GARDEN CITY, Kan. — This Sunday church potluck came with a side of community and church involvement.
Nine cardboard backdrops were set up throughout the fellowship hall of Garden City First United Methodist Church on Aug. 24, each a display about how church members could volunteer inside and outside the building, along with signup sheets.
“I want to see everybody in this church involved in some kind of ministry,” Rev. Jim Akins, the senior pastor, announced before the blessing. “That would be an awesome thing.”
It’s the latest step for this southwest Kansas church, which, not that long ago, was uncertain whether it was going to stay in its church building and stay in the denomination.
But thanks to a retired United Methodist pastor and a willingness to start over, Garden City is ready to enter full bloom.
Nearing a deadline imposed by a 2019 special session of the General Conference, Garden City UMC voted on whether to disaffiliate from the denomination in March 2023.
“I didn’t realize there was that much of a movement to disaffiliate,” church member Boyd Funk said. “At first, I just couldn’t believe we’d have to go through that. But there were a couple of people who pushed it, and that’s what it took.”
By six votes, the congregation decided to stay.
“We had a lot of people disagreeing about things in our church,” council chair Doug Harder said. “We had issues other than simply disaffiliation, and that catalyst brought some things to the surface.
“In retrospect, I think what needed to happen did happen,” he added. “It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
The contention between those who wanted to stay and those who wanted to disaffiliate became contentious, Funk said, estimating that half of the people who were active in the church were not members.
“The people who were actively involved in the church weren’t the people who got to vote. A lot of those people who weren’t members just quit coming or went to other churches,” he recalled. “A lot of people who were active here stopped coming because they didn’t like the fight. It was a bad time, not just for the church but for the community of faith. It was horrible.”
Not long after the vote, an imaging committee from Garden City went to Resurrection, a United Methodist Church, with other Great Plains Conference churches who had suffered the aftershock of a close disaffiliation vote.
“The takeaway for us was that this church, in essence, died after the disaffiliation and then started over from scratch,” Harder said. “We had a choice to look at ourselves as walking wounded, or we had a choice to look at ourselves as, in essence, a church plant, blessed with a building we didn’t have to pay for and a lot of assets we didn’t have to acquire. That’s the mentality and the spiritual direction we’ve taken ever since.
“We looked at that as Ground Zero, and we moved forward,” he added. “We had time for people to reflect and mourn and all the things that happen after any trauma.”
For some in the church, the post-vote feelings remain but are toning down, he said.
“It took probably two or three years for people to move past the hurt feelings from that,” Harder said. “We staggered. We were a post-boxing match guy there for a while.”
The people in the pews were about half of what they were after the vote. Although many went to a new Global Methodist Church, which meets in the fellowship hall of the local Presbyterian church, others scattered throughout the city of 28,000.
“After they left, it got real peaceful,” Funk said. “I like my church better now.”
Enter Akins, then six years past his official retirement from the Great Plains Conference. A former district superintendent and 43-year veteran of churches large and small throughout Kansas, Akins told district superintendents including Rev. Zach Anderson and Rev. Jenny Collins that he was open to any interim pastoral assignments that the cabinet would consider for him.
Not long after, Collins called him asking what he knew about Garden City. Months before the vote, both its senior and associate pastor accepted new assignments.
“I knew coming in, it would either be a new church start with a location somewhere else or trying to figure out how to stay in this building,” he said.
The church, with its spire looming high on the Garden City landscape, has one of the largest sanctuaries in the Great Plains, as well as stained glass windows that were a memorial from the Clutter family, known for the infamous 1959 southwest Kansas murders that prompted the book and movie “In Cold Blood.”
“Jim was absolutely the right person at the right time for us,” Harder said. “We needed a mature, seasoned, steady guy at the helm, and he’s been a godsend. He’s very people-oriented, bare-knuckles preaching. He’s a biblical preacher, and that’s helped a lot.”
“Jim has done a great job,” Funk said, praising Akins and his wife, Mary. “I just really like his theology, his whole Christian theology and how a church should run, how a church should be. He’s done a really good job with making peace.”
Akins said he’s enjoying the challenge of the assignment.
“There’s a really good spirit in this church, and it has been since I got here,” he said. “I walked in following the disaffiliation vote, and naturally there was obviously some grief. But there was a good spirit.
“I’m having more fun here,” Akins added.
With about half of its Sunday morning population gone, Garden City UMC found revitalization through the young families that started to attend its 9:30 a.m. services.
“We lost a lot of our older demographic, and retained a lot of our younger people, which is wonderful for the growth of the church, wonderful for the mission of the church,” Harder said.
“We’re attracting a different group, and it’s an encouraging group,” Funk said. “A lot of kids, and almost every Sunday it’s a new young couple with kids.”
Akins, Harder and Funk credit children’s director Missy Allen with energizing the children and young families.
“We owe a lot of it to Missy. She’s great at what she does,” Akins said.
The church already had been operating a preschool, which Harder called a bedrock of its ministry.
Worship leader Sean Boller, Akins said, can be credited with creating a vibrant worship experience, including a balance of traditional and contemporary worship music – including Harder playing bass.
Garden City UMC faced structural challenges in the past few years as well, including replacing the HVAC system and the unexpected installation of a new roof.
The budget is lower than it has been, Harder said, but the church doesn’t carry any debt.
“We’re gonna struggle a few years financially until we get back on our feet,” he said.
Business manager Jenny Maier, Akins said, has kept the church on track during challenging times.
During its early revitalization, the church decided to adopt a simpler management plan of a one-board structure.
“We’ve got a dozen people now that’s taken the place of five or six committees,” said Harder, chair of the board for the past year and a half. “The emphasis of that is that we’ve got people with administrative gifts doing administration, and that liberates everybody else to do mission.”
The mission fair during the Aug. 24 potluck represented the next step in Garden City UMC’s rebirth, Harder said.
“The focus is, ‘what do you bring to the worship service,’ not what are you going to get out of it,” he said.
Displays were made for involvement inside and outside the community, and awareness and recruitment were the next steps for the church, Akins said.
“This is not revitalization. This is new birth. When that vote was taken, for all intents and purposes, Garden City United Methodist Church, as it had been, died. What’s left is the core of people that said, ‘Now we’ve got to figure out who we are.’
“We spent a lot of time, not grieving, but we got comfortable. Now the question becomes, what is our identity? How do we reach out beyond these walls? How do we get people involved in ministry?” Akins continued. “For this community, what we have to do is figure out how to partner with other groups in the community — not just churches, but other groups in the community — to share God’s love as a way of saying we’re not making you come to church, but to improve life here.”
The church already has solid programming for families, including a Wednesday night dinner with classes for children and youth and Bible study for their parents.
“We have families who come to Wednesday night from other churches who will never become members of this church, who will never be here Sunday morning,” Akins said. “But they get fellowship along with their kids.”
One of the goals with outreach is adapting to the demographics of the city, which is 27% Caucasian.
“You look at this church, we’re probably 99% Caucasian,” he said.
The church, Akins said, needs to strengthen its role as a part of the community.
“The answer is not in figuring out ways to get them in here on Sunday morning. That’s just one hour a week,” he said. “If that happens, it’s fine. But we have to figure out how to identify leadership in this community and say, how can we together develop ministry that makes a difference?”
Adding to the dilemma is that students in Garden City schools speak, depending on whom you ask, anywhere from 30 to 50 different languages in each person’s native tongue.
“I’m still struggling to think I can learn that many languages,” Akins said with a laugh.
Between Sunday morning and a small but loyal Saturday evening service, attendance at Garden City is now between 150 and 175, Harder said.
“We believe that churches grow by attraction, not promotion,” he said. “You have to be Jesus to people and have to be attracted to what you’re doing.”
Harder said he and other church leaders are excited about the prospects of gaining a foothold as a part of the community.
“I think you’ll see a more robust congregation that is more focused on missions in Garden City,” he said. “The death of any church is inbreeding. When all of your ministry focus is inside and all of your rocket juice is internal, you just die. Jesus never said, ‘Go forth, build a building and hide in it.’”
For the first time since 2023, Garden City has an associate pastor. Obed Aying, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, began his appointment July 1, moving from the Chicago area with his wife and three children.
Aying is both associate at Garden City and the pastor at Ulysses UMC. Several times a year, including the day of the mission fair, Aying preached at Garden City while Akins took the pulpit at Ulysses.
Akins said what began as an interim assignment has turned out to be one of his most rewarding churches.
“At the end of three years, I’ll be 75. Maybe it’ll be time to check the energy level,” he laughed, adding, “I’ll be here as long as the bishop needs me here.”
Contact David Burke, content specialist, at [email protected].