By Ken Lay
If you’re an early bird in need of a place to worship on Sunday morning, a small church gathers for a service at 8 a.m. at Shoney’s, located at 4032 N. Broadway. The congregation meets in the private banquet room.
“We meet at 8 a.m., we worship, we have a prayer board we pray over, and then we have breakfast,” said Dr. Kenneth Link, who pastors the church, which was previously Churchwell Avenue Baptist Church in North Knoxville. “We want to welcome people.
“We want to be real. I mow my grass like everybody else and I work every day like everybody else. We want people to be real and we want people not to resent who God is and we don’t want to mold people.”
Link, who has been a pastor for nearly five decades and has pastored eight churches during his tenure at the pulpit, adds that he wants be a welcoming force as he shares his faith.
“We’re relaxed and we want to welcome those who have been disenfranchised by organized religion or pushed aside,” Link said.
The church is Southern Baptist in theology but stays out of politics. It has 20 or so in-person members and reaches approximately 300 more people online through Facebook Live at Ironworks Kville, which not only streams its Sunday morning services, but it also streams its midweek services on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
“We have about 20 in-person members and have 300 followers online,” Link said. “They’re all just good people and they don’t fight.
“We don’t have a lot of ministries. What we have is us. We read and follow the Bible, even the parts that we don’t like.”
Through Facebook Live, the church has a worldwide following, particularly in Brazil and Bulgaria.
Link has been pastoring to his current congregation for 10 years and the church had to leave its former building as the upkeep had just become too much.
“We weren’t reaching the community.” he said. “The building is a community treasure, but we couldn’t continue to take care of the building itself and could foresee it becoming more of a burden.
“We finally let go of the weight of our brick and mortar. But our church is not a building. Our church is our people.”
In letting go of the building, the congregation needed to find a way to continue to hold services and find a place to worship and fellowship. And the church would find its place.
“We were Christmas caroling and I told everybody that we had to go to Shoney’s afterward,” Link said. “And the next Sunday, before we even had any kind of agreement, when we got there, they already had everything set up for us.”
The church has been having its Sunday services at Shoney’s ever since.
“We met and talked it over, and I said ‘let’s think about it and let’s pray about it’, and the people said let’s go to Shoney’s. The people in the church made the decision to meet at Shoney’s,” Link said. “Pastor Ken did not make the decision.”
The church will continue to meet at Shoney’s and Link is hoping that Shoney’s will continue the partnership.
“We want Shoney’s to be glad we’re there and we’re hoping that they will actually be proud that we’re there.”
If you would like to check out Ironworks Kville, Pastor Link says they would love to have you visit and worship with them any Sunday morning.
