Soon, the church didn’t have the membership to justify a new sanctuary. It hasn’t had a full-time preacher in 25 years. In 1999, when Montgomery arrived, the church roll had shrunk to 35 members. Sunday attendance was half that. He has watched it fall year by year.

The first Christmas story introduced the world to a family of three facing uncertain times.

This holiday, Calvary Presbyterian Church gives us another.

Calvary’s tiny congregation near downtown Davidson clings together against time and loss, while offering lasting holiday reminders about family and hope and why giving is always the best gift.

A year from now Calvary could be gone. But the church, with more than a century behind it, always celebrates Christmas. This year, they do it a week early, and we’re invited.

We’ll start with some music. Upfront in the main room of Calvary’s education building, the Rev. Reid Montgomery’s 84-year-old baritone soars through the familiar verses and chords of “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

Calvary’s faithful join in. All three of them.

There’s Nancy Overcash Blackwell, who plays the piano. She’s 82 and started accompanying her church’s music in her early teens.

Bobby Overcash, her first cousin, sits on the aisle seat on the third row. He’s 80 and serves as Calvary’s treasurer, Sunday School teacher and clerk of session.

To his left is his wife, Pearl. She’s 75. They’ve known each other since high school.
That’s it, except for Montgomery, who’s been at Calvary on a year-to-year interim contract for more than a decade, never believing he would stay this long.

Given its size, Calvary’s very existence belies logic. But there’s a point in the best Christmas stories where common sense gives way to magic.

Calvary, you see, takes special solace in a certain pledge found in Matthew 18:20. “For where two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus promised, “there am I among them.”

The spirit of Christmas, the three members believe, can truly be found in this small, squat brick building on South Street. They intend to remain a church for as long as they physically can.

Outsiders, at least at first, don’t see how the numbers work.

“They are very adamant about continuing,” says Janie Beaver, part of an ongoing committee picked by the Presbytery of Charlotte to help chart Calvary’s future.

“Before you go up there, you think ‘How can they have a church?’ But they do.”
The committee makes its recommendation in February.

Is this Calvary’s last Christmas?

Beaver pauses before answering. “God has the answer to that,” she says.

The church members are perfectly willing to hear what God has to say. But for now they’re too busy celebrating this Christmas to worry about Christmases yet to come.
Which is good news for us. There may even be a happy ending. Let’s see.

A family and a church
Time and time again, the best Christmas stories bring us to a point where the characters must overcome an obstacle. In our story, the plot twist is this: Calvary stopped growing.

It began as a 19th-century Sunday School in a Davidson mill village. It became a Presbyterian church in 1949.

With dreams of a new campus, the 200 or so members broke ground on South Street in the mid ’60s. The education building is as far as they got.

For whatever reason, Calvary’s members began moving away. Young families, siphoned off by the bigger churches, didn’t appear to replace them.

Soon, the church didn’t have the membership to justify a new sanctuary. It hasn’t had a full-time preacher in 25 years. In 1999, when Montgomery arrived, the church roll had shrunk to 35 members. Sunday attendance was half that. He has watched it fall year by year.

Soon, the church didn’t have the membership to justify a new sanctuary. It hasn’t had a full-time preacher in 25 years. In 1999, when Montgomery arrived, the church roll had shrunk to 35 members. Sunday attendance was half that. He has watched it fall year by year.

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