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Commentary
WESLEYAN WISDOM: Don’t disregard value of our small churches Donald W. Haynes, Jun 9, 2010
Donald W. Haynes
By Donald W. Haynes UMR Columnist
In the nearly six decades since I became a Methodist pastor, I’ve seen many trends in the denomination. The most recent is, “What we need to do is close thousands of small membership churches.”
Many proponents of this are comfortably ensconced in large churches with staffs, so favored since seminary that they have neither experience nor empathy for the thousands of United Methodists who worship each week in congregations of less than 100 people and the hundreds upon hundreds of viable congregations with less than 50 people.
I bring a different perspective.
One of my childhood memories is from 1943, seeing my mother crying as she washed the supper dishes. I had seldom seen her shed a tear.
The anchor in her faith journey had been the little Methodist Episcopal Church, South that her father had built on four acres in 1904. In 40 years, six preachers had been called of God from that little congregation and were serving rural churches in North Carolina.
We were the smallest church on a five-point circuit. Worship was on third Sunday afternoons, when a few extra men pushed attendance to 20.
Mama was crying because the pastor had said that we were not worth his use of wartime “rationed gasoline” to drive 7 miles to preach to so few people. I will never forget her words: “They are going to turn us out of the conference.”
Mama had two brothers who were Methodist preachers serving rural multi-point circuits. Our home was a haven of Wesleyan/Arminian theology. Every Sunday morning a few women and children gathered for Sunday school. Aunt Eva and Cousin Minnie taught us from picture cards with Bible stories on the flip side. My concepts of Jesus as the Good Shepherd and God as a loving Father were taking root in my mind.
Even as a child of 8, I realized that “turning us out of the conference” would be a major crisis.
We had no telephone, and Mama could not drive. But she asked our unchurched father to take her to see her brother, then pastor of a five-point circuit, 25 miles away in another district.
My uncle, with only two years of college and no seminary, was a local preacher in his tenth year on the “Sandy Ridge Circuit.” He somehow convinced his district superintendent to attach our church to his five-point circuit in another district.
The next year he convinced our mostly Primitive Baptist neighbors to tear down the old one-room church my grandfather had built and salvage the lumber to build a smaller church with a hut out back. He brought in a woman preacher for a revival meeting, followed the next year by a local evangelist, who had stopped making bootleg whiskey since his conversion. His old customers were so intrigued that they packed the church; my father was among the 25 people converted.
Today my home church is a station appointment with its own parsonage, and paying all its apportionments. The church recently paid off the debt from purchasing 20 additional acres of my grandfather’s farm, on which was built a recreation park and a pavilion. Attendance is now just over 100—a small-membership church by mega-church pastors’ standards.
Interim role
In the area were three “Christian Churches” that grew out of a Methodist schism in 1792, when James O’Kelly challenged the authoritative appointment-making of Bishop Asbury and lost. O’Kelly formed a fledgling denomination along the Virginia-North Carolina border—Wesleyan in theology and congregational in polity.
Their 1884 by-laws state they would baptize by “sprinkling, affusion or immersion,” receive members by transfer from all Christian communions and consider “freedom of conscience” as their highest doctrinal requirement.”
Last October, one of those churches called me at, age 74, to be their interim pastor. The church is 53 miles from our home. Being “called” was new for me, and “signing a contract” with a background check seemed odd, but since I had gone to school with most of these folks from the first grade, I could not turn them down.
Now I am signing a contract through the year 2011.
This is my smallest church since 1966—except for a few interims—but I am having a ball. This, from an old preacher who once served a 2,200-member church and five churches with over 1,000 members. I offer my experience as encouragement during annual conference appointment season.
I began this role last October. The directory showed 62 homes in the congregation: six homebound members, 24 families with children and the rest “empty nesters” or retired. Church leadership and financial support is mostly from septuagenarians—my generation!
I launched a monthly newsletter that we send out mostly by e-mail. I began teaching William Paul Young’s best-selling novel The Shack on Sunday evenings. One of my grade school classmates predicted four to six would come; we averaged 33.
Initial goals
My goal was to visit each home by Christmas—less than six house calls a week for 10 weeks. Almost immediately I had a death. The Sunday school superintendent was dying with cancer and deserved at least a weekly visit. I try to see no less than 10 families a week, eat with three members and pick up the tab, and sent congregational e-mails almost daily—often “forwards” of beautiful photography or “laugh of the day.”
I visited no home without an appointment. Some took weeks to arrange; others said, “Come anytime you can catch us at home.” I listened, asked questions and let them see me taking notes. I found Mr. Wesley’s observations were still valid—if I visited a home, they often showed up the next Sunday in church.
Attendance began to grow—from an average in the 60s to about 100.
There was no pushback when I introduced “All Saints Sunday” with a roll call of the deceased, something previously only done at “Homecoming.” I asked the choir to wear their robes as I introduced the Christian Year, beginning with Advent. After a month, I asked their feelings about my wearing a robe.
On Christmas Eve we had over 100 for Lessons and Carols. On New Year’s Sunday we had “Baptismal Renewal” and every member came forward to dip their hands in the water as I said to them: “Remember your baptism and be thankful.”
On Ash Wednesday we had 57 come for imposition of ashes—a first in their history. On Sunday evenings in Lent I taught Henri Nouwen’s book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, using a 16 x 20 print of Rembrandt’s painting on an easel.
On Maundy Thursday we were ushered into the “Upper Room” (Fellowship Hall); then visited five stations on the lawn: Gethsemane, Caiaphas, Peter’s fireside denial, Herod and Pilate. Then we came into the darkened sanctuary for Tenebrae and the seven last words from the cross. Attendance was 96.
On Easter Sunday we had a sunrise service and breakfast, with everyone bringing a flower to transform the Tenebrae cross into a “flowered cross” for the lawn. Teenagers from the high school band played trumpet, flute and French horn.
On Pentecost we released red balloons from the parking lot with notes that included a Scripture verse and an invitation to be our guests at a faith family that believes in “radical hospitality.”
Seven have met in a confirmation class each week since Easter. I send out copies of my sermons every Monday with print copies available on Sundays. So far, we $219 has come in from folks outside our congregation who have received the sermon messages from our members and who want to mail them to their friends. It is one of our “radical outreach” ministries.
My 2010 goal for new members is 25; for 2011 I will propose a goal of 12 new family units. We received two in December by transfer, one in February by profession of faith, two by transfer on Pentecost and four more to join in June, in addition to the confirmation class. I have names of 25 “prospects” for whom I pray daily and call or take to lunch occasionally.
Expanding ministry
Another “first” ended up as a story in the local newspaper—our “Blessing of the Animals” service at the “Second Chance Ranch,” which rescues neglected horses. A sudden, torrential rain didn’t stop me from blessing 14 horses, 17 dogs and a fruit jar full of tadpoles. We have collected over 500 pairs of shoes for a mission in Appalachia, about $5,000 for local families who have suffered home fires or who have major illnesses with no insurance. On May 22, 76 of the folks drove 53 miles to our home for an outdoor cookout and yard games.
The small-membership church need not be clubbish nor focused on a world that is no more. If we are to “rethink” United Methodism, we must not leave them out!
Dr. Haynes is a retired member of the Western North Carolina Conference, an adjunct professor at Hood Theological Seminary and current interim pastor of Kallam Grove Christian Church. e-mail: dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.
Donald W. Haynes
