To Know And Be Known: Pillars Of A Community

To Know&

Pillars Of A Community

Written by Katherine Anne Thierfelder Photographed by Maddie Steele

For some people, home is the place where they have lived the longest. For others, home isn’t a place at all; home is the people they surround themselves with. For me, home has been a really hard thing to define and a really hard thing to find.

I grew up in a small town on the border of Mississippi and Tennessee. It had all the staples of a classically Southern town: churches on every corner, an inordinate number of homeschool families and more fake smiles than real people.

Even though I was born and raised there, I never found a place or people who truly knew me or even wanted to know me. In a town of 50,000 people, I felt utterly alone. When my family and I moved to Jackson, Tennessee, I grieved because I thought I was trading my familiar Southern town for an unfamiliar, equally as disingenuous Southern town two hours away.

But if I had known then what I know now, I would have realized that living in Jackson would teach me what it means to be a part of a community, to live in a place that knows me and to be surrounded by people who believe in making the place where you live into a home.

I talked to four of those people who have been committed to taking Jackson from a small Southern town to the home that it has become for so many.

Be Known:

Pillars Of A Community

Andy Neely came to Jackson in the fall of 1993 after transferring to Union University from Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). His move to Union would be the first of three times that Neely has been back in Jackson.

In 2006, Neely served West Jackson Baptist Church as their student pastor until 2010 when his family moved to Florida. Then in 2012, they were called back to West Jackson where Neely has served as the senior pastor ever since.

“Coming back, being back in this seat, has opened my eyes, enlarged my view of what Jackson is even more so, you know? It’s been really unique to have the opportunity to come back and serve in a place that was so special to me,” Neely said.

Neely understands the critical role that the local church plays in shaping a community. A hostile or removed church can drive people away just as fast as an intentional and genuine church can drive people into their community. Because of that, he is committed to making a positive impact on Jackson whether that be by supporting local organizations through his church, cultivating a love for God and a love for people in his congregation or giving back to the people that made his time in Jackson so special.

Neely hopes that his congregation will see their homes, schools and workplaces as their mission field, and that they will not just benefit from those things but will strive to contribute to the wellness of those around them as well.

“God’s calling in my life is to build up the church, but as you build up the church you are, hopefully, cultivating people, in the hearts of people, a love for God and a love for people. And that has to spill over into the community. You can’t say that’s what we’re about and then not impact the city you live in,” Neely said.

Neely is not the only person who loves giving back to his community. Kevin Adelsberger, founder and managing partner of Adelsberger Marketing, has done the same thing.

“I want our company to be a pillar of the community. When people think of things that make Jackson better, I want Adelsberger Marketing to be on that list,” Adelsberger said.

Adelsberger came to Union from southern Illinois in 2007 convinced that he was meant to be a youth pastor. It was not until his senior year at Union, three-fourths of the way through his youth ministry degree, that he felt the Lord leading him in a different direction.

Through his first couple of jobs out of college, Adelsberger started to see his community and talents in a new light. One day, he would be in a meeting with presidents of banks, the next, picking up clothes on the loading dock of the Regional Inter-Faith Association (RIFA). It was through these unique experiences that Adelsberger saw Jackson in a way that most people do not.

“Whether it’s a discounted video for a non-profit or doing a website for the Tyler Guy Fund,” Adelsberger said, “we love this community and we think when this community does well, everybody does well, and so if we can help the community do better, that’s a win-win.”

Adelsberger and his family did not have to stay in Jackson after graduating from Union, but they fell in love with their community.

“Jackson doesn’t have beautiful rivers or mountains to climb, but the people here are fantastic,” Adelsberger said. “There is value, great value, in being in a physical location for a long time with the same group of people that our culture doesn’t want to share. It glorifies moving and glorifies starting over and starting fresh and stuff like that, but there’s value to people knowing you for a long time.”

The value of being known drives people like Tori Graves, therapist for ReEnvision Counseling, to stay and invest.

Graves came to Union on the heels of her older sister in 2017 because she loved its core values and tightknit community. As a social work major, Graves got to know the Jackson community through different serving opportunities and internships.

“That really helped me, I think, get involved and see Jackson beyond Union and the bubble that it sometimes is,” Graves said.

After college, she was not sure what she was going to do. Nothing felt like it was the right fit for her until her friend mentioned ReEnvision Counseling. In less than a week, Graves had looked up ReEnvision, gone in for an interview and was offered a position as a counselor for them.

Graves came to love the familiarity of Jackson and the community that it offered her. She found that staying in the place she attended school gave her the opportunity to grow in existing relationships and invest in her community. Coming from Nashville, Jackson offered her a small-town intimacy that she has been able to see and reap the benefits of. She loved being in a place that knew her.

“Being in Jackson, you pretty much go somewhere, and you know someone,” Graves explained. “There’s an aspect of the community that just wraps around people and I’ve seen that in different instances where people have been able to come together, and I think Jackson does a great job of doing that.”

Katie Howerton, founder of “Our Jackson Home” magazine, also understood the importance of a community that is able to come together and support each other. Her magazine seeks to be a catalyst to helping the community do just that.

“Our Jackson Home” (OJH) magazine was born when Howerton was in her senior year as a graphic design major at Union. She was looking for something to do for her senior design project. A summer spent in Turkey made her want to design a travel magazine, but her wallet told her that probably would not happen.

When Howerton heard about “Our Jackson Home,” it was a volunteer-led podcast that had been started by Union graduate Luke Pruett. She saw this brand and decided to take that storytelling, travel approach to Jackson by making a fake magazine version of the OJH podcast — only that fake magazine turned into a real one.

After she graduated, theCO, Jackson’s regional innovation hub, bought the rights to the OJH podcast and asked her to continue producing her magazine version.

Under her leadership, OJH grew beyond a podcast to become a blog, a social media presence and a journal. Howerton sought creative ways to bring the community together through events like Porchfest and 731 Day that, though started by OJH, Jackson has since taken ownership. “Jackson’s a really hard place to live sometimes,” Howerton told me. “But it’s also a really good place to build community because it’s actually possible. You do actually run into people everywhere, for better or worse.”

What is a home? For me, home has come to mean a community that I want to invest in because it has invested so much in me. Home is made up of people like Andy Neely, Kevin Adelsberger, Tori Graves and Katie Howerton who love their city and strive to make it better. Home is not always glamorous. It isn’t always flashy or big, and it is not perfect, but it doesn’t give up on the people around them. Home is a community of people who come together to support one another.