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Durham Pioneers Church PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
New Church on the Block What happens when a non-LGBTQ+ affirming church-meets-coffeeshop comes to a particularly queer part of Durham? BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
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t would be hard to find a more desirable real estate location in Durham than 408 West Geer Street. The building, built in 1948 and situated at the intersection of Geer Street and Rigsbee Avenue, is the former home of Weeks Motor Company and Hutchins Auto Supply and contains a sleek, immaculately white showroom. Floorto-ceiling windows gives the space the feeling of a fishbowl. Over the years, prominent local businesses have tried to lease the space, but longtime landlord Mark Hutchins demurred. For several years, the property—which, in conjunction with the adjoining Hutchins Garage space, has an assessed total fair market value of $1,530,187, according to county tax records—has mostly sat empty. In early October, signs appeared advertising the new business taking over the space: Pioneers Durham, a “project of Pioneers Church‘’ offering “Coffee. Tea. Baked items. Events. Co-working. Faith. Community.” A QR code directs 14
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to a website introducing future parishioners to lead pastor Sherei Lopez Jackson and her husband, Daniel Jackson, both graduates of Duke Divinity School. Pioneers Durham, the coworking space and market, will operate in the showroom during the week; on the weekend, the space will flip to become Pioneers Church, a church plant of nearby Trinity United Methodist Church. The church and business spaces have different tax statuses, and the business portion, according to church leadership, will not be tax-exempt. “We are pioneering a vibrant and fresh approach to church uniquely for the people of downtown Durham— where creativity, compassion, belonging and purpose come together to bring hope to the heart of our city,” the website reads. It outlines the organization’s aims, including facilitating “redemptive enterprise and social entrepreneurship” and providing a “space of commerce for micro-businesses and start-ups to flourish and a ‘church space’ that is open
every day of the week as a local community resource to come rest, eat, dream, gather, and play.” The church’s website invokes a blend of references— Black Wall Street in one section (which the name Pioneers is intended to honor), a call for “city renewal” with hopes for seeing “Durham’s bright future manifested in our time” in another. “Did you move to Durham because you wanted to be part of the weird, creative, and diverse leg of the Research Triangle?” the “Who is Pioneers for?” section of the website reads. “Are you in a creative, technical, or medical field and dreaming or playing in the startup wonderland that is Durham?” Soon, skeptical comments on social media proliferated— my own among them—as residents questioned the message that Pioneers’ name and Millenial-Id-adjacent language sends to a gentrifying Durham. The church’s affiliation with the Association of Related Churches—an umbrella organization that helps fund and plant churches and that does not affirm LGBTQ+ members—furthered that unease. Numerous churches in Durham also do not doctrinally affirm LGBTQ+ rights, including the UMC denomination that is planting the church. Still, a conservative church in such a prominent location has caused waves. “I’m very concerned about you opening a church in a very diverse, queer community given ARC’s discriminatory stance on marriage,” local journalist Matt Lardie commented on the Pioneers Instagram. “Will you openly welcome and bless ALL members of Durham’s community?” To this, Sherei Jackson sidestepped Lardie’s question and instead invited him to chat over coffee. Though Lardie declined, several people did sign up for a virtual “Sunday Coffee with a Pastor” event posted on the website. Jackson, who got into a car accident later that week, was unable to attend. As social media chatter piled up, comments on the church’s social media accounts were turned off, several commenters (including Lardie) were blocked, and the Instagram account for the business arm of the church was deleted. Dialogue about the church briefly quieted; then, in mid-November, Jackson released a series of Instagram slides clarifying Pioneers’ position on LGBTQ+ rights. Although the church will “prioritize love and welcome because we follow Jesus,” she wrote, both UMC’s and her own principles prevented her from marrying LGBTQ+ couples. “I, personally, hold an interpretation of scripture that Christian marriage is a sacred covenant between one man and one woman and believe that sexual intimacy has the potential to be at its healthiest in that context,” Jackson wrote. The Sunday morning after the slides went up, a pair of women were seen pouring a thick perimeter of salt around the church storefront—a rite traditionally performed to cleanse a space of negative spiritual energy. The salt lingered for several days afterward.
