wfn.org | Hyde Park's neighbor may be crack house, says pastor

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

May 19, 1999 News media contact: Tim Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
10-71B{276}

By Cathy Farmer*

COVINGTON, Tenn. (UMNS) - The Rev. Mike Jeffers suspects that a house near
his church is used to manufacture and sell crack. 

 "I warned my neighbor that I wasn't going to turn my head to what's going
on around here," said Jeffers, pastor of Hyde Park United Methodist Church.
"I told him he's headed for a life on the run, prison or the cemetery."
 
The man's answer, according to Jeffers, is that he doesn't sell drugs and
that he's planning to move soon.

Hyde Park Church is in a quiet, blue-collar neighborhood. Big trees shade
grassy lawns shared in common by neighborhood kids. It's hard to hide a
secret where small frame houses sit as close as best friends at a movie.

"I've tried to make it clear to all that I'm not here to judge," Jeffers
said. "When I made my living as a musician, I did some drugs myself, so I
know how it is. He tried to hem-haw around about not selling drugs, but I
told him I'd been in those shoes, and I know."
 
Jeffers sighed. "I'm not judging him and I'm not his enemy. I'm his friend.
I'm here to proclaim the truth of God."

Not long ago, Jeffers was drifting himself. He had been raised by a divorced
mother, who had taken him to church every time the door opened. Nonetheless,
by the time he left college to play in bands, he had stopped attending
services. A pianist, keyboard player and organist, he played the hotel
circuits, even backing the Drifters for a 19-month run. 

His dream was to be a rock star, and his life was a 24-hour-a-day party. Two
marriages and three children later, he started looking for more.

"I was playing a club in Texas, just down the street from my ex-wife's
house. I went to see my kids, who were about 6 and 4 at the time. When they
answered the door, they didn't know who I was." He stared down at his hands,
hands with long, supple, musician's fingers, as he talked. "It just about
killed me."

Jeffers came off the road and devoted a lot of time to putting the pieces of
his life back together. He married again and started visiting at Mt. Vernon
United Methodist Church, just on the edge of Shelby Forest, north of
Memphis. 

"I can tell you exactly when my life changed forever," he said. "It was Dec.
14, 1987, at 9:41 p.m. A tornado blew us to smithereens. We lost the whole
house. One wall was sucked off, and it was twisted on the slab. Four of us
were at home with not a scratch on us." 

He stood in the front yard, wondering what to do, when the folks from Mt.
Vernon came and asked if his family wanted to live in the parsonage while
they were rebuilding.
 
"We did, and we never missed another Sunday,"  Jeffers said. "Edna Thornton
turned the piano over to me and then they asked me to teach Sunday School
for the fourth- through sixth-graders. I wanted to be honest with those kids
and give them the right answers, so I had to study the Word."

All that studying led Jeffers to believe that he had something to offer
others. "I'm not proud of my past," he explained, "but I've learned some
hard life experiences that help me to minister to others in the same
situation."

After a stint at a Course of Study school at Millsaps College in
Mississippi, Jeffers was appointed to Hyde Park in 1996 (average worship
attendance: 7). Since he's been preaching there, attendance has grown to 30
(12 of the 30 are children), they've started four Sunday School classes,
Bible study and Wednesday night prayer meetings. He recently took 17
children ice-skating in Memphis.

Now he finds himself ministering to those he believes are selling drugs.
Jeffers isn't afraid of his neighbors; he's worried about them. Once a
month, he prints up a batch of flyers and hands them out to people driving
by.

"This has been an interesting time for me, I've wrestled with a lot of
things," he said. "But the only hope they have is to truly open their hearts
to Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. I know. I've lived
it."
# # #
*Farmer is communications director of the United Methodist Church's Memphis
Annual Conference. This story first appeared in the conference edition of
the United Methodist Reporter.

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