Nahunta Friends Church meets just north of Pikeville in the rolling farmland of Wayne County, North Carolina, at 2537 NC Highway 581 North. The congregation is an independent, Christ-centered Friends meeting, one rooted in the centuries-old Quaker tradition that emerged in seventeenth-century England but that, in this community, grew into a meetinghouse that has stood on the same ground since 1882. The church is known for a deep commitment to children and youth ministry, a long pattern of sending and supporting missionaries in Africa and Latin America, and a one-of-a-kind community park called The Meeting Place, where neighbors walk, picnic, and gather for summer concerts.
Roots in the Quaker Tradition
The Religious Society of Friends, of which Nahunta Friends is a part, traces back to the 1650s in England, where George Fox wandered from town to town proclaiming that there is "One, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition." Followers called themselves "Friends of Truth" and slowly worked out the testimonies - peace, integrity, simplicity, equality, community, and respect - that have defined Quaker life ever since. From England the message spread quickly, and in 1672 William Edmundson and George Fox arrived in the Carolina colony, making the Friends the first organized religious body on the continent. North Carolina Yearly Meeting has met continuously since 1698.
The meeting that eventually became Nahunta began as Falling Creek Monthly Meeting in 1748, originally held near what is now Kinston. After multiple moves it was known as Contentnea Monthly Meeting, and it continued to meet at Contentnea until the early 1850s. As Contentnea Friends settled the small community of Nahunta in northern Wayne County, they gathered for First Day worship in the homes of local members - notably Matthew Pike, a descendant of the seventeenth-century Quaker Samuel Pike. By 1860 a distinct Nahunta Friends Meeting had been established, and within a few years its First Day School was welcoming children from other area churches, making it the first rural Sunday School in the county. In 1881 a building committee was appointed, two acres were deeded by Nathan T. and Mary Edgerton for the meetinghouse site, and the brick building - made from bricks fired near Nahunta Swamp - was completed in 1882 with financial assistance from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Charleston Fund.
An 1882 Meetinghouse, Continually Renewed
The original thirty-eight-by-fifty-foot meetinghouse has been enlarged and remodeled many times over the past century and a quarter. Stained glass windows donated by several families and individuals in memory or in honor of loved ones were dedicated on Mother's Day in 1942. New pews arrived in 1960; a choir loft in 1962; Sunday School rooms and an expanded parsonage in the late 1960s. A Fellowship Hall was completed in 1977, giving the meeting indoor space for the meal that traditionally follows October Homecoming. A new parsonage, built largely through the labor of member Harold Richardson, replaced the original in 1986, and a sound system was donated in memory of J. D. Howard the year before.
The most ambitious renovation to date came in 1993-94. A building steering committee led by Junior Hawley oversaw a complete rebuild of the entrance: a generous greeting area, accessible restrooms, sloping walkways to the front doors with no steps, and spaces left open for wheelchairs in the sanctuary. Indirect lighting, new carpet, fresh paint, and updated heating and air-conditioning systems were installed throughout. A large carport and an additional accessible ramp were poured outside the Fellowship Hall. In 2014 the meeting added a larger Friends Hall and dedicated The Meeting Place at Nahunta on the same grounds.
Sunday Morning at the Meetinghouse
Sunday mornings follow a steady weekly rhythm. Sunday School gathers at 10:00 a.m. for all ages, followed by morning worship at 11:00. On the last Sunday in August the Sunday School observes Promotion Day, distributing perfect-attendance pins and presenting a Bible to every child entering kindergarten. Attendance registers in the pews, a tradition that began in 1991, let visitors be recognized and welcomed when their name is read.
For those unable to come inside, the service can be heard from the parking lot on 100.1 FM, watched live on the church's YouTube channel, or viewed later the same day as a recording on the same channel.
Children's Church: A Sermon Time for Kids
Children's Church has been a regular part of Sunday morning worship at Nahunta Friends since 1981, when Vicki Pate began coordinating a children's sermon time during the 11:00 service. The program was so successful that within two years Monthly Meeting approved making it a weekly offering, and it has continued without interruption. Children ages four through twelve gather each week for their own lesson, and once a month they sing a song they have learned in Children's Church for the adults in the main sanctuary. Several generations of children have moved on from this ministry into the meeting's choirs, vocal groups, and music ensembles.
Wednesday Nights at Seven
From September through May, Wednesday evenings are devoted to the meeting's children, preteens, and teens. Each group meets at 7:00 p.m.
Wee Friends ministers to children from age three through first grade. The hour is filled with Bible stories, group activities, a puppet named Theo, and snacks that tie into the lesson.
Jump for Jesus serves children in second through fourth grade, with a focus on learning the books of the Bible - their authors, themes, characters, and timelines - alongside prayer, games, and snacks.
Kids in Christ gathers middle-schoolers, and the 8th through 12th Grade Youth Group brings high schoolers together separately. In the summer the meeting hosts a Vacation Bible School that typically draws more than one hundred children from the surrounding community, with music, crafts, and Bible study centered on a chosen theme.
The first Wednesday of each month is a fellowship meal, with a different committee hosting the meal and Bible study that follows. These meals are open to everyone.
The Meeting Place at Nahunta
In 2014 the meeting established The Meeting Place at Nahunta, a public park on its property that includes a covered picnic shelter, a quarter-mile walking trail, and a volleyball pit. The shelter is free to reserve, whether for a family reunion, a birthday party, or a church event, and the walking trail and grounds are open throughout the week for neighbors who want to walk, play, or gather. During warmer months the meeting hosts Pickin' in the Park, an evening of music on the grounds.
Music and the Singspiration Tradition
Music has shaped worship at Nahunta Friends for as long as anyone can remember. The earliest services were built around old-fashioned congregational hymns sung from a piano donated in the early years by the Caroline Stephenson family. The arrival of the Caughron family in 1966 ushered in decades of expansion: Jack and Elizabeth organized the Nahunta Men's Chorus in 1967, which sang on first Sundays and occasionally at North Carolina Yearly Meeting events. By the late 1970s the men had joined the choir for combined Easter cantatas.
Beth Caughron Peele, who completed her music studies at Mount Olive College, took over as choir director and went on to organize two more vocal groups: God's Kids, a youth musical ensemble that performed for the meeting and other area churches in programs like the one entitled "God's Kids," and the Quaker Notes, a small vocal group that brought the meeting closer together through song. A women's chorus called Friends in Song began singing in 1997. A baby grand piano donated by the Caughron family, an organ donated by the Mack Pierce family in 1970, new hymnals purchased in 1973 and again in 1997 (the latter set in honor of longtime pianist Pearl Pierce), and choir risers added in 1985 all enhance the worship space. On fifth Sundays the meeting gathers for Singspiration, a hymn-and-talent service open to anyone moved to share a song or other gift during the 11:00 hour. Several young people from Nahunta have performed with state-wide Friends music groups known as Serenity and Psalm 98.
Missions Near and Far
Outreach has been part of the meeting's identity since its founding. Today the meeting supports two long-term missionaries: Dr. Bob and Hope Carter in Kenya, where a new chapel at Kijabe Hospital was recently completed, and Ann Harrington in Malawi. Annual giving is organized through the Faith Promise program, and the meeting contributes regularly to the Adopt-A-Bed program at Lugulu Hospital in Africa. Past mission work has also taken members of the meeting to Mexico and Jamaica for work camps, Bible School, and the building of worship and study structures.
Closer to home, the meeting is a member congregation of United Church Ministries, a coalition of fifty-three churches in Wayne County that provides financial assistance and food-bank support to families in crisis. The meeting partners regularly with Wayne Pregnancy Center, The Gideons, and Cry Freedom. The women's circles have for years produced baby layettes for mission hospitals in Africa, hygiene bags for local migrant workers, and items for the American Friends Service Committee. Red Cross blood drives are also hosted at the meeting.
The Friendship Circle, the Lona Edgerton Circle, and Friends in Faith
Three circles carry on the work of the United Society of Friends Women (USFW) at Nahunta. The Friendship Circle, the oldest of the three, and the Lona Edgerton Circle - formed in the early 1960s by women who worked public jobs and could not meet in the daytime - both contribute monthly to USFW projects and carry out hands-on missions in the community. A younger circle called Friends in Faith has begun meeting in recent years, with the Lona Edgerton Circle providing childcare so its members can attend. Members participate in the annual USFW reading program, and several have received reading certificates repeatedly over many years.
Seniors and Long-Running Fellowships
Each fall the meeting hosts a Senior Citizens Appreciation Day with a special program and lunch honoring older members. Since 1976 the broader Nahunta Community Senior Citizens group has brought together older adults from five area churches for monthly programs and fellowship. The Saturday men's prayer breakfast, organized in 1981 after the Lay Witness Weekend, has continued without interruption, with monthly offerings supporting the Gideons. Other long-running traditions include the second-Sunday-in-October Homecoming, a week of revival that follows it, cottage prayer groups during revival season, and a prayer chain organized in 1986 that still shares requests and concerns among members.
A Statement of Purpose
Nahunta Friends is independent and Christ-centered. Its statement of purpose, written in 1997 as part of the Vision 400 effort, reads: "As a meeting we purpose to make disciples of Christ by attracting, and leading the unsaved to Jesus; encouraging uncommitted Christians to consecrate themselves to God's plan for their lives; providing a climate in which personal spiritual growth and worship occur; and equipping believers for effective ministry to reach the Nahunta area and beyond." The Antioch model of an innovative, evangelistic, fruitful, discipled, generous, worshipful, and missionary people remains the touchstone the meeting looks to.
Beliefs in Brief
The meeting confesses belief in one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - who created all things, visible and invisible. Human beings, made in God's image, are broken by sin and in need of redemption. That redemption comes only through repentance and faith in the atoning death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, who now intercedes at the right hand of the Father and will one day return to establish his eternal kingdom. The Holy Spirit empowers transformed lives through obedience and self-denial. The Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, is received as the inspired and trustworthy written Word of God, the final authority for doctrine and practice. Marriage, the meeting teaches, is a covenant union between one man and one woman, intended by God for a lifetime, and the foundational framework for the family as a God-given institution of society.
Pastoral Leadership
Randy Quate serves as the meeting's pastor and writes The Messenger, a monthly devotional newsletter distributed to the congregation. The history of pastoral leadership at Nahunta Friends stretches back to itinerant preachers in the nineteenth century. Of the thirty-four known pastors, two have been women: Lola Simpson and Lela Sills Garner. Jack Caughron (1966-1986) brought new energy to missions support, Bible study, and the formal committee structure still used by the meeting, and his family shaped decades of the meeting's music. Steve Lawrence, who began pastoring in 1989, served for many years, leaving a legacy shaped by a deep emphasis on prayer, Bible-based preaching, and a ministry suited to every member's gifts. The meeting has always been led by committees - Ministry and Counsel, Christian Education, Stewardship and Finance, Peace and Social Concerns, Outreach, and more - each with a chair and members who keep the work of the meeting moving.
Visiting Nahunta Friends
The meetinghouse sits along NC Highway 581 North, just north of Pikeville, with ample parking around the building and a sloping entrance that requires no steps. Sunday School gathers at 10:00 a.m. and morning worship begins at 11:00. If you would like to listen from the parking lot, tune to 100.1 FM. Live video of the service and recordings of past sermons are available on the Nahunta Friends YouTube channel. Wednesday evening children's and youth programs begin at 7:00 p.m. during the school year.