A small woodworking shop near the Thomaston square in Georgia has become a place where people build tables, fishing rods, planter boxes and relationships while First Baptist Church Thomaston seeks to make disciples.
Named Wild and Free, the ministry gives people a place to learn practical skills alongside others who can teach them, with prayer, Scripture and gospel conversations intentionally woven into the work. Jesus taught His disciples by going, doing and modeling. Wild and Free follows that same pattern.
“When everybody’s gone and I’m sitting in the shop, I’m thinking, why doesn’t Sunday morning church look like that?” said Bryan McPherson, senior pastor of First Baptist Thomaston, as he reflected on the Tuesday morning gatherings at the six-month-old shop.
Shared work
Every Tuesday morning, people gather at the shop for worship and the Word of God from McPherson before working on projects.
McPherson said shared work creates opportunities for discipleship that are difficult to reproduce in a classroom.
“If you’re looking to build community, cultivate deep relationships and meet people where they are spiritually, there’s no better way than through industry,” he said.
Each class begins with prayer and a short Scripture-based talk. Leaders then teach the craft of the day while intentionally engaging participants in spiritual conversations.
“I make sure that everybody in here I’ve never known gets asked if they believe in God,” McPherson said.
McPherson said participants are told from the beginning that faith will be part of the experience.
“They don’t get to not pay attention to us,” he said.
Where it began
The idea for Wild and Free began during McPherson’s 10 years as lead pastor of Chamblee Memorial Baptist Church in Fort Valley.
Chamblee deacon Jerry Wilder invited McPherson to a Tuesday morning gathering he held each week at his mechanic’s shop. McPherson agreed to attend only if the men were not initially told he was a preacher because he feared they would stop coming.
“I wanna get to know them before they figure that out,” McPherson told Wilder.
Wilder later invited him to preach. The men began calling Wilder’s Garage their church, and the gathering grew from six men to 80 within three months. Baptisms, communion, and offerings all took place inside the mechanic’s shop.
That experience became the model for what McPherson later wanted to try in Thomaston.
When he arrived at First Baptist Thomaston in 2022, McPherson quickly proposed a similar ministry. The first proposal was unsuccessful, but another followed.
During the second proposal, the chairman of deacons asked how the church would pay for the ministry. McPherson asked whether they would approve the idea if he could raise the money by the next deacons meeting. They agreed.
Within three days, seven donations from around the United States had supplied the needed funds. The building was completed six months ago.
The ministry’s name is based on James 5:19–20, which speaks of bringing back someone who has wandered from the truth.
“One of the problems we have everywhere I’ve ever been is people get saved and then are no longer involved in any form of church ministry, discipleship, or anything else,” McPherson said. “It’s going after the lost sheep that kind of lost their way and lost their place in church.”
McPherson said some people who would not normally attend church will come to the shop to build something.
“Many men stay away from church because their parents complained about it on the drive home 30 years ago,” he said. “They made up their mind a long time ago. If that’s what church does to people, I don’t want any part of it.”
Opening the door
McPherson said those relationships can eventually open the door to a church invitation.
“I will pull them aside and say, ‘Hey, it’d be really good if you went to church with your wife on Sunday morning.’”
First Baptist Thomaston’s attendance has grown from a combined 130 across two services to more than 200. Twenty-seven visitors connected with Wild and Free attended one Sunday morning service.
The son-in-law of a church member came to the shop for help trimming columns for his house and attended church that week for the first time in 15 years. About half of those who attend the Tuesday gathering are church members, while the other half are not. The shop is also open to people from other churches.
Finding help
McPherson told of a woman who came to a planter box class after her husband asked for a divorce. Other women prayed over her in a corner of the shop, and the next Sunday morning she was in church.
“I know that she might have found somebody to console her somewhere, but the women who consoled her here I know gave her solid truth,” he said. “I know she walked out of here with something of value. Every time we turn around, there’s a new story.”
The shop offers woodworking, metal fabrication, fishing rod building and woodturning. The church also has wood lathes in its basement. Participants have made everything from charcuterie boards and planter boxes to dining room tables and leather Bible covers.
“If you and your wife decide you want a dining room table and you were to come here, you would get paired up with someone who knew how to do it,” McPherson said. “You would be a part of that process, hands-on as much or as little as you would like.”
The person teaching the project, he said, is also expected to bring faith into the conversation.
An upcoming class will teach participants how to make a chair from a log without electricity or power tools. Classes are scheduled and are also offered on demand. Some require a materials fee, while some materials have been donated.
The original vision called for structured weekly classes with sign-ups and a defined schedule, but Wild and Free has developed into a more organic, demand-driven, and often spontaneous ministry.
It has also expanded beyond the shop. A cycling group grew out of McPherson riding with his son, Jed, at 5 a.m., and a cycling class is planned.
“Whatever door opens, we jump in,” McPherson said. “We don’t get bogged down in what we’re not doing.”
McPherson said he has learned not to measure the ministry by whether it followed the original plan.
“Who cares if our class schedule is not what we wanted it to be?” he said. “We are doing what we set out to do. We’re just being willing to go with it.”
‘Willing to trust God’
He hopes other churches will look for their own ways to meet people outside traditional church settings.
“We got to be willing to trust God to walk in it,” McPherson said.
For McPherson, the focus ultimately comes back to people.
“People are why Jesus came,” he said. “He died on the cross for people. So people are the priority. I love people. It’s a win-win for me.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Jason Queen and originally published by the Christian Index.
