Adam Kelchner, the new pastor at First United Methodist Church in Camden, Tennessee, noticed something strange in his first couple of weeks at the church.
He saw a man and his wife sitting way back in the foyer.
It didn’t seem right to Kelchner who explained that folks don’t typically sit in that area during the service. But this man was in a wheelchair because of spinal condition. He and his wife were also longtime members.
The awkward situation bothered Pastor Adam. He said, “It was heartbreaking that somebody physically could not be in a sacred space with everybody else. And I wanted to do whatever it was as quick as I could to rectify that!”
His idea was to shorten a pew to give Jerry Lamb room to park his wheelchair in an area with other worshippers. And his wife, Laura, could be there right beside him. Pastor Adam asked church trustees to greenlight his idea. But he admitted it was a pretty easy ‘sell’ for the trustees to get this family in with the rest of the worshippers.
Jerry and Laura appreciated the gesture but didn’t want the church to go to any trouble to help them. Understanding that, Pastor Adam still believed it was the right thing to do.
So after two days’ worth of work at a cost of $2,500 dollars, the changes were made.
The act of kindness ricocheted into national news when an Associated Press religion editor learned of the pew shortening and arranged for a feature story.
Pastor Adam thinks their remodeling got a lot of attention because people are moved to see a community of faith doing good works – and he admits, good news is a little hard to come by sometimes.