Welcome to Friendly Chapel
Church of the Nazarene
and F.L.A.M.E
(Feeding Loving All Men Equally)
ALSO VISIT US AT:
www.friendlychapel.com
Friendly Chapel Church of the Nazarene
116 S. Pine
North Little Rock, AR 72114
501-371-0912
HOW TO CONTACT US:
EMAIL: donnah@friendlychapel.org
or
donnaholderfield@sbcglobal.net
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THE POWER OF ONE
“I am just one – only one – but I am all the one I can be –
for the One Who is All for Me” - Brother Paul
Paul Holderfield
Golden Gloves Champion -
North Little Rock Boys Club
Founder -
Friendly Chapel
Church of the Nazarene
North Little Rock,, Arkansas
This quote is worthy of consideration in its own right but it means a great deal more when considering it’s source, and the power of One Boys & Girls Club to help change the life of One man, and through that One man, thousands of others.
The One man was Paul Holderfield, the son of a dirt poor, share cropper in
Scott, Arkansas, just southeast of
North Little Rock.
The One Club was in those days known as the North Little Rock Boys Club, and it was there that Paul Holderfield learned to box, and where the course of his life would change dramatically.
At the Club Paul came under the mentoring influence of Joe Red, Club Director and Sonny Ingram, Assistant Director and former Golden Gloves and professional boxing champion.
Paul, and his brother Buddy, had been fighting since they could walk and both would become Golden Gloves champions in their own right. Buddy would win both the Mid-South and National Golden Gloves titles and fight professionally, many times in the main events at
Madison Square
Garden.
Paul, by his own admission was a beer drinking, cigar smoking, sailor swearing, tough guy - good old boy, who, after his boxing career ended, became a fireman for the North Little Rock Fire Department and a volunteer boxing coach at the Boys Club.
When Joe Red passed away, Jim Wetherington became the new director and, as fate would have it, Paul Holderfield’s next door neighbor. They became best friends and Jim, a warm and friendly man of deep faith, would continue the positive influence of the Club on Paul’s life.
Paul always had a big heart, loved his wife and family dearly and all children, especially those at the Club. Recognizing their many needs, he and other firemen began to fix a big pot of something – soup, chili, stew, - or cook hot dogs or make sandwiches - every afternoon at the fire station and bring the meal to the Club and feed the kids before they went home.
Paul’s mother was the source of his compassionate heart – she had been the comforting presence of faith in a home that suffered the abuse of an alcoholic husband and father.
When her health failed and she was hospitalized for many months, her doctors could not explain why she continued to live. When Paul told her that the family would be fine, that she could go on home to Heaven she said, “But who would pray for you and your brother and sisters?”
Unable to bear her suffering any longer, he walked out of her room and down the hall where alone, he prayed for the first time, asking that his mother be able to live at least until the next Sunday.
When he visited his mother that following Sunday afternoon, he told her that he had gone to church that morning and become a Christian, and then he prayed for her. After his prayer, he told her that from now on he would be praying for the family too. Within minutes his mother would take her last breath and Paul Holderfield would never be the same again.
Out went the old man with the beer and cigars and swearing and in came the new – Paul Holderfield was truly a changed man. He attended church whenever it was open and took his family. They too would follow his example and the entire family became and remains one of great faith.
It wasn’t long before Paul started taking some of the kids from the Club to church with him too and when he was invited to take them elsewhere because of their color, he did – he took them to the Boys Club.
Jim Wetherington gave him permission to hold Sunday morning services in the Club library. With their chairs in a circle, Paul and his family and a handful of kids from the Club and their families would listen as Paul shared his new found faith. Once again Paul Holderfield was fighting at the Boys Club – this time in a different ring – this time for a different Golden crown.
And so began the story of
Friendly Chapel
Church of the Nazarene. The little group would quickly outgrow the Club and purchase an abandoned church in what was then the declining inner city area of
North Little Rock. But that was close to where the Club was located and where “Brother Paul”, as he had come to be known, felt called and led to be.
He often said, “We have a real advantage here because this is where we want to be. We’re not trying to get out of this area, we’re trying to get into it – this is where the Lord wants us to be – and we have come here to stay.
And stay they did – and grew. Paul continued the meal program that he and the other firemen had begun at the Boys Club – but now he was feeding the hungry and homeless – those on the streets all around Friendly Chapel. And along with the daily meal in the soup kitchen came a hearty serving of faith – a hand out with a hand up – mixed with the power of unconditional love.
Today Paul’s son, with the help of the entire Holderfield family, continues his father’s ministry, pastoring a congregation that meets now in a new sanctuary that seats over five hundred.
The old sanctuary, the one Paul added to the first church building, seats two hundred and is home now to their children’s church. Connected to it are the original soup kitchen that serves a hundred meals daily, a full gymnasium, temporary apartment housing for the homeless, and a second-hand store where donated clothing and other items are sold and more often than not, given away.
Their annual fish-fry fund raising event, which began in the soup kitchen and gym, outgrew it and then outgrew the local National Guard armory, and is now held at Alltel Arena, last year served over four thousand people.
Brother Paul liked to say with a grin, “If I am going to be accused of being a Christian, there is going to be so much evidence all over
North Little Rock that they want even have to have a trial – I will be guilty as charged beyond a shadow of a doubt”.
And so it was and so it remains. Paul Holderfield and Jim Wetherington have passed on but they have left behind a lasting legacy of love and faith and faithfulness.
There is a new Boys & Girls Club in
North Little Rock dedicated to Jim and next to his picture in the Hall of Fame ring of honor that surrounds the walls of the board room hangs the one of Brother Paul.
One Boys Club - One Director - One Boxer-Pastor
The Power of One
“I am just one – only one – but I am all the one I can be –
for the One Who is All for Me”
Rich Baldwin
North Little Rock Boys Club Alumnus
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater
Kansas City Outreach Coordinator
Independence and Eastern
Jackson County