The Long Obedience of a Small Town
What Eugene Peterson taught me about staying in Cheneyville when most of my seminary classmates left for cities.
Read essay →A small Louisiana fellowship gathered under cypress and pine, learning to pray honestly, sing fully, and love our neighbors well.
We are not a megachurch and we are not trying to be. We are farmers, teachers, mechanics, retirees, students, and visitors — gathered weekly to read the scriptures together, to sing without performance, and to remember the One who first loved us.
Verse-by-verse teaching from the whole counsel of scripture — Old Testament and New — read in community, not soundbites.
Hymns of the Church, psalms set to simple melody, and prayers spoken in plain Louisiana English. No spectacle, just substance.
Sunday lunch is part of worship here. Stay after service for shared meals on the lawn — gumbo, cornbread, sweet tea, and conversation.
When my wife Mary and I planted Cypress Grove with seven other families in the spring of 2014, we wrote one promise on the back of a feed-store receipt: we will not rush people through the gospel. Twelve years later, that promise still sits on the wall behind the pulpit.
If you are tired of religion that performs, exhausted by a country that argues, or simply curious whether Jesus has anything to say to a Tuesday in Cheneyville — come and see. There is a chair for you, and there is no obligation.
— Leonard Struck, Founding Pastor
Visitors are welcome at every gathering. Wear what you’d wear to a friend’s porch.
What Eugene Peterson taught me about staying in Cheneyville when most of my seminary classmates left for cities.
Read essay →A short defense of the hymnal, written between two batches of Sunday cornbread.
Read essay →If you’re passing through Cheneyville, or if you’ve been wondering for a while whether to walk through a church door again, this is your invitation. Bring questions, bring doubt, bring children — bring whatever you’ve got.