Why did this Knoxville church get on NPR? Its outreach includes brew pubs and Topgolf

John Shearer
·4 min read

Churches have traditionally tried to focus primarily on drawing members and worshipers into their doors.

But as mainline denominational church attendance has declined nationwide, particularly among younger adults, many houses of worship are finding that meeting people outside their walls is an increasing area of focus.

That is true for Bearden United Methodist. While still possessing a healthy-for-today Sunday worship total, it has also begun two ministries in its parking lot related to solving food and hunger needs. The church and the Rev. Brad Hyde are also planning to start a monthly dialogue with the community down Sutherland Avenue in – yes – a brewery.

“It’s developing relationships,” said Hyde of the additional efforts. “It’s changing the community’s perception of who we are.”

Bearden United Methodist Church pastor Brad Hyde was recently interviewed on NPR regarding the church’s ministries.
Bearden United Methodist Church pastor Brad Hyde was recently interviewed on NPR regarding the church’s ministries.

The church’s work has come into larger focus through a National Public Radio report last month by John Burnett focusing on Knoxville churches doing outside-the-box ministries. Besides an interview with Hyde about the church’s monthly produce ministry, the nationwide broadcast also highlighted Episcopal Church of the Ascension and the Battlefield Farm and Gardens.

Hyde jokingly admitted to initially being a little nervous when a professional crew representing NPR showed up. “And then it dawned on me − something very good could come out of this opportunity,” he said, adding that he heard from numerous friends and acquaintances after the piece aired.

He just arrived as the pastor last summer after previously serving at Powell United Methodist and said some of the outreach ideas and mission mindset had begun under previous ministers Sherry Boles and Mike Sluder.

But with many activities beginning again as the pandemic has waned, he said the church was ready to start anew. The food ministries involve going the second Saturday of the month to the Market Square market, where some vendors will allow them to take unsold produce back to the church parking lot to give away.

“The community now knows they can get fresh and locally grown produce for free,” he said.

The church also has a “blessing box” by its parking lot, where canned, nonperishable and sometimes fresh items are donated and taken by local residents. It is a project in which he hopes the larger community can get involved.

The church's blessing box provides canned and nonperishable food for community members.
The church's blessing box provides canned and nonperishable food for community members.

“We are partnering with restaurants and businesses in the community who are going to be adopting the blessing box,” he said, adding that FirstBank and others have already begun helping.

Hyde is trying to help the church offer good conversation as well as good food. He said he is planning in the coming weeks to start having a monthly community dialogue at Albright Grove Brewing Co. on the Christian faith and a selected social issue of interest.

“It will be an open dialogue with civil discourse, so we don’t have to be at each other’s throats like so much of the country is,” he said.

The church is also trying to do other untraditional activities, like its restarted men’s ministry that met at Topgolf, a place he said the attendees likely felt more comfortable inviting friends than to a Sunday service.

“Long gone is the day that just because we sit here, people will come and go to church,” he said, adding that Bearden UMC has gotten additional visibility from passing rush hour traffic avoiding Kingston Pike.

This is a trying time for the United Methodist Church in general, with some churches around the country disaffiliating amid debates on allowing LGBTQ clergy or performing same-sex weddings. But he believes his church will stay part of the UMC and continue doing ministry.

Bearden United Methodist had been formed in 1950 and, according to a plaque at the church, began meeting on the ground floor in 1951 until the Barber and McMurry-designed sanctuary was finished in 1955. The church has had several additions since then.

Rev. Brad Hyde hopes the NPR piece “might shine a different kind of light onto what local churches can do.”
Rev. Brad Hyde hopes the NPR piece “might shine a different kind of light onto what local churches can do.”

By the time Hyde was born in the early 1970s, UT football coach Bill Battle attended and occasionally invited team members to worship there, he has learned.

After Hyde’s father, Don, served in the military and later took a community college job in Chattanooga, Brad attended Baylor School there before graduating in 1991. A mission trip to Jamaica with a Presbyterian church as a teenager led to a decision to become a minister.

After attending Emory & Henry College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he began his ministerial career with the United Methodist Church.

He said he experienced a warm feeling when he and his wife, Nicole, drove over to see the Bearden church building last year after learning he would be appointed to serve there.

“We said that this strangely feels like home,” he recalled.

He also hopes others can be warmed as well by the ministries highlighted on NPR.

“I am still hoping that this spotlight might shine a different kind of light onto what local churches can do,” he said.

Info: BeardenUMC.org.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Why Knoxville's Bearden Methodist Church was featured on NPR