Written by Frank Smith for The Reformed Presbyterian Witness.
Originally called Terminus, Atlanta grew up around railroads. In 1864, during the Civil War, the city was torched because of its importance to the Confederacy as a vital rail junction and manufacturing center and became gone with the wind. Immediately thereafter, General Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea cut a 60-mile wide swath of pillage and destruction through Georgia.
Phoenix-like, Atlanta emerged from the ashes to become the state capital and an industrial and corporate powerhouse. Though passenger rail virtually disappeared by the 1970s, Atlanta remains a transportation hub. Major interstate highways crisscross and encircle the city. And the old joke from the 1960s is that if you died and went to heaven, you had to fly through Atlanta first. Today, Atlanta’s airport is the world’s busiest.
The city proper has about half a million people, but the metropolitan area boasts six million. Fueling the growth are Yankee transplants and immigrants from other countries. Their presence, while presenting opportunities for evangelism, has significantly changed the religious, ideological, and political landscape. Historically considered part of the Bible Belt, Georgia is swiftly being subjugated by perspectives that are overtly hostile to Christianity, with Atlanta being a focal point of the battle. While still having a bit of a Southern accent, Atlanta is, overwhelmingly, like any other metropolis.
Atlanta, Ga., RP Mission Church is located in “the Bluff,” an area notorious for heroin dealing and prostitution peddling. In April 2010, this ministry began with a Bible study conducted at a derelict AME church building—an edifice with four stone walls and no roof. At that intersection, drug deals would take place during the time of the Sunday afternoon study. For two and a half years, we met on the steps of that old church building—in all kinds of weather, week by week by week.
In December 2012, an architect and attorney who had a heart for the area and was accordingly operating a corner grocery store, came and listened to the study. He was duly impressed. Even though he was Muslim (a convert from Methodism), he offered for us to gather—gratis!—in the back end of the building he was renting. So we moved three blocks from where we had been meeting and began weekly worship. We eventually rented from one church and then another church and then, for four and a half years, one side of a duplex.