Bonnie Church: Friendship Evangelism

Bonnie Church of Boone reminds me of a boxer taking the walk to the ring for a highly anticipated fight: energetic, firing up those around her, ready to work, and pumped-up with energy not often seen in everyday life. Bonnie “The Vivacious“ Church.

I met Bonnie through my parents, Hutch and Phyllis Sprunt, as a kid in the 70s, and she is still the same energetic, genuine woman I’ve known since the time I affectionately refer to as “Hippie House Church” days. It was a time of Jesus freaks, gospel tracts, and flower children, and the new expressions of faith, while likely scary to some Christians, brought Jesus to places outside of traditional church and to the people where they were, much like Jesus himself did.

While I have known Bonnie primarily in a personal realm, she has become quite successful in her work with Market America, a multi-level marketing company based in Greensboro, North Carolina. In fact, one time I was chatting with an employee in a toy store in New Hampshire and when the woman mentioned Market America and I mentioned knowing Bonnie, you would have thought I was talking about the Red Sox starting lineup, the Pope, and Princess Diana all rolled into one.

I caught up with Bonnie to learn about her faith journey and where she is on the path today. Growing up in Nedrow, New York, Bonnie, like many people in this country, grew up attending church. “I was taken to church and baptized as a child, but I certainly went my own way when I became a teenager. I pursued a counterculture lifestyle that was extremely liberal and the moral compass was a little bit skewed on occasion, but I came back to the Lord — I hate to use that cliché. It’s more that I had a renewal of my faith in college,” she explains.

It was in 1974 during one of her summer breaks from Syracuse University that Bonnie came to Boone because she had an opportunity to stay with friends while working at Hound Ears Club making three dollars an hour cleaning houses and cooking

“It was during the time when all the baby boomers were looking for jobs in the summer and it was really hard to get them. I ended up meeting Michael when he picked me up hitchhiking. We fell in love, dropped out of college, and got married. “Then,” she laughs, “we went off to live off the land and wait for Jesus to come back, I guess. We were definitely Jesus hippies.

“I was an extreme evangelical at the time. I still consider myself an evangelical, but I used to go down King Street wearing bibbed overalls and braids with [daughter] Meredith in a backpack carrier on my back and hand out tracts, talking to everybody about Jesus. So, I mean, I was in one hundred percent. I was willing to get out of my comfort zone and do things that could be highly embarrassing because of my love for the Lord.

“I probably alienated people because I was so upfront. Over the years, though, I have learned that the role of the believer is to bear the hope in their heart and to get close enough to other people for them to see it and ask the question. You know, that’s a really patient process that can take time, but I feel like most of us are called to that. I’m not going to judge anybody that’s called to extreme evangelistic efforts. Everybody, before their master, stands or falls, you know? You have to decide what God wants you to do. But, I see my faith being expressed by being a living love letter written by God and read by humanity than someone in peoples’ faces alienating them.”

It is this ‘friendship evangelism’ that I appreciate so much in Bonnie. Loving people where they are, just as God loves us where we are. As failed humans, we often feel “safer” comparing ourselves to those around us by what we do, say, or wear, but Bonnie reminds us that God gives us each unique spiritual gifts and wants us to be authentic in the expression of those to His glory.

“Michael and I,” she shares, “have gravitated to ministry in the past: Michael was a home group leader and I led a ladies’ Bible study or prayer group. But, it never felt right. It just never felt like us because it wasn’t our area of gifting. What I came to discover is that my ministry is in the marketplace. The ethos over my life is to work with all my heart as unto the Lord and from Him comes my reward. If you look in Scripture, a lot of it is about working humbly with your hands, working as unto the Lord, bearing the hope that’s within you, and being ready to give an answer for that…with a message of grace.

“I had a situation not too long ago where I went to a gala dinner for the company I work for. A man I’ve known for a number of years who is dealing with a serious health issue sat down next to me at the dinner and just asked, ‘Are you afraid to die?’ I felt for a minute like the dog that caught the train,” she laughs, “but I was able to share with him my utter confidence in my

relationship with God. People are afraid to die, but when you have God’s love written on your soul, there’s no fear. I was able to express that to this man in a way that he was able to receive it. It’s just an example of how he saw the hope in my life. I’m not patting myself on the back with that. Believe me, if you walked around with me you’d find plenty of reasons to wonder about me! But the hope that shines in us does shine brightly when we allow it and it’s going to shine more brightly when we’re in places that are dark.”

Bonnie certainly shines. Even as a kid, I remember recognizing that Bonnie lifted up and pointed out the strengths and best qualities about people with whom she came into contact, seeking to be the expression of God’s love to people.

“If I had a faith tradition,” she summarizes, “it would be contemplative more now than it was before. Worshiping God by paying attention to what He’s doing, you know, in the lives of other people. It’s like creation, getting out into nature. Nature is like a conversation from God sharing His love with us. Nature is like a living love letter, too, you know? I get out into places where I feel really, really small and realize He is God, and I am not. I don’t care anymore about impressing people with how spiritual I am. I started out as a rebel in the counterculture and I went into the Christian subculture, surrounding myself with people that believed exactly like I believed. And you know what? It caused me to want to comply and be accepted by the people I was surrounded with. But I’ve come to realize that Christianity is not a subculture, it is a counterculture. It’s where you live the life of God in integrity wherever you are. That doesn’t mean a holierthan-thou sort of piety; it just means walking in love, being ready to give an answer for the hope that is within you. That’s it. That’s pretty much it.”