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When a famous company that manufactures men's and
boy's underweara seemingly necessary commodity in lifecloses its plant, laying
off its entire work force, life couldn't get anymore hopeless. Or could it? For the small
town of Campbellsville, Kentucky, pop. 11,000, the final nail in the coffin was when their
second biggest employer, Batesville Casket Company, pulled up stakes and closed its plant,
draining what little was left of the town's economic lifeblood. Proving that even coffin
makers don't always have a final resting place.
Most of the 3,700 workers at Fruit of the Loom had given their entire working lives for
the company; a surprisingly high number of them had been at the plant 30 years or more,
without ever missing a day of work. And there were others, now
in their 50s, who were second generation Fruit of the Loomers. For a child growing up in
Campbellsville, the old playground tease, "Oh, go sew buttons on your underwear"
wasn't a
tauntit was, most likely, what he or she would end up doingnot
literally buttons, but for workers like Karen Brockman it was thousands of "hem
bottoms" and for June Judd it was "tube-flys/cut tubes". For them, and the
rest of their fellow workers, working at "The Factory" as it was called by the
townspeople, wasn't just their livelihoodit was their identity.
But by the end of that unseasonably cold spring morning, on April 15, 1998, the company
slogan, "Good Days Begin at Fruit of the Loom" had turned into a cruel epitaph.
For this tight-knit rural community, where most of its adult population was employed at
the plant, the following weeks and months became some of the darkest in their 154 year
history. From Briefs to Books
In the end, most of these salt-of-the-earth, Fruit of the Loom folks managed to
survive the fallout. Reporters from as far away as "Down Under" would talk about
their plight, made newsworthy by what the town symbolized. In just
three years Campbellsville, Kentucky would became a textbook example of a rural town that
turned around when the New Economy jumped in to save them. Their economic
salvation began with the emergence of Amazon.com, the dot.com giant with a corporate
culture that was radically different from the paternalistic Fruit of the Loom.
But for some of the dislocated, the turnaround was a day late and a dollar short. Many of
them lost their houses and some, sadly, took their own lives. Like the character of George
Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, these dissolute souls looked for the nearest
proverbial bridge, perhaps
to be found at nearby Green River, climbed the highest pointand
jumped. . . only with no angel named Clarence to save them.
For the most part, the Campbellsville community rallied around its wounded. A consortium
of business, civic and government leaders called Team Taylor County worked around the
clock to bring in new business. Campbellsville University, the local Baptist College,
offered tuition at a drastically reduced price to help those who needed to acquire new
skills.
"While there was a good deal of despair when Fruit of the Loom pulled out,
there was also this sense of determination that emerged as well," said the chairman
of Team Taylor. "There's a special spirit among Taylor Countians. They're resilient,
proud and compassionate. "
But despite the town's combined efforts, it remained that those on the fringe, the ones
who had more questions than answers, and who were more disposed to despair and
hopelessness, felt they had no place to turn. As a result, the suicide rate skyrocketed.
A Plant of Their Own
1500 miles away, about the same time that the layoffs were happening, companies
like Amazon and Frost-Arnett were combining instinct with
demographics to determine where they would put their new or relocated offices and
processing plants.
Closer to home, the Lutherans and Episcopalians, specifically the Episcopal Diocese of
Kentucky and the Indiana-Kentucky Synod of the ELCA were doing virtually the same thing,
using both well-honed intuition and demographics in considering where they would put a new
church plant.
Key to this important decision, as it turned out, was Percept. Before looking at
demographics, the Episcopal Diocese was leaning towards a location West of Louisville. It
was an idea with merit, they thought, since it was the county in which their Diocesan Camp
and Conference Center was located. But after looking at Percept's FirstView demographic
report and other resources, which the Lutheran Synod had helped provide, that reasoning
was contradicted.
"Quite simply, we determined that it wasn't a place that was going to grow and it
didn't have the demographic characteristics that might lend itself to an Episcopal or a
Lutheran congregational start," says Karl Lusk, a Missional Planner for the Diocese.
"But, on the other hand, the Campbellsville area, and the four counties surrounding
it, did have those characteristics. And there were other factors that pointed to
Campbellsville. Our instincts were that there would be people there who leaned towards a
liturgically-based worship system where they would feel comfortable."
But perhaps the most significant factor for the Diocese and the Synod was the sudden
announcement that Fruit of the Loom was closing its plant. Now there were new
community-at-risk factors in the mix.
"It became evident that Campbellsville was the place to be because it was a place
where people were hungry spiritually, and frankly, physically." says Lusk. "I
knew that there would be people without hope who needed something different."
The Bishop Calls a Meeting
In helping to determine where the new church plant would be located, Karl
thought his job was over. But the little Campbellsville country
churchhoused not in a traditional charming Anglican 100-plus year-old stone
building, but rather a strip-mall storefrontwas gasping for air. St. Thomas's had
already gone through two vicars, the second one remaining less than a year.
"We were in a staff meeting and the bishop announced that this person had
resigned," says Lusk. "'I don't know anybody I can send,' said the bishop. So I
said, 'Ted, I don't know what we are going to do either, but I know those people over
there, and I don't want the health of souls of the people in Campbellsville to suffer.'
Well, the next thing you know, I found myself in the "principals" office. There
I was thinking that the Bishop had called me in to scold me for something. Instead he just
looked at me and asked, "How soon can you go to Campbellsville?'"
Although not an ordained minister, Lusk was a natural for the job. To start with, he was a
native Kentuckian who had grown up in a small town of 10,000almost the same size as
Campbellsville. As a young boy he had traveled around with his grandfather, a large-animal
veterinarian. He had seen country life in the raw, and he was not afraid to get his hands
and feet dirty. He also had a strong sense of mission; one, he says, that Percept helped
to define.
"What Percept did was give us a process whereby we could understand that engaging the
community outside the door was much more important than trying to get
the people inside the door," says Lusk.
In Karl, the people found as perfect a match as they could hope to find. Twenty years as a
funeral practitioner had taught him a great deal about people who were hurting, especially
how to listen. "I'm not a great preacher, I just tell stories," admits Lusk.
"And I like to get people to tell me their stories. I guess I just kind of fell into
that in my former profession. I was involved because I was more interested in the pastoral
care and the grief support end of it than I was in driving a big station wagon and selling
boxes."
Apparently a good listener who tells stories is just what the people of Campbellsville
needed, especially in their hour of crisis. Both inside and outside the church, people
began to take notice of the "new" and "improved" St. Thomas Church.
Soon some of the lapsed Episcopalians began to come "out of the closet,"
bringing in some non-Episcopalians as well. One devout member, Mimi Moore, had been
praying 30 years for an Episcopal Church to come into town.
"I'm what you call a cradle Episcopalian, a fifth-generation Episcopalian who married
a fifth generation Presbyterian," says Mimi. "But all that time, in my heart I
ached and missed the liturgy. So when Karl showed us the Percept study I got very excited
because I could see that it meant that we were going to have a church!"
Alyson Thompson, a former Catholic from her father's side, still kept the spare parts of
her mother's failed Episcopal church, stored
in her basement for decades, just waiting for them to come to life. Her husband, Dale, a
former Cumberland Presbyterian had tried another church for awhile but didn't feel
comfortable there. Both of them found St. Thomas to be "The Church of the Happy
Medium." For Alyson, the services contained just enough liturgy to give her a link to
her Catholic heritage. For Dale, there was just enough "preaching" to make him
feel like a good Southern Protestant.
Before long, St. Thomas was no longer doubting its existence. . . or its future. It was
coming alive. In seven months they grew from eight "hangers on" to about 60
active members including the unchurched, the dechurched and the churched out. Now they're
faced with a good problemthat of becoming too big for their benches. Or, in this
instance, folding chairs.
"We may be a baby mission but, as Karl says, we're the fastest growing one in the
Diocese, because when we get four new people, that is like one-fourth of our
congregation!" says Mimi.
Part of the reason for their growth, Karl believes, is that St. Thomas is offering
something that people can't find elsewhere. According to him, St. Thomas was a church
plant that was done at the right place at the right timesomething that would not
have happened without demographics. Mimi agrees. "Percept birthed our church,"
she says.
But it wasn't just the Episcopalians and the denominationally marginalized that were glad
to see St. Thomas come to town.
"Several leaders in the Baptist community here said to me, 'We're thankful that you
are here because we have reached a saturation point,'" says Lusk. "They added,
'Our polity and our way of doing things has been presented to everybody, and
33% of the folks who are in a faith-based relationship are active members of one of the
Baptist churches here. So we feel that we may have saturated the market. We are not going
to quit trying but we're glad to see that there are alternatives, because the bottom line
is not about denominational labels, but whether people have heard and accepted the Gospel
of Jesus Christ.'"
Lusk would give a heartfelt "Amen" to that. He is already working with other
churches in the area to help build a Jubilee Centera cross-denominational outreach
center that will minister to the diverse needs of the community. It's a vision he shares
with his bishop, the Diocese's Department of Evangelism & Congregational Development
as well as many other leaders in Campbellsville. Although they share a common mission:
"to engage the least and the lost, and then share with them the love of Christ"
their methodologies will undoubtedly differ. Lusk's own "relational" approach
falls in line with the Episcopal tradition.
For Campbellsville, and especially for one hurting individual, it turned out to be the
right approachone that was a healing balm applied on a wound that went deeper than
anyone could know.
Surviving Suicide
"Many days you have lingered at my cabin door, but hard times come again no
more" goes the Kentucky bluegrass song. In Campbellsville, people might like to sing
about their hard times, but that doesn't mean they'll always talk about them. After all,
this is a town where a little less than a decade ago, if you didn't show up for church on
Sunday, your name would be published in the local paper. Even today, they still broadcast
obituaries and birthdays on the radio. This sort of public airing does not exactly promote
a climate of vulnerability. Although clearly not a "town without pity",
sometimes its' very sense of piety, the same quality that gives them such a strong work
ethic and resiliency, can prove to be a double-edged sword. Especially when it came to one
of the town's darkest secretsthe ever-increasing suicide rate.
"With the suicides came shame, because so many people would think you were going to
hell if you killed yourself," says Mimi Moore. "They would consider it a murder.
So the families that were left behind were not being comforted."
Soon it would be two churches in the aftermath of April 15, St. Thomas and Bethel First
Presbyterian, that would join together and go in where angels maybe not feared to go, but
had little experience in treading. For the most part, all that the members of the newly
formed Survivors of Suicide could do was comfort the families of those who had already
taken their own lives.
All except for one man. His name wasn't George Bailey and the town wasn't Bedford Falls.
But it could have been. Like its fictional counterpart, Campbellsville was as one pastor
put it, "A tried-and-true sort of town,". . . "one where the loyalties of
the townspeople run deep" said another. One journalist, who would later write about
the town's troubles, was amazed at its astonishing friendliness, remarking that it was a
city that was "a place of discipline as well as a place of cheerfulness." This
was a hard standard to hold to when you were someone like "George". For a man
with an already troubled life, the layoff only served to push him dangerously close to the
edge. Enter Survivors of Suicide, and Karl Lusk. Karl, who in his twenty years as a
funeral practitioner had only seen "successful" suicides, was now given a
Clarence-like chance to prevent one. Thankfully, through a lot of listening, sharing and
praying, he was able to talk "George" out of choosing a "permanent solution
to a temporary problem." It was, Karl admits, a miracle. "If I came to this town
for no other reason than to help save this one life, then it would have been worth
it," says Karl.
The Campbellsville Comeback
Three years after the layoffs, the looming presence that once sat on the ridge
looking down onto the town, dominating it for so many decades, was gone. The huge 570,000
square foot building stood empty for awhile, the constant hum of sewing machines and the
loud swoosh of heavier machinery fading into a distant memory. But then Amazon,
representing a giant slice of the New Economy pie, came and changed everything. The former
Factory workers returned to a New Worldone of books, of music, of vibrancy and hope.
Campbellsville
had defied all the odds for survival. "Apparel Layoffs Will Devastate the Local
Economy" cried a newspaper headline right after the layoffs. But they didn't.
Community leaders came together with astonishing speed and honestyassessing both
their weaknesses and strengths. In just 2 1/2 years Team Taylor managed to recruit 11
companies to relocate to Campbellsville/Taylor Countyreplacing all of the jobs, plus
some. But the New Economy provided more than just jobs; it gave the people something they
never had beforeempowerment, a strong sense of self-esteem and a window to the
future. At "The Factory," the employees had been treated
more like errant children with little to contribute. At Amazon they found their ideas were
welcomed, and even encouraged. As June Judd would later say, "They've given me the
chance to use my brain." But it wasn't a one-sided relationship. Amazon needed the
town as welltheir resiliency, sense of loyalty and their strong, older-than-dirt
work ethic. It wasn't patronizationit was mutual dependency.
When St. Thomas Church emerged, through "fits and starts", it was their sense of
mission to help those who fall between the cracks of pity and pietythe hurting and
the doubtingthat would give them the chance to "use their hearts". Just as
Campbellsville's community leaders recognized that it was important for all the residents
of the city to benefit from the town's economic revitalization, so the members of St.
Thomas had to discover who they were, their uniqueness and what they could offer to their
beleaguered community. Or, as Karl says, "to walk where no one else was
walking." At the same time, they had to realize they were only one part of God's
redemptive purposes. All the parts of the body of Christ were needed in Campbellsville to
be fully functional.
"I think there is room for many different approaches," says Karl.
"And that's what we are abouthelping to bring the different
denominations together for a cause that is bigger than our polities.
And interestingly, people appreciate that. They are tired of hearing all
the things that are different. They're more interested in what we can do
together." -Jenni Keast |
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