MEMORIES OF MY HOME CHURCH

I contributed the following recollections for the upcoming 200th anniversary of First United Methodist Church of Shelbyville:

First United Methodist Church of Shelbyville was the classroom for much of my earliest spiritual and social development.

Reverend Bill Clayton was the first pastor I had any personal connection to. He was not only the pastor at FUMC but he and his wife were friends of my parents and their son James was a friend of my brother Spencer.

(We engaged in some prolonged and violent pillow fights with James during those years!)

I had just finished the third grade when the Claytons were assigned to a different church. During a Sunday morning that June, after worship, the congregation gathered in the basement Fellowship Hall to welcome Reverend Jack Haskins along with his wife and their two kids.

Standing in the back of the crowd of onlookers next to me, my mom nudged my shoulder and said, “Look, Steve, they have a little boy your age. You should go and say hi.”

I didn’t. I was painfully shy as a child and shrugged off my mom’s suggestion as being completely unrealistic.

But God intervened in the coming weeks and Peter Haskins became my best friend. I spent a lot of time at the parsonage there on Broadway and Pete spent a lot of time at my house. In the 6^th grade we went through Confirmation together and it was special to have Rev. Haskins as our teacher for the year. In 7^th grade Pete and I would meet up each school morning to walk to the junior high together.

Unfortunately, the Haskins family transferred before my 8^th grade year and suffice it to say here that the succeeding pastors and youth pastors had little positive direct impact on my life, but my parents were involved in the youth group and they made sure the program stayed active and spiritually grounded.

In those years we took trips to Florida on “God’s Nightcrawler” – a bus with seating that served also as bunk beds so groups could travel overnight. Also memorable were the Halloweens with the youth would create a haunted house in the church basement as a fundraiser.

While I was in high school, the church put a basketball goal in the attic and framed in a nice little classroom for Sunday school. We had some good teachers along the way, but none were as impactful on my life as Tom and Marcia Kuhn.

The Kuhns challenged me and my classmates to begin a habit of reading a chapter of the Bible each day. Always hungry for greater depth in my spiritual life, I took them up on that challenge.

It changed my life.

It’s not a coincidence that, at the age of 57, I am currently working toward my Doctor of Ministry degree and my focus is on how to help believers develop a habit of personal study of Scripture.

For a while after college, I didn’t have as much contact with FUMC except on occasional visits home.

Then, in 1995, I felt a call to begin studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. Not too long into my time there, my parents called to tell me that their current pastor, Alan Rumble, was taking the youth to hike in the Smoky Mountains and wondered if maybe I could come back to Shelbyville that Sunday to fill the pulpit for him.

I thought, “I would rather go hiking with them in the Smokies!”

I called Rev. Rumble to see if he could use extra help supervising the trip and he gladly invited me to come along. I joined them in Tennessee and, as a result, FUMC once again became prominent in my life – this time professionally.

As we hiked up a mountain, one of the teens had told me that the youth group had become pretty weak. He wondered if I would consider becoming their youth pastor.

So the late 90s found me making the 3-hour trip from Asbury each weekend to stay with my parents and serve as the youth pastor of FUMC. Those were good times (overall!) and I enjoyed reconnecting with the church and getting to know the families with teens.

Although I have no musical ability myself, I was grateful to play a part in pulling together FUMC’s first “contemporary” worship service. Several of the teens played musical instruments, others sang, and we installed the church’s first video projector – a giant beast that we bought used from Asbury when the school updated classroom technology.

I could go on with memories of FUMC, but this recollection would become a small book. There’s too much to say. When I got married in 2000, Melissa and I held our reception in the basement of the church, where we were the recipients of so much love and generosity.

Even though it’s been 25 years now since the church was a regular part of my life, so many individuals and families there are still near and dear to my heart.

I am so grateful to have been a part of First United Methodist’s long record of serving the Kingdom of God. My prayer on this special anniversary is that FUMC’s best days are still ahead!

I thank God for FUMC and Christ’s body there over the years. The best is yet to be!