has blessed us in letting us do that.”
The new furnishing for his church, he believes, reflect an “extra blessing. It feels more church-like.”