Saturday, July 18, 2009
Ministry through music
Every Sunday, one family uses music to deliver the Gospel at Happy's Flea Market.
JOHN W. ADKISSON I The Roanoke Times
Rebecca Williams (from left), Katie Braxton, Pamela Braxton and Dan Agee sing gospel songs during a service held at The Lighthouse booth inside Happy's Flea Market, something that has been done for five years.
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Toward the back of the flea market, past the pipe shop and the pet store, a crowd congregated in front of corner booth No. 1820. At The Lighthouse, an outlet for religious literature, 78-year-old Rebecca Salmon Williams played an upright piano, with her face tilted to the heavens.
"Hallelujah! Hallelujah! We are going to see the king," she sang.
It was about 11:30 a.m. Sunday. It was a time for the faithful at churches everywhere to assemble in pews for a sermon. And it was a time when the bargain hunters at Happy's Flea Market, on Williamson Road in Roanoke, rummaged for computer parts, used furniture and old guitars.
The Lighthouse sits at the intersection of the spiritual and the commercial. It is a store where Williams has sung with her family in their own brand of ministry every Sunday for five years this month. Her daughter, store owner Pam Braxton, says it's nondenominational and formerly affiliated with the Pentecostal Holiness denomination.
When they started playing at Happy's, neighbors complained because of the music. Braxton replied that they are not a church and that the singing is a ministry independent of the store.
"We're only doing the Lord's work," she explained recently. "We're an outreach ministry."
The musical ministry has been in the family since at least when Williams was in her teens, playing with her parents in a Roanoke church. When they went out of town for revivals, Williams would be called in to play -- even though she hadn't been formally trained.
"I probably prayed more than I practiced," she said. "I would say, 'Lord, if you help me learn this good, then I'll do it only for your glory.'"
So she gave her hands and vocal chords to Jesus. A bookkeeper by profession, Williamson says she learned by ear and has played only gospel in her 60 years of playing at churches, and any other places that would let her sing with her family.
"I always pray that the Lord makes an opening for us, and when he does, we step right in and fill it," Williamson said. "Music makes any heart joyful."
But that hasn't gone for everybody. Braxton recalls a time when the veins in a Happy's vendor's neck were showing when he walked to their booth and yelled, "Would you all shut up?!"
They kept singing, and later reached an agreement with management. They buffered the piano with a vinyl covering, and blocked a side of the booth with pegboard. Some of their neighbors now sing along with them during their outreach from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Sundays.
"I think anywhere you can set up and preach the Gospel is good," said Travis Wimmer, 31, who sells smoking accessories nearby. "I mean the Bible says every seed God put on earth is good. So it's all good."
And Braxton says they'll keep singing there.
"We're not here to put on a show for nobody," she said. "We're coming to worship and whoever hears us, we pray it will help them. That's what I pray for. Otherwise, we would just stay home and turn on the radio."
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