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MADISON — Up U.S. 220, where 11 crosses take root within a two-mile stretch, there’s a tiny country church where Jesus speaks.

Kinda.

It’s really three huge paintings behind the pulpit and a 26-minute presentation in which the baritone voice of Jesus rumbles and the voices of The Hoppers, a family of gospel singers from Madison, narrate and sing.

The murals tell three Bible stories, including the one that’ll be told many times over the next few days: the story of Easter, the most important day on the Christian church calendar.

At Mount Tabor United Methodist Church, they call the paintings “The Talking Murals.”

Now, Mount Tabor is no Sistine Chapel. It’s shaped like a shoebox, small and simple, and has attracted generations of working-class families to that same tree-shaded spot since 1887.

Yet, when she painted the murals, Greensboro artist Peg Dufresne checked out the “Renaissance guys’’ and used some of the same ideas Michelangelo employed in the Sistine Chapel five centuries ago.

Dufresne spent six weeks on a ladder. After she finished, the people came. Since opening in July 2006, the murals have attracted at least 15,000 visitors to this spot off U.S. 220, where the roadside crosses crop up with every rise of the highway.

The visitors come from a 100-mile area, from Albemarle, Durham and Greensboro as well as a big swath of southwest Virginia.

They come in church buses, big tour buses or by themselves. They ask many questions about the paintings, and a few visitors have even claimed they saw a hand move, an eye blink or the lone dove flap its wings.

But mainly, they come to look and listen. Sometimes, they meet church members Mary Carroll and Tommy Roberts. Carroll and Roberts act as volunteer hosts and often turn into prayer partners.

Visitors share their stories of personal loss and spiritual need and ask for prayers for themselves or someone sick, broke or broken.

And in our pocket of North Carolina, many feel broke and broken — particularly in Rockingham County, where the unemployment rate is 14.2 percent, one of North Carolina’s highest.

“So many people are losing their jobs and are discouraged, and with the economy the way it is, we need this more now than when we did when things were going well,’’ said Roberts, a 65-year-old grandmother who grew up in the church.

Mount Tabor lost some members after using $20,000 in donations to create The Talking Murals.

The doubters saw it as a canned presentation with more flash than flesh-and-blood gospel.

But believers see it as a way to draw people in to hear what some call the greatest story ever told.

“I told someone when the cost came up, I said, 'You know, if one person is saved from these murals, it’s worth every dime,’ ’’ said Carroll, a 63-year-old disabled postal worker living in Stokesdale.

The murals haven’t built Mount Tabor’s congregation. Right now, the church has only 38 members, with only one person under 50.

But the murals have built conversations in this southern corner of Rockingham County, where a tiny church remains open six days a week for anyone at all.

Anyone like Ronnie.

The hosts don’t know his last name. They just know him by his requests, which come every two weeks. He leaves them in the basket in the back, detailing his needs for housing, money and better health.

After watching The Talking Murals, he often starts his prayer request the same way.

“It’s me again, Ronnie. I need some help. ...’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com