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Dan Kegley/Faye Gentry holds the ladder as Kayla Lance paints inside Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church Thursday.

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Transforming work: Teams convert church into museum

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

While one girl said she got as much paint on herself as on the walls, she and some of the other youth from two North Carolina churches did bear on their faces and arms smears of the white paint squishing from their rollers and brightening the interior of Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church in Marion.
This was a summer mission trip for youth and adults from Taylorsville Presbyterian and St. Luke Lutheran churches in Taylorsville, N.C., said the Rev. Paul Sink of the Presbyterian congregation. Their work furthers the transformation of the building into a museum celebrating the area’s African-American heritage and closing a circle of the building’s own history.
Former slaves built the church in 1871, and it served for 131 as a house of worship. The old structure was rehabilitated once during the 1970s, but was finally closed in August 2002 after a steady decline in its congregation.
The Methodist conference at first considered selling the church, but instead deeded it to Project Crossroads in December 2003.
Project Crossroads is best known for addressing housing needs in the county. Established in 1988, it installs access ramps and makes roofing and general home repairs for those who can’t otherwise afford to get the work done. It draws on skilled-labor missionary teams from the region and houses the volunteers through local churches.
Over the years Project Crossroad’s mission expanded to include a firewood ministry in which volunteers cut, split and deliver wood to dozens of homes. For Thanksgiving and Christmas, the group prepares and delivers more than 400 meals to individuals and families.
Now, it’s working to write the first chapter in the church’s re-use as a museum and non-denominational community center.
“I’ve known about Project Crossroads for a couple of years,” Sink said, and took the opportunity for the North Carolina youth and adults to come work with the organization. Those opportunities are plentiful. “They stay booked,” he said.
Here for a week, the travelers have worked on three homes in Chilhowie and Konnarock.
At the church, the volunteers who ranged from age 12 into the 60s rolled paint onto walls, trimmed along strips of blue protective tape, and seemed to enjoy themselves as rain soaked much of Southwest Virginia Thursday morning.
Some of the volunteers worked in the basement preparing for the installation of drywall in the kitchen.
“This is a rainy day project,” Sink said.
The museum will house Lawrence’s collections amassed over seven decades that were largely spared damage in a fire at her home several years ago. Lawrence is famous in the area for her zeal in sharing the black history of a community that was much less divided by race than many in the south, a place where blacks and whites visited in each other’s homes, their children growing up together even as laws in public places sought to keep them apart.
She also upholds the memory of people who made names for themselves in the wider world, like William Starling, the first black man to be hired by the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, who was born in Marion.
And on Thursday, with fresh paint going on walls and in spite of the dark and dreary weather that drove the young people and adults indoors, the museum’s home was looking as bright as the area’s history whose stories it will help tell.

Get involved: Individuals and churches who would like to get involved in renovating Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church into a museum and community center should contact Project Crossroads at 276-782-3339 or by e-mail at .