Macon’s Highland Hills congregation is not your typical Baptist church

Highland Hills Baptist Church’s pastor admits the church is not a typical Baptist congregation in the South.

For one thing, Highland Hills sponsors Tavernsong Beer and Hymns at Bearfoot Tavern to engage people in spiritual dialog. Pastor Jake Hall said Tavernsong provides a neutral, comfortable setting for people not prone to attend church to encounter God.

He said there are surprisingly fewer pints consumed and more old hymns enthusiastically sung than expected. He said a third of those who come are from Highland Hills, another third come regularly but don’t attend his church and another third are first-timers.

And for another thing, there’s the Gothic Gospel program, which Hall co-hosts on The Creek 100.9FM at 9:30 a.m. Sunday mornings. It’s not a typical streamed church service.

“I had asked the station about streaming our service but what a non-idea that turned out to be,” he said. “I later found myself just sitting at a table with two radio guys who were kind of frustrated with religion and we were talking about faith and spirituality. It dawned on us that this was what we should put on the air. We added songs that convey theological themes and spur conversation on topics like the Trinity, Pentecost, Baptism and the Seven Deadly Sins.”

And the songs aren’t Top 40 Christian worship music — they’re a gritty amalgamation of roots music, country, folk, rhythm and blues, gospel and rock that help the hosts poke ideas around.

Ideas about God.

“I’ve been told it’s the most streamed program on the station,” Hall said.

On the other hand, and in a further departure from Baptist norms, Hall said Highland Hills’ own worship is more high church, more liturgical in tradition, topics and symbolism.

And the music is organ-based.

“I know,” Hall said. “It’s surprising we’re the ones doing what I call dangerous research and development with programs we hope will create spaces where others can engage with God. We don’t really look the part. We’re traditional but we’re progressive. We’re hard to pin down. But I think it’s all a matter of God calling us to create a community of love, justice and mercy. We’re to love and worship God with all we have and love our neighbors as ourselves. God calls every person to a relationship and that relationship is with Christ, but it’s not just an individualistic thing. It’s also a collective call to us in community.”

Highland Hills Baptist was begun in 1953 when five families sought to establish a church in their new, fast growing neighborhoods across the bridge over the Ocmulgee River heading away from downtown.

At the time, and for years to come, the idea was they wanted a church “over here on our side of the river.”

Or more accurately — as Hall said founding member Frank Willingham said with Southern flair — they wanted a church “ova he-uh.”

Church records show organizers took a survey and determined a Baptist congregation would be most suitable for residents. The name was a combination of two neighborhoods the church would serve: North Highland and Shirley Hills.

“They began meeting in the Little Theater on Riverside Drive then at the Baconsfield Clubhouse,” Hall said. “By 1954, they broke ground on Briarcliff Road for their own facilities and the first regular meeting was held in the chapel on May 8, 1955 — Mother’s Day.”

Hall said that from the beginning, grounds and facilities reflected the church’s desire to do something today’s members say a lot: create spaces people can enjoy and meet God in.

Only now their ideas about spaces have advanced from only being physical spots to more atmospheric spaces that give people the time, place and opportunity to engage with one another and with God.

“Highland Hills has always loved sharing the campus with the community and considered it a gift back to Macon,” he said. “There’s an outer trail people walk, sunken playgrounds, an amphitheater and a courtyard that have served us and others well. Like all of Macon, our neighborhoods ‘over here’ have two sides: some well to do and others experiencing blight. Through the years, we’ve see changes. One has been a shift of focus of not wanting to just do charitable deeds for individuals but wanting to be a transformative and redeeming influence in the whole city. We’ve shifted from wanting to be a church over here ministering to immediate neighbors, to a church that crosses back over the bridge and has a transformative effect on all Macon.”

To help clarify how to move into the future, Hall said Highland Hills has spent the last year looking at themselves, at Macon as a community and at how the Spirit is leading them.

Hall said the effort is called Vision 20/20: Praying, Listening, Seeing, Doing.

“God has definitely rekindled a love in us for our community and is showing us who he wants us to be, what he wants us to do,” he said. “In early June we presented initiatives that came from the year’s study to the church, but our work isn’t finished.”

Hall said six initiatives were determined and each given “illustrative actions” to make them practical.

For example, he said one initiative is to engage in risk-taking missions. Illustrative actions for it include developing new partnerships and strengthening existing partnerships with other area churches and nonprofits to address needs in the city.

Another initiative is to be a passionate community. One of its actions is to create a care team to ensure needs among members are effectively communicated so that physical, emotional and spiritual needs can be ministered to.

Hall said Highland Hills expended great effort determining the initiatives, including inviting government, economic, cultural and other leaders to address the congregation and offer insights.

“And we’re still not done,” he said. “A great core group led 20/20 but we all played a part in praying and listening. Now, as we go into summer, we’re asking each person to prayerfully discern their passion and what role God wants them to play in embracing what he has in store.”

Hall said yet another thing that differentiates Highland Hills is that it is one of the few Baptist churches in the area that is part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an association of churches formed in the early 1990s in response to concerns about other Baptist associations and their educational institutions becoming too fundamentalist.

Hall said one distinction of the CBF and Highland Hills is, unlike many other Baptist groups, they endorse the ordination of women.

A Columbus native, Hall is a graduate of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, where he met his wife, Erin. He said she also is an ordained minister who is currently engaged in writing Christian curriculum.

Hall received a master of divinity degree from Duke University and graduated from the pastoral residency program of Dallas’ Wilshire Baptist Church. He has served in ministry in north Georgia as well. Hall completed a doctorate of ministry degree at Mercer University’s James and Carolyn McAfee School of Theology in 2013.

“I love this church,” Hall said. “It was an easy church to fall in love with. The giftedness of the people, thoughtfulness and willingness to do risky things to fulfill what we believe we’re called to do — they all work together to make the church a really unique place. I believe the love and service of a number of long-term staff members facilitated continuity and maturity among our members and the work of former pastors readied us to engage a changing culture with the love of God.”

This story was originally published June 15, 2017 at 3:01 PM with the headline "Macon’s Highland Hills congregation is not your typical Baptist church."