400 Nails

That's how 400 nails started, in the fall of 2009. NarroWay had a loan on the property, and the math was simple: 400 people giving $25 a month would cover the payment. Nobody had to write a large check. Sammie Johnson said, “I can do that.” Then someone else did. Then another.

The loan is long paid. So is the land we’ve added around it since. Some of the first Nails have gone home to be with the Lord, but what they started never stopped: there has been a group of people quietly giving every month since that day in 2009, and the theatre you walk into tonight is standing because of them.

What you walk into at NarroWay is a renovated warehouse. Inside it, guests who drove in from every state and flew in from other countries are watching an original production written and directed here, with live horses and camels on stage and a cast of professionally trained volunteers who perform the show and serve your dinner. Nobody comes for the building. They come in spite of it.

That’s the next thing to fix. NarroWay is preparing for a capital campaign to build a theatre worthy of a national audience, with more seats for people finding their way here, and a front door that tells them they’ve arrived somewhere.

The shows made everything else possible, including a thriving education department. More than 300 students take classes with us right now, and we do not have a single classroom. Every class meets on the theatre stage, or in Illuminate Studio when it’s free, with nowhere to break out. The same building that gives the shows a proper home gives those students a room of their own, and lets us say yes to more of them.

Monthly gifts are what make a project like that possible to plan for. A Nail isn’t a one-minute gesture. It’s a vote, every month, that this work should keep growing.

Can you do that?