The prodigal’s church

By Tobin Perry
 

The irony didn’t escape John Smith. When he stepped in front of the small, assembled crowd at Pontiac Central High School in July of 2008, it had been 22 years since he had been expelled from the school for selling drugs at the age of 14.

Now two decades later, he was starting a church at that very school.

“I used to sow a different kind of message at Pontiac Central,” Smith said. “God let me come back. [Now my message is] restoration and redemption.”

It’s a much-needed message in Pontiac today. Fueled by job losses at General Motors, the city has declined rapidly in recent years with the much-publicized decline of the auto industry. More than a third of the population is unemployed. Half the schools have closed in the last two years. All four of the city’s community centers have closed. Some are calling the Detroit suburb a wasteland.

It’s not the city that Smith, a Pontiac native, remembers. Yet the NAMB church planter sees potential.

 “Sure, there have been times when I have wanted to leave, but this city needs the God who is in us,” Smith said. “This city will rise from the ashes. My dad raised me and taught me to never stop believing in the people of this city. For some reason, I’ve grabbed onto that. Where other people see problems, I see opportunities. Where other people see ungodly things, I see the power of Christ that can come in and change the whole community.”

That’s why, when Smith first started Shepherd’s Fold in 2008, he held tightly to an evangelistic vision. Smith says while there were churches in the city, most were shells of their former selves—and suffered from a declining public image. They no longer engaged the community.

“I’ve lived in Pontiac for 35 of my 38 years, and I’ve only had Christians come by my place and witness to me one time,” Smith said.

So Shepherd’s Fold does “whatever it takes” to reach new people with the good news about Jesus. That has included door-to-door evangelism, block parties and a sports camp. The church has baptized 62 people in its short life.

The church’s newest evangelistic venture has been to organize a community action group (called Transform Pontiac) to “go and arrest violence, poor education, brokenness in families and an impoverished mindset,” Smith said at the group’s first meeting. The small church with an average attendance of 30 has galvanized the entire community in the efforts – and provided Shepherd’s Fold with additional evangelistic contacts. 

Smith’s own story mirrors the gospel-centered revitalization he’d like to see in Pontiac. Although well-provided for by his single-parent dad, Smith started selling drugs in high school to boost his reputation with buddies. Instead, it started a downward spiral that led him to steal money from his dad to pay a large drug debt. Shortly after the theft, he headed to Tallahassee, Fla., to stay with some friends. Despite the new surroundings, his downward spiral continued and eventually left him in prison.

When his dad, a committed believer, discovered his son’s imprisonment, he drove 1,100 miles from Pontiac to Tallahassee to get his son out of jail and deliver the most important sermon Smith would ever hear: “You don’t have to come home, but if you want to come home after I get you out of here, I forgive you of everything you did, and you can come back home, and we can start over.”

Though it would be several more years before the sermon bore fruit, Smith went back home to try to get his life together.

“It was tough,” Smith said. “I was so seduced by the drugs and the crazy things I was involved in that it was still a battle when I came back.”

Smith finally hit absolute rock bottom when he woke up at his cousin’s house from a drunken hangover with blood all over him. When he arrived home, he found the windows kicked out, blood on the windows, and the door kicked off the hinges. His girlfriend (now his wife) told him he had five minutes to get out of the house. Not knowing where else to go, he showed up at his home church. God changed his life that day. He went into rehab and hasn’t had a drink since.

A few years later God called him to start Shepherd’s Fold church and do in Pontiac what God had already done in his life. Starting a church in the beleaguered city has been tough. Struggling finances have led to frequent moves in the first three years. The transient population has meant even though 62 people have come to Christ in the new church, many have already moved on.

Yet Smith sees great potential in Shepherd’s Fold and its impact on the city.

“This church will take 15, 20 people and hang out at a gas station and just tell people about Jesus. This church will scrape pennies together to go and help another church. This church will go help at a homeless shelter though they don’t even have a building of their own. This little church just took an offering of $49 on Sunday. That’s a miracle. That’s a message. That’s a sermon within itself.”

Tobin Perry is online editor of On Mission.

Action Item 

Watch a video about John Smith.