Where you are welcomed, nurtured, and known
Each week, we pray that God would make us into the type of community where all are welcomed, nurtured, and known. As one member says about Refuge, “Church is an exercise in community building.”
The exercise metaphor seems fitting because it requires practice to become this kind of community. Community building fosters spaces and times for interaction between adults and children and breaks down the boundaries of the nuclear family. It looks like washing dishes, picking up toys, and bringing food to share as your abilities allow. It means asking for help when we need it and showing up when we can. It takes shape in sharing laughter and joy in times of celebration and sharing silence in times of grief. While this exercise begins on Sunday, it extends into other parts of our week as we cultivate space in our lives where all are welcomed, nurtured, and known.
Meeting for Church in Homes, Houses and Parks
Choosing to worship in someone’s home is vulnerable. We’ve been doing church this way since our founding in 2007. While awkward at times, meeting in homes moves us past superficial conversations and relationships, and presents opportunities for deeper connection and community. Meeting in homes or at the park also means we are able to give more resources to our community without the overhead and maintenance that accompanies church buildings. Our gathering practices align with our commitment to simplicity and care for the earth.
What to Expect on a Sunday
On most Sundays, we offer two service options at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. On the second Sunday of every month, we provide an opportunity for the entire community to worship together in a single service at 10 a.m. During a typical service, we begin by sharing a meal. Then we gather in the living room or picnic shelter (adults and kids together) and sing, share announcements and updates, read Scripture, pray together, and tell a children’s story. After the story, the kids go outside to play with adult supervisors. One of our pastors reads our Scripture passage for the day and offers a conversational sermon that includes space for reflection and dialogue. When the children rejoin us, we share the peace of Christ and communion. The entire gathering, including the meal, takes about two hours.
Loving Our Neighbors
Refuge doesn’t exist only for ourselves. Our life together compels us outward, into the work the Spirit is already doing in the larger community. Each week, we pray that God would “not allow us to become comfortable, but give us the ears to hear the cries of the oppressed, the eyes to see the needs of the poor, and the voices to speak with the marginalized.” This prayer is a consistent call to participate in God’s reconciling work in Durham.
Our Pastor
Our ecclesial affiliation is with the Church of the Nazarene, rooted in the Wesleyan-Holiness theological tradition. Our pastor is an ordained Nazarene elder. The Church of the Nazarene has a beautiful historical foundation, including the ordination of women since our founding (1908), solidarity with the poor and marginalized, a commitment to simplicity, and working for justice alongside the neglected. You can listen to Pastor Megan’s call back to these roots in a sermon she preached to other Nazarene clergy in 2017.
Megan Pardue, Lead Pastor
Rev. Megan M. Pardue is the lead pastor at Refuge Home Church since 2013. A native of Portland, Oregon, she’s called Durham home since 2009. She is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene and a graduate of Southern Nazarene University and Duke Divinity School.
In addition to pastoring, she teaches preaching at Duke Divinity School and co-hosts the weekly preaching podcast A Plain Account. She’s one of the co-authors of Edison Churches: Experiments in Innovation and Breakthrough.
Megan cares deeply about environmental justice and climate change, and believes communities of faith must address these crises with urgency. She’s the winner of the 2021 C3 (Christians Caring for Creation) Sermon Challenge, a recent guest preacher at Duke Chapel, a featured preacher at the 2018 NTS Preacher’s Conference, and much of her guest preaching and speaking centers around these intersectional issues.
She enjoys growing a large vegetable and flower garden in the city, thrifting, and spending time on the American Tobacco Trail or at the Eno River with her husband Keith, and children, Iris and Jasper.
Support Team
Dawn Dreyer - Support Team
Dawn is a mixed-media storyteller and activist who believes art is a way to connect across differences, release shame, and fight the powers and principalities. She has spent many years as a teacher (pre-K to university) and caring for children, as a job and vocation. Dawn has lived in Durham since 2000. She is involved in the children’s ministry at Refuge, and leads daily morning prayer. Her many passions include boxing (training) and ice hockey (legacy Carolina Hurricanes fan).
Jana Grindheim - Support Team
Jana, along with her husband and 4 beautiful sons, has called the Triangle home for the last decade. A nurse by training, she currently spends her waking hours managing a house full of testosterone. She spends any leftover time running long distances and creating foods she hopes her kids will eat.
Ben Williams - Support Team
Ben is a hospital chaplain in Durham. He is originally from Ohio. He likes eating and doing all things outdoors with his wife, Hannah, and son, Oliver.
Ryan Hallett - Support Team
Ryan moved to North Carolina in 2009 for graduate school and made it home after founding a small biotech company headquartered in the area. He is a scientist turned entrepreneur, with a passion for building up the local startup community. He enjoys board games, gardening, and working with young entrepreneurs.
Dave Lacambacal - Support Team
Dave is a Filipino-American family man that lives in Durham, NC. He works as a Family Nurse Practitioner, and also works on his golf game on his days off. He loves spending time with his family, exercising, reading, and listening to music.
Finance Team
Todd Maberry - Finance Team
Originally from Illinois, Todd has lived most of his adult life in North Carolina. He and his wife Laura have been a part of Refuge from the beginning. If you see Todd out in the wild, he is likely riding his bike or seeking adventure with his 2 beautiful girls, Monika and Julena.
Daisy Mills - Finance Team
Daisy is a passionate people person, with a real-life “Parks and Rec” career in local government. A native of Atlanta, she moved to the area for graduate school and now claims the Triangle as home.
Zach Bond - Jubilee Advocate
Zach moved to Durham a decade ago from Kansas for school at Duke Divinity. He, his wife Avery, and their son Ira, are deeply connected to Reality Ministries: a community of people with (and without) intellectual/developmental disabilities. In his free time, he enjoys gardening, backpacking, reading aloud, and cooking.
Refuge Kids
Safety is a priority in all we do and we adhere to a set of policies and structures to help keep our kids emotionally and physically safe. Please reach out to either of our pastors or support team members with any further questions.
Children are a central part of our community, for parents and non-parents alike. They’re welcomed, included, and known. We listen to them. We learn from them. And on a given Sunday, there can be a lot of them. Our Sunday rhythm includes reading a children’s story, engaging Scripture through Godly Play, and kids’ time during the sermon portion. Children of all ages are welcomed to participate in all aspects of Refuge, from communion and baptism to making weekly announcements, we care deeply about making our church accessible and invitational to our children.
