Wake Forest is a cool town. Seriously.

Wake Forest Presbyterian Church is why we’re here, most certainly; but I’ve been wanting to live in a small town with an active town center for some time now. Ideally, I thought, I’d like a “real” small town… but one that’s close enough to a big city… and close enough to growth; a town that is family oriented and with a young demographic; a town in a region where we’d have access to culture, and research, and cutting edge medicine, and all those handy amenities, but without being in suburbia.

Guess what? Wake Forest is that town.

EXPLORE: So Friday we ate lunch at a home-grown downtown restaurant and worked our way down all the art studios, the antique stores, the stringed instrument repair store, the consignment shop, the ice-cream parlors, the tea-room, the coffee shops and more, introducing ourselves, and inviting people to church, and finding out that most folk had already heard about Rebekah, and just deep-breathing in the small-town-ness of it all.

And, yes, there is a family owned hardware store in the middle of town and it’s very authentic, and it’s having its best year ever.

I asked the guy in the antiques store about the beauty and the unusual accessibility of the town center. He told me all the renovations to the town center cost several million dollars, created a huge mess for the best part of a year, and made it really hard on businesses for many months. But then he said that everyone’s business has improved as a result, and more than one store owner bragged that Wake Forest is beginning to become a regional destination downtown.

Antique Guy said the all the work was completed just last year. “Thanks,” I said. “Just in time for us.”

Currently there are no empty storefronts.

BELIEF: And did I mention this is all exactly a one-mile walk – all sidewalks – from the new Maul Hall? And did I mention that this week they started to build more sidewalks and that they’re going to run from the back end of our neighborhood and on up to the town center?

One Friday evening every month all the stores stay open till nine-o’clock, bands play, lunch places serve fancy dinners, carriage rides move people around, and there’s a festive atmosphere.

I asked several store owners about their commitment to the vision here (I kind of had my journalist hat on). They were all, unequivocally, optimistic.

Here’s how one of the guys in the WFPC Saturday morning men’s covenant group put it to me: “My business has never been better. We’re all so lucky to be living here, and working here.”

COMMITMENT: No-one moves into the future like that without belief, without a vision, and without a sense of confidence. This town seems to be all about renewal.

This weekend may be only Sunday number four for us at WFPC; but I sense that belief, that vision, and that confidence all around the church here. And renewal too. And why not? We serve a God who delights in sowing seeds of encouragement and then delivering on the promise!

I’ll see you in church – DEREK