Farragut Church 'Clicks' With Area Funeral Home

FARRAGUT, Tenn. — When you first learn that First Farragut UMC is sharing its building with a funeral home, all sorts of questions and bad jokes come to mind. The Rev. Richard Edwards made light of it himself at Annual Conference in June, when he joked about mistaking an urn for a candy dish.

So let’s start by laying some of those issues to rest: Click Funeral Home only maintains an office and holds funerals and receptions in First Farragut’s building. Other funeral-home functions are performed at Click’s two sites in Lenoir City, Tenn.

Yet, Edwards and Associate Pastor Rev. Bernice Kirkland admit: Sharing digs with a funeral home does present some interesting challenges.

“Initially, some people may be scared away from visiting our church, since Click’s sign is over ours,” Edwards says. Both ministers also spend significant time working around a complex schedule that allows, for example, the church to use the sanctuary on Sunday morning, the funeral home to use it on Sunday afternoon.

Not that Edwards and Kirkland are complaining. With groundbreaking on a new church site scheduled in the near future, First Farragut already has a buyer for the existing facility. When the growing church moves into its new place in early 2003, the current tenant has the “absolute right and option of purchase.”

It’s a creative agreement that allows Click to “establish a presence” in the area while giving First Farragut a boost toward acquiring a new place.

The existing 17,000-square-foot building is only 14 years old and attractively located on prime real estate in west Knoxville. But the Oak Ridge District church, chartered in 1983 and the firstever recipient of a Holston Builder’s Club grant, has grown too large for its home. With about 470 in average worship attendance, First Farragut recently purchased 17 acres two miles west of its current site. Total relocation package: about $7 million.

Church members pledged $1.8 million, while the conference is providing a $30,000 grant and $400,000 loan. Phase one, projected to be complete in 2003, will produce a 38,000-square-foot building.

“We hope to add a third worship service at the new site, a contemporary service to meet on Thursday or Friday night,” Edwards said. He attributes First Farragut’s rapid expansion to a highgrowth area and the congregation’s “pioneer spirit”: “Whatever needs to be done to move to the next level, they’ve been willing to do.”

Even if it means sharing the parking lot with a hearse.

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