DOWN-HOME RELIGIOUS SERVICES COMFORT WORSHIPERS AT FLEA MARKET.

Byline: Kim Curtis Associated Press 

Come Sunday services here, it's coffee and doughnuts in place of bread and wine. Wooden chairs and vinyl-covered tables replace pews and kneelers.

And, after the service, they sell barbecue by the pound.

For on Sunday mornings, Jim's Barbecue at the local flea market becomes the Barnyard Worship Service.

The churchgoers are mostly flea market vendors, and they like their Sunday service tailor-made for just plain folks.

Donald Shivers, a military-surplus dealer and ordained Baptist minister, shepherds his flock in his khaki trousers and a crisp cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves. His pulpit is a music stand, the song books secondhand.

"This is one of the most wonderful experiences I've ever been through," he says. "Everyone seems to be in one accord. They come here because they have a need."

Betty Evans and her friend Jetty Moorer travel from Irmo 28 miles each week to find comfort at the flea market service.

"We were looking for a church with feeling and spirit," Evans says. And no one pays attention to what fellow worshipers are driving or wearing - most come in jeans, tennis shoes and sweat shirts.

"You don't need fine clothes to go to church," she says. "Everybody's here for the right reason."

Dick Stewart, the flea market's general manager, got the idea for the worship service nearly two years ago - he missed being able to go to church. Even the early services were too late for Stewart to be ready in time for the flea market's 10 a.m. opening.

The logical solution, he says, was to bring the minister to the people.

"I didn't know how to go about finding a preacher," Stewart says, so he began asking around and discovered Shivers' background.

He and Shivers had been friends through the flea market, but "I had no idea he had pastored a church for 24 years."

Shivers jumped at the chance to begin preaching again. Three years ago, he left his church when ulcers, the result of the stressful life of a full-time minister, put him in the hospital.

Now, he enjoys preaching without all the politics of an organized congregation. "If the Lord wants me to move from here, he'd have to hit me with a hammer," Shivers says.

On a recent Sunday, Ann Bailey recalled how she and her children recently moved here from Seattle and had problems meeting friends and fitting in. Then she met Marsha Redmond, who plays her portable keyboard at the flea market.

Bailey says she was tired of the vanity of many churchgoers she'd met. Redmond told her about the flea market church.

Bailey is now convinced this is the way church should be.

"The one thing we've found here is comfort," she says.

The services started with about a dozen people. Now, it's standing room only at Jim's Barbecue. The down-home atmosphere draws people in, says David Watkins, a former Episcopal priest and another regular worshiper.

Watkins, drawing a parallel to early Christians, who met in each others' homes to worship, says, "This is the essence of what church should be."

Shivers' nondenominational service, less than an hour long, is straightforward and upbeat.

"People have enough negatives going on in their lives," he says.

His smile is unwavering and warm - and he gets everyone out in time to open the restaurant for business and get vendors to their stalls.

Worshipers toss donations on an open Bible on their way out. The congregation has saved $6,000 in the past two years. The money was to give the church its own shelter at the flea market, but as the holidays approached, the congregation decided to help needy families instead, Shivers says.