When Pastor Paul Gunn first arrived to lead Tusculum Hills Baptist Church 10 years ago, he noted that while the church was declining in attendance, the community around it was growing and becoming more diverse.
“People from all around the world live in Nashville,” says Terry Hudgins, the church’s world outreach pastor. “Hundreds of different languages are spoken around here.”
Knowing that meeting their neighbors would help the church grow, Gunn felt the key would be to reach out to their children. The church started offering a weekly music camp for kids, which became the Freedom Choir (the church selected “freedom” as part of the name because the kids said it was their favorite word).
Hudgins started going door-to-door, inviting kids to join the choir. Word of mouth quickly spread, and soon the church had Burmese, Korean, Hispanic, Haitian, Chinese, Sudanese and Egyptian communities ask if they could meet at the church facility.
Today, the church is not only home to its own congregation, but it also shares its space with six ethnic congregations on Sundays. In addition to the English-speaking, traditional worship, six other groups meet throughout the day from various ethnic backgrounds: Chinese, Sudanese (in Arabic), Spanish, Victory Myanmar Church, Karen (an ethnic group in Myanmar), and Zomi (a Christian ethnic minority group from Myanmar, Bangladesh and India) meets.
“A lot of these groups like the program we’ve got at Tusculum Hills. They send their kids to our traditional (English-speaking) services, then the parents attend their own services in the afternoon,” says Hudgins. “This way the kids get Sunday school while also practicing [speaking] English.”
Other groups use the church building for such programs as kindergarten prep and Bible studies for immigrants. In addition, several Muslim women come to work on their English-speaking skills at the church’s Friendship Center.