On behalf of the Wedgewood faith community I want to welcome you to our web site. I hope you will explore the various pages of this site to learn about Wedgewood. I think you will find that I and the other Wedgewoodians take our faith very seriously while we also realize life is too short not to have fun.

 

 

If you have any questions about Wedgewood I will be glad to speak with you over lunch, email you, or talk with you on the phone. If it turns out Wedgewood is not the church for you, I'll be glad to recommend other churches for you to consider. Charlotte has some outstanding congregations, including Park Road Baptist, St. John's Baptist, Sardis Baptist, Myers Park Baptist, First United Methodist Church, St. Ann's Parish, St. Peter's Catholic Church, St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Cross and Crown Lutheran, Holy Trinity Lutheran, Caldwell Memorial Presbyterian , Sewlyn Presbyterian, and Holy Covenant UCC.

 

 

I have been married to Vicky (I call her Victoria) for 27 years. Hard to believe somebody could put up with me for that length of time. We met at Heaven, that would be UNC-Chapel Hill. As the song says, Carolina girls are the best in the world.

 

 

Vicky has worked for Bank of America since 1989. Well, way back then she was an attorney for little North Carolina National Bank. In addition to working in legal, Vicky has worked in compliance, and now the audit department. She loves gardening, reading, yoga and "training her husband" (if you know what I mean).

 

 

Will is our only begotten son, our gene pool carrier. He's now seventeen. Will does a great impression of his mother and father. Maybe the only thing he does better is play golf. He's an outstanding golfer who says of his father's golf game: "you stink and you'll always stink".

 

 

Fluffy is our short haired, non-fluffy dog. Hey, that's what Will insisted we name her when we took her in as a stray fourteen years ago. Fluffy is the best dog in the USA. Make that the universe.

 

Well, that's my blood family. One of the great things about being the Pastor at Wedgewood is the church is my family too.

 

 

I feel like I'm the luckiest Pastor in the world.

 

I am not a big fan of the institutional church so to find a church like Wedgewood and be its Pastor for such a long time is like ice cream on the cake.

 

Wedgewood is for me and others a church for people who don't like "church", a church for individuals beat up or oppressed by the traditional steeples. At Wedgewood people can be who God created them to be. That's one reason why I've stayed at Wedgewood all these years and why I have no interest in being anywhere else.

 

There are no perfect churches, and that includes Wedgewood. At Wedgewood, however, we make a special effort to keep "church crap" to a minimum. We feel our mission is too important and that life is too hard to mess it up with church headaches.

 

 

I'd like to encourage you to go to the Columnists section of Wedgewood's web site and read articles I have written, many of which have been published. I invite you to read articles like "Homosexuality is not a Sin: The Christian Education of a Baptist Minister," "July Fourth: A Dangerous Day for Christians," "Gay Marriage Not Defeated," "Thank God we have a godless Constitution," and "Beware of Christian Herods".

 

I believe relationships are more important than opinions. That said, opinions are important.

 

Wedgewood is a theological/political zoo. My opinion is one of many. We'd love for you to join the zoo and share your opinions. We are all teachers and students.

 

 

I have mixed feelings about sharing my resume with you.  God, it seems to me, has a long history of using the worst possible people to do stuff.  Resumes can be an attempt to communicate (incorrectly) I’m better than you.  On the other hand, when people turn their bodies/health over to doctors/surgeons they want to be assured the doctor has the experience and skills necessary to help them.  In the same vein, before joining a church an individual wants to know the Pastor will provide the care and instruction that is necessary.

 

At Wedgewood we say “Everyone is welcome except for perfect people.   We don’t want anyone messing up our record.”  We also say with respect to our mission that “We are an imperfect church for an imperfect world.”  All of that is to say that anyone looking for the perfect pastor will not find one at Wedgewood.  I may be the most forgetful/easily confused person in the history of the world, but I do love my job and a few people now and then have found me to be helpful. 

 

At Wedgewood we also like to stress that everyone is a teacher and everyone is a student. Resumes can give the inaccurate impression that a person is smart, more teacher than student. As it turns out, no one knows everything and someone can be really smart in one area and not so smart in other areas. Humility is far more important than a knock-your-socks-off resume.

 

One more caveat.  Although I have a very important role to play at Wedgewood, Wedgewood is not about me.  Even more important than learning about me and getting to know me is becoming familiar with the Wedgewood faith community.  The best way to do that is to:  1) worship with us, 2) get on one of our mission teams, 3) go out to eat with us after worship (which we do every Sunday except for Sundays on which we have meals in our fellowship hall), and 4) explore our web site.

 

With all the above in mind, I offer my resume to people interested in visiting Wedgewood or becoming Wedgewoodians.

 

Rev. Dr. Chris Ayers
6132 Gate Post Road
Charlotte, NC 28211
(704) 364-2767

 PERSONAL:

            Birthday:         July 9, 1958
            Spouse:           Vicky Willis Ayers
            Child:              William Willis Ayers (17 years-old)
            Interests:         Computer, photography, golf, web site design, early church history, text criticism
            Licensed:         Clemmons First Baptist Church, April 27, 1977
            Ordained:        Clemmons First Baptist Church, February 27, 1983

 

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Minister, Wedgewood Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC, February 1989 to the present.

Minister, Bethel Baptist Church, Chapel Hill (also known as Heaven), NC, August 1983 to January, 1989.

EDUCATION:

Doctor of Ministry, Columbia Theological Seminary, 1997.  Graduated with straight “A” average.

Master of Theology, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1985.  Graduated with straight “A" average.

Master of Divinity with Languages, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1982.  Graduated with “A” average.

Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1980.

AWARD:

J. Lake Williams Christian Ethics Award.  Presented by the faculty of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary to a student who has exhibited exceptional skill and promise in the study of Christian Ethics, 1983.

PASTORAL CARE:

           American Association of Pastoral Counselors.  Reached Member level.

           Counselor, Charlotte Counseling Center, Charlotte, NC, 1996 to 1998.

Presbyterian Samaritan Counseling Center Training Program, Charlotte, NC, 1992 to 1994.

 

PUBLICATIONS:

Reflections, Smyth & Helwys, 7 devotions, April 1997.

“Show Compassion to People who have AIDS”, Baptists Today, January 23, 1977.

Reflections, Smyth & Helwys, 7 devotions, December 1995.

Reflections, Smyth & Helwys, 7 devotions, May 1994.

Formations, Smyth & Helwys, 7 Sunday School lessons, April/May 1993.

Formations, Smyth & Helwys,  Sunday School lesson, March 22, 1993.

Seven articles published in The Charlotte Observer including “Homosexuality is Not a Sin:  The Christian Education of a Baptist Minister”, “Is It Possible for a Preacher to be too Popular”, and “July 4th:  A Dangerous Day for Christians”.

DOCTOR OF MINISTRY DISSERTATION

Reclaiming The Eucharist: The Church and the Ritual

MASTER OF THEOLOGY THESIS

Protestant Uses of the Bible in Contemporary Christian Ethics: A Methodological Study

MINISTRY INVOLVEMENT (among other):

Sunday School Teacher, Hope Chapel for the Homeless, 1989 to present.

Prison Sponsorship program, 1992.  Relationship with ex-convict to the present.

Regional AIDS Interfaith Care Team, 1996 to present.

Room In The Inn ministry, 1999 to present.

Board member, Metrolina AIDS Project, May 2004 to Dec. 2007.

 

 

I wish I could require all people, especially Christians, to read:

Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith and Other Cotton Patch Sermons

Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jesus Against Chrisianity: Reclaiming the Missing Jesus

I'm also a big fan of Will Campbell, Anne Lamott, and Phillip Gulley.

 

I highly recommend Sojourners, Weavings, and encourage lay people to become a member of the Society of Biblical Literature. You can learn alot by reading/skimming the SBL bi-monthly installment of book reviews. (Be forewarned: not all the reviews are in English [95% are, though) and not all of them may be of interest to you. There's enough, however, to keep you busy. You'll learn about cutting edge Biblical scholarship.)

 

 

Gay women golfers (GWGers) are some of the most competitive people in the universe. (Or put another way, GWGers have trashtalked me more than you can imagine.) I consider my Gay Women golf ministry to be one of my most important ministries. I'm doing my best to teach gay women golfers humility. (Smile) There are very few things I enjoy more in life than beating a Wedgewoodian gay woman golfer. (Very big smile.) This, in no way, is meant to discrimate against non-GWGer's. I, in fact, enjoy golfing with heterosexual, transgendered, bi-sexual, asexual golfers too. (Actually, one of the things I've learned is sexual orientation/gender identity minorities just want to be treated like human beings. Their sexual orientation/gender identitiy is an important part of who they are, but it's just one dimension of who they are. Many gay Wedgewoodians come to Wedgewood because they want to go to a place where they are fully accepted but also because Wedgewood is not a "gay" church, not that there is anything wrong with gay churches. It's just a preference mentioned by most Wedgewoodians. We like that Wedgewood is a zoo with a little bit of almost everything.) So why draw attention to a Gay Women Golf ministry? Because I feel like I'm the luckiest Pastor in the world, in part, because of my Gay Women golfer friends. Two, I love joking, dishing it out, and having fun. Three, I think it's neat that a Baptist minister who never ever wanted to play golf (He started playing golf when his 9 year-old son, who now is a 1 handicap golfer, went crazy about Tiger Woods.) and never dreamed of being who he is or dreamed of being the Pastor of a church like Wedgewood, has ended up playing a lot of golf with GWGers. (Saying I play golf with Wedgewoodians or saying I play golf with women golfers just doesn't get at the wondrous thing that has happened.) And yes, this is based, admittedly on a small sampling size-----but I find that more so than playing with non-GWGers, there's something about my psyche that gets "hooked" by playing with GWGers who have become very competitive and very good. I love beating them in golf (and I've had my sharing of losing)---but I love beating them in golf, especially after they buy new golf equipment.

 

Humility, of all of life's lessons, is one of the hardest to teach-----ummmmm, and to learn.

 

2008 Trash Talk

 

"Don't cross the river if you can't swim the tide." (From America's song, Don't Cross The River)

"If you are going to play with the boys, you've got to be able to play with the boys."

 

 

 

 

 

At Wedgewood we are not afraid to take on the difficult cases. Or put another way, we have our share of math teachers/math people in the congregation. (Can someone tell me why God created Math?) Yes, algebraic formulas can fry your brain but in a loving faith community even math brains can be healed.