Harmony United Methodist

I was appointed to Harmony in June 1991.
Harmony was the 9:30 church on a two point with Floyd UMC.

Harmony is very rural and has a cemetary with graves dating back almost to the civil war.

The Harmony community has 2 churches, The UMC and a Church of Christ (Campbelite). Both churches are about the same size with the UMC being the more ornate of the two. Harmony had a membership of about 45 with an average attendance of 26.

Although Harmony didn't have the resources to have the programming and outreach of larger churches, they were quite the vital small rural church. Harmony had a wonderful shape note hymn sing on the first Saturday of each month. The attendance of the hymn sing was usually 50 or 60. The 4 part harmonies were great at Harmony.

Harmony prided itself in paying over 100% of its apportionments and giving generously to all of the general offerings. Harmony had a very strong loyalty to the Methodist church.

I was the youngest person there most Sundays. (I was 31 when I was appointed) The next youngest regular was in her 50's. With a congregation that had an average of around 75 we did have our share of funerals. Most people would assume that a church with all older members would be destined for closure. The numbers seemed to stay about the same for the 3 years I was there and have remained almost stable in the 20 years since. When one older person dies a "younger" one retires and moves into the community and joins the church.

While I was pastor of the Floyd/Harmony charge I prepared a childrens sermon for the Floyd church every Sunday. The Harmony church only had children when Grand Children came to visit. The first Sunday that we had a visiting grandchild I did the childrens sermon at Harmony. I often based my childrens sermon on some part of the sermon that I thought children wouldn't understand or the symbolism of the colors of the liturgical year. The first Sunday of Advent or Epiphany etc I would discuss the season.

That 1st Sunday that I did the Childrens sermon at Harmony I explained the change in the altar clothes. The older folks at Harmony asked that I would do the childrens sermon even when there weren't any children. I also used childrens time to discuss a lot of the Methodist concepts such as prevenient grace and the quadrilateral. After a few months of covering the Childrens sermon topic at Harmony some of the seniors that had been members of the church for decades said that they learned more about the Methodist church in a few months than they had in decades.

I came to realize that many people can be every Sunday worshipers and Sunday School attenders and not understand the liturgical year or some of the uniquely Methodist concepts on grace. I think one of the biggest mistakes made by pastors is assuming that the congregation understands why we do the things we do. We might know that we need to put a scripture in contest or explain bigger theological concepts but we don't always remember to explain the basics.

I have heard that churches that are pastored by Student Local Pastors tend to go through the course of study with the pastor. Harmony had been a retired pastor church for decades and I was the first student local pastor so I took them through a lot of what I was learning. They were quite patient with my early bungled sermons and were great teachers and learners.

The community of Harmony had quite a rivalry between the Church of Christ and the UMC. Most of the extended families of the community had members of both churches. The Church of Christ was old school & claimed that churches with pianos were evil and anyone that was a member of a "denominaitonal" church was hell bound.

One of my favorite members was Miss Viola. She was a great cook and her nephew who lived next door was a member of the CoC. Every now and then he would tell Miss Viola that she was going to hell for being a Methodist. She would quit cooking for him and within a week he would decide that maybe Methodists were going to heaven. She made all her own bread and grew quite a garden. When she turned 90 her son decided she didn't need a garden any more. She cried when they sold her tiller. About a year after I left the circuit her son sold her wood stove and got her a gas stove. Within a few months she died. I actually think she might have lived longer if she had been able to keep her wood stove.

The ladies of the Harmony church had quite a quilting bee going and on Monday mornings I would stop by and watch them quilt and have a cup of coffee. I watched them make one quilt that was really beautiful for several weeks. When the weather started getting cold that fall I stopped by and they had just finished it, they had all embroidered their names on the back of it and presented it to me. That will always be my favorite quilt! I took it with me when I went back to preach Miss Violas funeral, she had requested that I would preach it when she died.

May Gob bless all the little Harmony churches out there.

Grace United Methodist in Dallas, Texas becomes the newest Reconciling Congregation!

News Article

More televangelist hair

The sad thing is that when I see preachers with big hair I automatically tear apart everything they say. They could have something good to say and I probably wouldn't hear it!

Hunter United Methodist Church
(Officially its Andrew Hunter Memorial United Methodist)

Hunter has an interesting history which I will only highlight.

Hunter is named for Andrew Hunter who served as President of the Arkansas Conference in the 19th century and was quite an evangelist.
The original church building was in East Little Rock. Hunter was mostly a working class congregation not to far from the late 19th/early 20th century industrial area. In the late 1960's there were 6 UMC's in the downtown area of L.R. (there are still 4) & Hunter voted to move to West Little Rock. Hunter met at Romine Elementary School until the present building was completed in 1974.

Within a few years the (all white) congregation found themselves in a neighborhood that was becoming more and more racially mixed. In order to grow Hunter voted to integrate (can you believe such a thing should be necessary). Now a church can't just decide that they are going to be integrated and it happen.
Hunter requested that the district ask for one volunteer family from each of the black UMC's in Little Rock to attend and participate in the church for one full year. Hunter was yoked with to smaller semi-rural churches (Mt. Pleasant {white} & Marks Chapel {black}) to form the John Wesley Cooperative Parish.
This provided white & black co-pastors. By the late 1970's Hunter was thoroughly integrated.

When I first visited Hunter the congregation was about 65% white 34% black &1% other. This was when integrated churches were still extremely rare. When I joined Hunter had a female & male pastor. I was so impressed with the integrated nature of the church and the female pastor that this is where I officially became a United Methodist. Hunter has in all of my experience been very musical and liturgical. Beverly Sawyer, the pastor that took me into membership, had been raised Baptist & as a convert was VERY METHODIST! She also included in the children’s sermons a lot of distinctive Methodist things. You couldn't have been a regular attendee of Hunter UMC at that time & not know the liturgical seasons & colors or about the quadrilateral nor prevenient grace.

In the late 1980's Chester Jones (General Secretary of Religion and Race) was my pastor. During this time I entered the candidacy process with Hunter as my charge conference. I also served as Youth Pastor of Hunter under Chester from 1988-1991.

In the late 1980's the neighborhood became over 60% black. A funny thing happens at that saturation level, whites who would speak of how proud they were to live in a mixed neighborhood would put their houses up for sale and move to whiter neighborhoods. Although many of the church members were from outside the neighborhood the church also became more and more black. When the church passed the 60% black mark, within a year it was 80% black. It seems that a lot of white folks that say they don't mind integration still want to be in a solid majority or at least not in too small a minority. Hunter is now 90% black.


Hunter continues to be a reasonably strong church. They are the "High Church-Black Church" in Little Rock. High church/black church in my definition is a liturgical, processing & robing church that still amen’s and talks back to the preacher. Hunter sings the Psalter & responsorial readings, recites the creeds every Sunday & chants the Lord's Prayer. They also have a choral introit and benediction and sing 4 hymns (ALL VERSES) every Sunday. The only things spoken are the announcements (before the service begins), the Pastoral Prayer and the sermon. For this reason they prefer that the sermon not go over 20 minutes. Hunter with an average attendance of 90 can out sing most congregations with an attendance of over 200.

A little quirk about the members of Hunter (post Chester Jones), their PPR almost always asks for a new pastor after one year if the pastor is black. They will keep a white pastor for 3 or 4 years. Hunter is probably one of the few predominately black churches that almost always has a white pastor.

Some days I really feel like the guy on this refrigerator magnet!

I have no doubt that allmost all Christians are quite well meaning and even try to be quite loving. The scarry thing is how many hateful things have been said and done in the name of Christianity.

Then of course we have the people that really believe in "churchianity".

You ever wonder who does these guys hair?

Cabot United Methodist

Cabot Methodist was my first real connection to Methodism on any real ongoing basis. My mothers parents went to First Methodist Houston, TX(The mega church of the time) & I had a few other friends & relatives that went to Methodist churches.

Cabot being a small surburban/farming town evolving into a "white flight" bedroom town Cabot United Methodist was the only show in town for someone that was remotely Mainline Protestant. Back then they didn't even have a Presbyterian Church. 1 Methodist, 1 Penticostal, 1 Church of Christ (Campbelite) and every breed of Baptist known to humanity. I really wonder how a town with under 3,000 could support over a dozen Baptist churches.

Cabot UMC was and is pretty liturgical and open minded. Although I never joined the church I was a constituant and went to UMYF most of the time and to worship ocassionally. I still have some friends at that church. Cabot might have been the end of my Methodist journey except that Carolyn Park made me promise that I would go to a freshman welcome cookout at the Wesley Foundation when I started college. Wesley Foundations were my spiritual home during my college years.

Cabot UMC is a Mega-Church of sorts now and is parenting a 2nd UMC in Cabot.
The new UMC start is Christ UMC, Cabot.

We can see that the Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience argument won't work with AG folks.

This is a real church sign. If you want to invent one of your own you can visit churchsigngenerator.com and pick the words on the sign. They also have lots of amusing real signs.

I will pick back up on the church series this weekend sometime.

Unity Church

I was a member of the Unity Church of Little Rock from 1973 to 1982.

My dad was quite the reader of religious and faith related books. In the early 70's he read a lot of Emmett Fox. Some of Emmett Fox's books were published by the Unity School of Christianity.
Unity publishes The Daily Word which is similar to the Methodist Upper Room.

Dad decided to look up Unity in the phone book and discovered that there was a Unity Church in Little Rock. When we began visiting the Unity Church I was so moved by the focus on Love and Positive Affirmations and prayer and meditation that it was only after a few visits that I joined. The rest of the family joined the Unity Church over the next few months.

Unity was very much where I needed to be at the time. As opposed to being told how terrible and miserable I was, I was told that I was created in the image of Christ and that I needed to work on realizing the "Christ in me". LCMS spent so much time teaching about how much we needed Christ to die on the cross that one began to feel personally responsible for Christ's crucifixion. I also got the childhood impression that if I sinned the least little sin died before I could ask for forgiveness I would go straight to hell. The Unity Church also included a meditation as a part of every worship service.

Unity was an important part of my spiritual development. They taught me to meditate and gave me the ability to pray in a more friendly and positive manner. They also gave me the opportunity to develop leadership skills. At that time the Unity Church in LR had very few children & youth. I was then able to participate in adult classes and even teach occasionally.
Unity also taught me to tithe.

Unity would not be for me now, but I think that they are a pretty good place to pass through for people that have been trapped by the image of a mean & angry God or that have low self esteem.

Unity is also where I discovered inclusive language. Way back in 1973 I heard a prayer that began "Father-Mother God". My mother almost had a cow and I thought it was really neat. They also had adapted a lot of the words to hymns. Their version of Amazing Grace had the change "saved a soul like me" instead of "waved a wretch like me". I prefer the wretch now that I have a fuller understanding of the hymn but that was a time when I didn't need to be a wretch.

Unity was a necessary part of my path to becoming a Methodist. Unity exposed me to a theology of love, female clergy and a more contemporary worship. The Unity church was also multi-ethnic in a time when most people were still fairly uncomfortable with whites & blacks attending the same school or church. (yes, I know there are still people like that.)

I now have some distinct issues with the Unity Church but I fully support their particular mission.

Good Things about UNITY:
Strong Healing Ministry
Positive Thinking
Teaches meditation
Prayer
Open Minded
Progressive

Things about UNITY that don't work for me:
Non-sacramental: No Communion - No water involved in Baptism.
A little to much "prosperity gospel"
Non-Liturgical
Very New-Age

I don't know about now, but at the time a large percentage of the members of the Unity church only stuck around for a few years. Many used Unity as a recovery center from fundamentalism. Some used it as an introduction to easy Christianity. A lot of the people I knew from the church eventually ended up in Methodist Churches.

Little Rock now has 2 Unity churches, the larger one was where I was a member. The smaller Unity church rents space from a UMC church.

Elementary Faith


There is a very definite foundation of my faith during my early childhood.
I do not think we should ever underestimate the importance of Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, bed time prayers or saying grace before meals. These were all a big part of my growing up. I may not have always understood anything about denominations or theology but I knew about God and that Jesus loves me.

Back in the '60s we may not have done church on Christmas Eve or Christmas day but my grandfather always read the story from Luke. I still prefer hearing the KJV version of the nativity story because of this. The first liturgical season I remember is Advent because Lutherans make a big deal of it. There are 2 times a year that we had mid-week services, Advent and Lent, the two purple seasons.

I think I attended VBS every summer through the 5th grade. This was back in the day of slide shows and 8mm movies. VBS was always a great combination of sugar overdose, singing, playing and a lot of feltboard lessons. I don't really think that most preachers knew how to talk to elementary kids, we usually tuned them out when it was their turn for something. This was before very many churches had children's sermons.

Although we had a nursery at all of the churches we attended, children above the age of 3 or 4 were generally expected to be in worship. Most churches didn't have children's bags but my mother did. She usually had some paper and colors and such. I would sit with my parents and just look around at the art or stained glass or count the ceiling tiles or boards during the sermon. I did like the music the whole time, even the "grown up" hymns.

When I began reading, my mother would put her finger to the words of the hymns so I could follow the verses. The way that the verses are placed with the music is hard for elementary kids to follow. I didn't figure that out well until 3rd grade. I am sure that for children that are not accustomed to hymnals it takes even longer. I have had to show adults how to read a hymnal before. I always liked the hymns and the liturgy. I might have thought the pastors sermons boring but the Apostles Creed and the hymns were something I could be involved in.*

*I think one of the reasons that I still don't like performance church is because when we visited a non-liturgical church as a child I just stayed bored. I could participate in responsoral readings and creeds and hymns but solos and long sermons just left me out.

Going to a parochial school was like having a short Sunday School every day. There were some good foundational things that came with it. Children are not quite ready to jump to the deeper theological questions in early elementary. We did get much more philosophical by 5th and 6th grades. We had chapel every Wednesday morning and I never did find any of the preachers sermons relevant to anything at that age. I enjoyed the singing and liturgy. I am starting to wonder of children get anything out of sermons now.

In the 6th grade I also had weekly confirmation classes every Wednesday afternoon. This same pastor that never made any sense from the pulpit did make sense in confirmation class. I probably would have been confirmed a Lutheran if we had not visited the Unity church. Lutheran confirmation class was 2 years back then. (I don't know about now). In the Missouri Synod they have closed communion so if you have not been confirmed NO COMMUNION. If you are not Lutheran or a different breed of Lutheran NO COMMUNION. Had we not been Missouri Synod Lutheran I would quite likely still be Lutheran. In the South ELCA is pretty rare.

The Misery Synod is to Lutheran what the SBC is to Baptists. I have been know to jokingly call them Beer Drinking Baptists. They did give me an excellent foundation in Christianity but they gave it with some excess baggage that I still find myself carrying sometime. Even back then when separation of gender and race was common they didn't make sense to me. (I had heard my parents gripe some about some of the silliness* of the LCMS But they were grown-ups and they were the church so I didn't question them until age 13.

*fundamentalism

The LCMS still does not have female clergy or open communion. I think they have actually become more fundamentalist and conservative.


Next will be UNITY church.

My Faith Journey

I would like to spend the next few days writing about my faith journey.

To start, I was born August 25, 1959 two months premature. When I was a few days old the doctors told my parents that I would probably not live another 24 hours. My father started calling ministers to find someone to come to the Hospital so I could be baptized. Within an hour of being baptized in the incubator I turned around and they said that I would live.
Because of this, I will argue all day long with those that do not believe in infant baptism.

My early childhood was in the Methodist Church (pre-united) though I do not remember much about it being Methodist. When I was 4 my father ran for county judge of Angelina County Texas. Angelina County was and is dry (no alcoholic beverages sold). As is true anywhere that is dry, people that want to drink just hop in the car and drive where they can get what they want, or they go to a bootlegger. My father was advocating that the county go wet as there were many accidents (some fatal) on the roads connecting Angelina to the neighboring wet counties. Dad taught Sunday School for the teens at 1st Methodist in Lufkin. The church asked him to quit teaching the class for advocating the consumption of alcohol. Because of this, my Mother was quite incensed. She plucked my sister and me out of the Methodist church and trotted down to the Lutheran church where they have no issues with drinking. My dad followed shortly after. This is about the age where I really became aware of denominational affiliation so I thought we had always been Lutheran. My first remembered church experiences were at First Methodist LCMS Lufkin Texas.

When we moved to Little Rock from Lufkin our pastor told us that we were to transfer to Grace Lutheran. Grace Lutheran was my childhood Sunday School church. We would gather for fifteen minutes before Sunday School and sing all of those old favorites such as Jesus Loves the Little Children & He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands. From 2nd Grade through 6th Grade I went to school at First Lutheran School We had devotional every morning, chapel every Wednesday morning and on Monday mornings during roll call we answered with whether we had attended Sunday School, church, both or neither. This put incredible peer pressure on to attend at least Sunday School or Church. I wonder how many parents that felt like skipping went to make their children happy.

When I was 13 my dad took us to visit a Unity Church. There were some aspects of Misery Synod Lutheran that didn’t quite click with me so this visit really began my interest in Christian alternatives. After we had visited the Unity Church a few times I surprised my parents by going up front during the invitation to membership. Thus we began attending the Unity Church and my parents and sister joined within a few months of when I joined. We all remained members of the Unity Church for several years. I only attended my first year of confirmation classes at the Lutheran church so I was never officially a member of the Lutheran Church. I wonder if any churches still require two years of confirmation to become a full member. Back then graduation from confirmation class was almost as big a deal as graduation from high school.

Just before my 14th Birthday in 1973 we moved to Cabot, Arkansas. Cabot was pretty typical small town America except that it was 99.9% white and within 30 miles of Little Rock. Thus Cabot became a “white flight town”. We commuted to the Unity Church in Little Rock most of the time we lived in Cabot. On Friday nights after the High School football games there would be after the game functions alternating between First Baptist and First Methodist. The entire feel of the two was VERY different. At the Baptist there would usually be some college athlete talking about how they drank and cussed and smoked until they accepted Jesus as their “personal Lord and Savior” after which we ate cookies and drank pop. The Methodist after the game functions usually had some activity and then a film or discussion where we had to think about how we would react in different situations after which we would have cookies and pop. About the only similarity between the two was cookies and pop.

Cabot was one of those typical Arkansas towns that had 2 or 3 Southern Baptist Churches, a Missionary Baptist Church, a Primitive Baptist Church and a couple of other Baptist churches and one each of Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and maybe a couple of others. There were in the surrounding country side dozens of Methodist churches that were on circuits. I visited several different churches with friends when we didn’t make the drive to Little Rock. To me, the Baptists were really weird. The Missionary Baptists always had separate Sunday School classes for boys & girls, men & women. The Southern Baptists always had some separate function when ever there was a school dance because they didn’t want any good Southern Baptists kids dancing. Most went to the Dances anyway. I also didn’t quite know what to think about these Baptists having to mention Hell in every sermon. I did like singing Just As I Am through until someone came to the alter rail even if we had to sing in through 12 times. I think most of those people repented just because they were tired of singing Just As I Am.

I began going to UMYF every Sunday afternoon as the Unity Church didn’t have a regular youth program and was an awfully long way off for Sunday afternoon. I really connected more with the Methodist way of doing things over the other churches in the area. They used a lot of the same liturgy that we had in the Lutheran church and they were a heck of a lot nicer than the Baptists. There were some other really neat things about the Methodists. They didn’t think that it was OK to be prejudiced. They would let women be ushers and even preach. In 1976 I attended Sex-Education classes at the Methodist Church. That was pretty bizarre to me. Those other churches didn’t ever say anything about sex. They might say something about fornication or adultery but NEVER sex.

When I began college I was still a member of the Unity church but I regularly went to the Wesley foundation at UCA (University of Central Arkansas) and UALR (University of Arkansas at Little Rock). I think that Wesley Foundation probably had more of an influence on my theological thinking than anyplace else. From 1978 to 1981 (ages 19-22) I really went through a period of religious seeking. I visited almost every Christian denomination I could as well as taking lessons in Judaism at Temple B’nai Israel and visiting the Bahai Center. I continued to go to the Wesley foundation and actually paid my tithe directly to Wesley Foundation until I found my Church home.

In 1981 I visited Hunter United Methodist in Little Rock. I walked in and the congregation was racially mixed with a young white female pastor and an older black male pastor. The church seemed to perfectly mirror the racial make up of the neighborhood and was a really neat church. Within 6 weeks I was a member. When I walked up during the hymn of invitation I told the pastor that I was baptized as a Lutheran and she said that they would accept that baptism. It was that afternoon that I discovered that I had actually been baptized a Methodist.

Over the next few days I will discuss each church that I have been a member of and what I think was their mission. I will be lifting up the good and bad as I remember it. I hope that this will give people an opportunity to look at their own church and maybe give them some ideas.

It's Annual Conference Season Again!

Of the 62 Annual Conferences in the USA 17 have already met or are currently meeting. On the UMC site only 5 have their reports posted so far, but there is usually a week or two lag time on the report summaries making it to the official site.

Decision 1032 seems to behaving a definite effect on what is happening at the various Annual Conferences being held. Three of the five that have published reports have passed resolutions that are related to inclusion of GLBT persons in the church. I expect that we will see many more.

Here are snippits from the umc.org reports

Detroit Conference

The conference affirmed the United Methodist Council of Bishops’ pastoral letter “unanimously declaring the church’s historic stance that membership in a congregation is open to all persons. We further support their specific statement that ‘homosexuality is not a barrier’ for such membership.”

Baltimore Washington

Adopted, by a vote of 392-352, a resolution that seeks to develop a culture in the conference that "expects and encourages" congregations to understand that membership in the church is open to anyone.

Troy

Six petitions to General Conference calling for changes in the Book of Discipline's paragraphs on human sexuality were tabled, and another five petitions, all dealing with inclusiveness issues, gay marriage, human sexuality and broader equal rights, were approved.

Not yet posted on the UMC site is a resolution from the Minnesota Annual Conference that will finish today.


NEWS reports are now popping up on the web about the Minnesota AC's resolution which has gone a step further than the others.

The vote was 496-223 in favor of the petition calling for equal access to the Methodist church "regardless of sexual orientation."
The resolution "to remove prohibition of United Methodist clergy from celebrating homosexual unions" passed on a 394-320 vote.

It looks to me like we are heading into what will be a lively and interesting Annual Conference season. Lets also pray that the Holy Spirit and not our personal wants and wishes prevail at each Annual Conference.

Zimbabwe Introduces a $100,000 bill!

The new $100,000 notes will buy you a loaf of bread.... Today

With 1000% inflation that may not be enough next week.



The United Methodist Africa University is located in Zimbabwe. I wonder how the incredibly high inflation rate effects the school. In Methodist News the newest Bishop of the UMC was elected in MUTARE, Zimbabwe on May 27. Rev. Daniel Wandabula of Uganda will be the new bishop of the East Africa Annual Conference replacing the late Bishop J. Alfred Ndoricimpa, who died last July.