COMMUNITY A2-3 | GOVERNMENT/POLITICS A4 | OUR COLUMNISTS A6-7 | FAITH A9
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powell
VOL. 50, NO. 35
AUGUST 29, 2011
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Fishy? Powell Masons treat community to fish and fries See page A-2
Dance team member Katlyn Jordan Hayden Williams plays the tuba
Psyching up! Powell readies for big game By Sandra Clark
Grand openings A look back at Vols’ season openers See Marvin’s story on page A-7
Football player Dyshawn Mobley
Internal to external
FEATURED COLUMNIST BETTY BEAN
Godspeed, Superman Betty Bean says goodbye to longtime friend James Anderson See page A-4
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First Baptist Church of Powell is more than holding its own during this period of a stagnant economy. It’s actually expanding its mission work. According to FBCPowell’s pastor for missions and evangelism, Tim McGhee, this can be attributed to a couple of factors. While giving is up by 5 percent for the first six months of this year, overall giving has been generally flat for the past few years since the recession officially hit the country in 2008, according to McGhee. One factor that is helping the church do more with less is the shift of some of its focus from internal, activities aimed at members, to external, things that
To page A-3
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4509 Doris Circle 37918 (865) 922-4136 news@ShopperNewsNow.com ads@ShopperNewsNow.com EDITOR Larry Van Guilder lvgknox@mindspring.com ADVERTISING SALES Patty Fecco fecco@ShopperNewsNow.com Darlene Hutchison hutchisond@ ShopperNewsNow.com Shopper-News is a member of KNS Media Group, published weekly at 4509 Doris Circle, Knoxville, TN, and distributed to 8,314 homes in Powell.
Wow! The parking lot at Powell Place was packed last Thursday as students, families and friends rallied to support the Panther football team in Friday’s home opener
against Austin-East. Food City hosted the kickoff pep rally and provided free water. Rain threatened but never dampened the enthusiasm of the kids and fans. The band played on, the cheerers cheered, the dancers danced, the coaches
looked somber and the players wore grey Panther T-shirts and clustered at the edge of the crowd. In all, it was a tremendous show of Powell Pride and community support for this Panther team which exceeded expectations last season and looks toward another great year.
Cheerleader Deanna Lyon Photos by S. Clark
Churches challenged Declining revenue forces review, innovation By Sandra Clark Recently, The Tennessean profiled Nashville area churches that have closed or modified their outreach since the onset of the economic downturn in 2008. We tasked Shopper reporters to talk with church leaders to discover the impact of the economy on their congregations. While each Shopper-News paper has interviews from its community, readers can find all interviews on our website at www. ShopperNewsNow.com/. What did we learn? Smaller churches are hurting worse than larger ones, which seem better able to absorb flat or declining revenue. Some churches are growing, such as Concord United Methodist which just hosted a three-day celebration of its
new contemporary worship center. Others have been challenged to become “better stewards” of the Lord’s money. According to the Tennessean, most of the state’s residents belong to congregations with fewer than 100 people, and many of those actually number fewer than 50. A 2010 survey on church giving showed small churches endured a heavy 40 percent drop in donations during the economic crisis. With far less money for building maintenance and fewer people volunteering, more congregations are considering closing down. An example is Nashville’s LaVergne Presbyterian Church. With a congregation of seven, it will no longer collect canned goods for the food pantry or recite the Apostles’ Creed. It voted to disband after 124 years of service. Knoxville native the Rev. Dale Peterson writes in his book, “Leave a Well in the Valley,” of a similar situa-
Anxiety at Powell Presbyterian
tion. The congregation of the oldest Baptist church in Michigan dwindled to fewer than 200 members and risked what Peterson called “death by default.” Instead, it voted to merge with another congregation, giving away approximately $11 million in assets and ending its historic mission. The Tennessean story concludes: “Four Methodist congregations in Tennessee have closed this year, and 16 Tennessee Baptist Convention churches closed last year. All were small with well under 100 members. It has been extremely hard for church leaders to close down their congregations. … Not only is it hard for church leaders and attendees but also for the communities that these church closings are occurring in. Many compare their church closings to the death of a friend. Many have hopes that the tenacious and steadfast faith of church members won’t be forgotten.”
“There is anxiety in our church,” says Powell Presbyterian Church pastor Jonathan Warren. With a congregation of just below 100, the church has noticed a drop off in giving, especially this year according to Warren. “Gas prices have increased, food costs have increased, retirees are not sure how their stocks are going to do, it does affect people’s giving,” says Warren. In the first two years of his pastorship, the church surpassed its giving pledges. It has also gained almost 10 percent in membership. Warren does not credit all of this to the economy. “The changes were due to the changing of the guard here,” he says,
To page A-3
Carter proposal: What might have been By Larry Van Guilder The Devon Group’s announcement that it was withdrawing its proposal to build a new elementary school in Carter shook Knox County
Analysis Mayor Tim Burchett’s office and left most observers scratching their heads. Now a review of the scores awarded to the project finalists by the
P.C.C.A. Compounding Specialist Kenton Page, DPh Since 1976
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county’s evaluation committee reveals how close the competition was and how the rankings of one evaluator changed the outcome for the runner-up, Partners Development, and may have sealed the fate of the project. The six-member evaluation committee was chaired by Mitch Steenrod, a senior executive with Pilot Travel Centers. Developer Buzz Goss, Mathew Myers from county purchasing, Doug
Dillingham with the school system, local executive Kevin Wilson and UT architecture professor Tricia Stuth rounded out the committee. The finalists were the Devon Group, Hewlett Spencer LLC, Municipal Capital Markets Inc. and Partners Development. The proposals were rated in five categories: cost, adherence to program standards, time to complete, innovation and “identification and complete understand-
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ing” of any proposed financing arrangement. Cost, which considered the long-term operating costs of the facility in addition to the contract amount, was worth 35 points. Program standards was assigned 30 points and time to complete 15. Innovation and understanding proposed financing were worth 10 points each. Thus a perfect score was 100, and a proposal could receive a maximum score of 600
when the individual evaluations were totaled. Hewlett Spencer and Municipal Capital Markets finished with scores of 541.63 and 539. 2 respectively. Both lagged the leaders by a fair margin. The Devon Group edged Partners Development 558.22 to 552.5. In order, these were the individual scores for the Devon Group and Partners Development: To page A-2
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