Plank Chapel UMC has stood on the same spot on Bobbitt Road in Kittrell for over 125 years, but the church’s history goes back much further. A July 10, 1780, journal entry by Francis Asbury, a preacher John Wesley appointed to share the message of Methodism, mentions a church service at a local house that had 60 people in attendance. From that journal entry, Plank Chapel can trace its beginning.
Centuries later, the church holds on to its long history while also building bridges for the future.
Connect Church Helps Churches Plan for the Future
Sections of those bridges were constructed in 2024, when Plank Chapel participated in the year-long coaching initiative Connect Church, led by the Center’s Faith in Rural Communities team.
The Connect Church program helps churches find engagement projects that expand their missional work outside church walls using assets that the church and the congregation already possess. Those uncovered assets are then used to address current community needs.
The FIRC team has walked over 100 churches and faith-based organizations through the program curriculum. Each church’s programmatic work is completed by a team comprised of 6-10 church members that work with Connect Church coaches directly. The curriculum introduces topics like asset-based community development, toxic charity, and upstream thinking.
“We knew we needed to [create a program] with the youth and the children. And we already had some efforts underway to get that going. But when Connect Church came along and provided some money for it, but also the discipline to force the process to move forward, that really helped a lot.”
Scott Ritchey
When you arrive at Plank Chapel, just beyond a small pond and a bend in the road, the white steeple stands tall and gleaming in a small clearing. The church’s current name, Plank Chapel, was first used around 1800, when the chapel was replaced with hand sawn planks, timbers, wooden pegs, and handmade nails. While the church’s current location isn’t its first, church members have found a deed for the current land dated 1836.
In 1965, a fellowship hall was built next to the chapel. A breezeway with windows connects the two buildings. The cross on the steeple, added in the 1950s, was forged from a donated moonshine still. The church’s current cemetery sits across the road. The site is peaceful and sits under an open sky.
(Re)Connecting a Community Hub
Pastor Edgar DeJesus is about to start his fourth year as Plank Chapel’s pastor and his 26th year of full-time ministry. He has a dual appointment at Plank Chapel and Bethel Chapel UMC, also in Kittrell. He learned about Connect Church from FIRC Senior Program Manager Darren Crotts at a conference.
Scott Ritchey has been a Plank Chapel member for 20 years; he’s also the church treasurer and was on the Connect Church team. He moved to the area with his late wife, who is now buried in the church cemetery across the street near family members.
Scott is one of the leaders of the church youth program, The Journey, for kids ages 5-18. While the church began The Journey before finishing Connect Church, they made the decision to strengthen the program during the Connect Church process. They also created a new missional engagement project, The Gathering, a regular opportunity for people over 18 to come together as well. Both The Journey and The Gathering offer participants’ meals, the opportunity to meet others, and a worship activity.
Pastor Edgar says a big post-pandemic challenge has been “to bring [the church] back, to bring back the vitality and to really wrestle with the understanding of what the church should be now, a church that is not the same as it was before. Because we have people expecting and looking for different things now.”
Two Programs, One Mission
The Connect Church process involves asking community members what issues they think are currently affecting the area. To better survey local individuals, Plank Chapel’s church team passed out printed surveys to community members, including at the Kittrell Volunteer Fire Department, which hosts community events.
Common survey answers included loneliness, social isolation, lack of community belonging, and disconnection from the church community.
“So we asked ourselves,” says Pastor Edgar, “how can we join with God and what God is doing in this community? How can we be able to effectively address those needs? And that’s a result of The Gathering and also The Journey. It provided a space for them to belong, to connect, to find themselves, and also to reclaim the hub, the church being the hub.”
The Gathering includes a talk from experts working in the community; the group has heard from the fire department, community watch, hospice, social services, connections that Scott says happened through networking. The event also includes a meal as well as prayer, but both The Gathering and The Journey are largely about forging connections. “We want to make sure that they feel belonging first … it’s a very subtle way of being a church,” says Pastor Edgar.
After going through the Connect Church process, churches are invited to apply for a $10,000 grant to start their missional engagement programs. FIRC funding partners are The Duke Endowment and the Lilly Endowment.
“So we asked ourselves, how can we join with God and what God is doing in this community? How can we be able to effectively address those needs? And that’s a result of The Gathering and also The Journey. It provided a space for them to belong, to connect, to find themselves, and also to reclaim the hub, the church being the hub.”
Pastor Edgar DeJesus
The extra funds helped Plank Chapel strengthen The Journey and put The Gathering into action. “We knew we needed to [create a program] with the youth and the children. And we already had some efforts underway to get that going,” says Scott. “But when Connect Church came along and provided some money for it, but also the discipline to force the process to move forward, that really helped a lot.”
Pastor Edgar also mentions that the gifts and graces of church members has helped as well mentioning a former schoolteacher who is helping with The Journey at age 90, “no matter what age you are, you can still contribute to children and youth ministry.”
Scattering Seeds
As far as how Plank Chapel’s Connect Church programs are going, Scott says that the hayride last autumn and trunk or treat were both real crowd pleasers. But these new events are showing gradual success versus overnight success. The Journey meets monthly, and The Gathering was initially meeting monthly, but is pivoting to meet a little less often.
Explaining how the programs have progressed, Pastor Edgar quotes a church member who said, “we’re scattering the seeds,” to which he adds, “we don’t know when it’s going to germinate, but we keep on scattering the seeds and God will do the multiplication.
“Our ultimate goal is to build connections, build relationships, move them away from that loneliness and isolation so that they can have a place to belong, which is our initial framework, a place to belong, a place to connect, a place to experience the goodness of God, and how to go back again to that understanding that the church becomes the hub of the community.”
Explaining how the programs have progressed, Pastor Edgar quotes a church member who said, “we’re scattering the seeds,” to which he adds, “we don’t know when it’s going to germinate, but we keep on scattering the seeds and God will do the multiplication.”
Both The Journey and The Gathering exist alongside with other church programs, such as a Senior Circle, which began with individuals from a number of local churches and has met monthly for over 30 years, exercise classes and events like their annual barbeque, which happens in early November. They also stream their traditional Sunday 11 a.m. worship service on the church’s Facebook account, which Scott handles, and hold a more informal worship service at 8 a.m. Sundays too.
As Pastor Edgar and Scott walk through the church, they point out items they’ve been able to buy with Connect Church funds to bolster their programming: a refrigerator that allows them to store food on site, raised flower beds where children are learning to garden, a movable basketball hoop in the parking lot. Just beyond the hoop and the beds at the edge of the trees are several small rectangles encircled by low stone walls. A small gravestone with worn etched letters and moss lies at the back of one of them, highlighting how both the history and the future of Plank Chapel sit side by side.
Applications for the 2027 Connect Church cohort are being accepted now through July 31.
