Every Thursday, a cross-denominational group of Union County church leaders meet in Bible study and prayer. Their titles are Pastor, Reverend, Father, and Brother, but all have one thing in common: an abiding love for Union County and a desire to share God's word.

They meet privately for three weeks of the month, and the last Thursday they take their meeting to Hardee's in Maynardville, and they're always ready to accept more church leaders, whether they're pastors, music ministers, lay ministers, youth pastors or any other calling, into their group.

"As ministers, we're always taking care of others," said Fr. Steve Pawelk of Saint Teresa of Kolkata Catholic Church. "This is for us to take care of each other, to support each other as pastors and grow in our faith. We find that we have far more agreement in Jesus Christ than disagreement, and where we have disagreement we find respect, and friendships are built."

"I have seen a sense of Christian unity," said Josiah Kimani of Saint Teresa Church. "We preach the same Christ but with different methods."

And those friendships have been bearing fruit. Current membership includes Pawelk and Kimani, Pastor Bryan Wheble of Revival Vision Church of God, the Rev. Kathy Chesney of Millers Chapel United Methodist Church and the Rev. Paul Kritsch of Chapel of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. At the beginning of December, several of the churches partnered to bring the WordPlayers, a religious theatre troupe from Knoxville, to Maynardville to present an Advent play. The sight of so many denominations gathered together in fellowship inspired a blog post by the WordPlayers in praise of the evening. You can read it here: http://wordplayers.org/full-moon-maynardville/.

The group also discusses and prays about issues facing Union County as a whole. At their final meeting of 2017, those prayer requests were both a look back on a year gone by and hopes for the future. They spoke of their concerns for the county and its residents.

Pawelk said he hopes trust will grow in Union County.

"I feel like as a county, and the cities, all of these have suspicion of who is getting what out of this," he said. "As ministers, what we model is that we do better together than we do separately. Under the Tree is the best example, I think, of the whole county working together. Can we do that with other aspects of our society?"

Union County's schools also received prayers from the group.

"I continue to have concerns for our schools. I'm not sure our students, parents and administrators love each other. That's why we are involved in iCare, we feel that the schools need help. The general atmosphere is a lack of trust. Those are our children, and they are what's going to make this county stronger," Pawelk said.

"I would like to see us get cooperative in our ministry to the community," said Chesney, adding that many churches have food pantries, but a clothes closet is needed. Other needs include an in-county women's shelter and an in-county way to address homelessness.

Their thoughts also turned towards issues facing the church, including increasing political divisiveness. Chesney said, "If you just go to church and talk to the people at church, you're going to find most people in the middle.

"It is a very different environment than when I was ordained 30 years ago," said Pawelk. "We live in a very divisive world right now, so churches take sides, and I think that's a very dangerous thing. You need to ask yourself, is your moral teaching based on scripture or culture? How do you minister and love people and their families? How do you get the truth of Jesus Christ out? How to you communicate truth and love in this world?"

The group invited all local worship leaders to join them in prayer. They meet at 7:30 a.m. the last Thursday of each month, in the community room at the Maynardville Hardee's.

"We just want to pray together and do God's will," said Pawelk.