“It’s almost like stained glass, in that their lives have been a little splattered, in that it’s not like the way it used to be,” said Lyons, who became Clarkston UMC’s first African-American female pastor after serving as associate pastor at St. James United Methodist Church in Alpharetta. “They’ll say, ‘I wish you could have seen it, so you could know what it was like.’ I (say) ‘I have been received.’ So, change is good. It’s good for all.”

For all seven of the churches in one.

“Clarkston United Methodist Church is still open,” DeVon Thomas remarked pointedly during her sermon message at the “traditional” 11 a.m. service one Sunday in mid-September. “And our partner congregations have doubled in size.”

Photo: The Burmese congregation holds its worship service in the sanctuary at Clarkston United Methodist Church following the Methodist worship on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016.

Thomas, who chairs the church’s staff-parish relations committee, delivered her message inside the church’s light-filled main sanctuary, where thick red carpeting and traditional polished wooden pews seem right at home against a colorful backdrop of flags from 10 different countries. No sooner had that Clarkston UMC service ended a little past noon when the pews began to quickly fill up with members of the Mara Community Church.

That church had started out holding its Burmese language services in a small house that Clarkston UMC owns right across the street. But Mara’s congregation outgrew the house’s capacity of about 60 people and moved over to the much bigger sanctuary.

Photo: The choir of the Light Mission Pentecostal Church performs during their church service in the basement at Clarkston United Methodist Church.

Even as the Mara members were filing in, the sound of drums and guitar music coming from downstairs in McCord Hall signaled the arrival of members of Light Mission Pentecostal Church. The only “partner congregation” at Clarkston UMC when Lyons arrived as senior pastor in June 2014, they were also meeting across the street. Now, they frequently run out of folding chairs in the larger assembly hall as upward of 140 members attend the Sunday service rich in music and personal testimony.

Like the other partner congregations at Clarkston UMC, Light Mission Pentecostal is almost entirely made up of refugees — in this case, people who’ve fled war and persecution in four Central African nations. In that sense, it’s different from other local churches. In other ways, though, the partner congregations seamlessly weave into metro Atlanta’s increasingly devout and diverse religious fabric.

Photo: Pastor Dawit Habtemicael with his 2-year-old son, Senay, in the chapel at Clarkston UMC after conducting a recent Sunday morning service. His church, which follows the Wesleyan doctrine, conducts its services almost entirely in Eritrean. Photo by Jill Vejnoska/jvejnoska@ajc.com

That trend doesn’t surprise Emory’s Laderman, who says major metro areas are the likeliest places to attract newcomers seeking economic opportunity, cultural and religious tolerance and other things associated with a better life. Indeed, he attributes the growing number and diversity of people of faith here in part to “the real rise in the number of immigrants from different parts of the world.”

That’s what’s been happening at Clarkston UMC. Pastors and other leaders of would-be partner congregations kept approaching her and saying, “God has sent us. Can you make space for us?” Lyons recounted.

For some, the weekly services are a chance to “hear the word of God” and reconnect with religion as they experienced it back home, Light Mission Pentecostal’s pastor, Callixte Safari, a native of the Congo, said through a translator (a church member who himself is from Burundi). For others, it’s a chance to do something they couldn’t do back home — worship freely.

“Our church was being persecuted (in Eritrea),” Pastor Dawit Habtemicael of Bethlehem Eritrean Church said after a recent 11 a.m. service, conducted primarily in Eritrean, in Clarkston UMC’s more intimate-sized chapel.

Photo: The Light Mission Pentecostalists hold worship service in the basement at Clarkston United Methodist Church on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016.

For the host church, meanwhile, there are some practical benefits to the arrangement. The partner congregations pay rent, which helps to pay for some of the upkeep on Clarkston UMC.

So why doesn’t Clarkston UMC just fold its partner congregations into its own to enlarge its ranks?

That’s not realistic and beside the point, said Lyons. She’s more interested in modeling a way of creating community by providing a place where people can come together and worship in their own styles.

Several times a year, Lyons invites pastors from the partner congregations to attend or preach at Clarkston UMC’s “traditional” Sunday service. And once a month, the spectacular choir from Light Mission Pentecostal sings at that same service.

The support goes both ways: Lyons sometimes shows up at various “partner” services. At a recent Light Mission Pentecostal Church service, she joined church leaders up front and led the congregation in a prayer.

It’s a simple concept, really, Lyons said. “It’s inclusivity and diversity working together.”