Jim Minter's article in Fayette Extra, Atlanta Journal/Constitution
3-11-1999
Excerpted from Jim Minters book, Some Things I Wish We Wouldn't Forget.
Along with the general store and the train depot, the church was a center of community life in the rural South. It was either Baptist or Methodist. Except for Baptists having to be pushed all the way under in somebody's pond while Methodists could be saved by a sprinkling of well water, nobody could tell the difference.
When the Inman Methodist Church, already in adolescence when the Civil War began, had a homecoming, J.C. Lovett, one of the faithful, asked me to write a piece recalling my memories of growing up in the congregation. I have quite a few.
Doris Harp playing the piano and leading us in Bringing in the Sheaves, and how it made me feel good and worthy although I had no idea what sheaves were...The warmth of the pot-bellied stove, and how it put Uncle Walter to sleep before the sermon was over...The little lapel pins earned for making it throughout the year without missing Sunday School. Andy McLucas collected 12 in a row, a record that still stands...Dropping my penny into the collection plate...Arthur Burch all dressed up in a new suit and forgetting to shine his shoes...Brother Garrett's sermon on the valley of the dry bones, preached at least three times a year.
Weldon Griffith, who if he had been Catholic might have been made a saint, and whose name is on the Fellowship Hall...Too many funerals, but always coming away feeling that everything was going to be all right...Willie Mae Tarpley teaching us to sing Jesus Loves Me....My daddy wishing Brother Conway would come back and be our preacher again because his wife tapped her heel to make him stop when his sermons headed into overtime.
Fried chicken and egg custard pie when the preacher came to Sunday dinner...Fried chicken, potato salad, tomato sandwiches, pimento cheese sandwiches, chocolate cake, lemon cheese cake, caramel cake, fried peach pies and banana pudding at quarterly meetings with dinner on the grounds...Wondering why the food was on tables instead of on the ground, if that was what we called it...Watching the ladies lay out their dishes so I'd know where my favorite cooks put theirs.
Helping my mother fill the communion cups, hoping there would be some grape juice left over in the Welchs bottle for me to drink...How the preachers apologized for Jesus changing the water into wine...Frank Reeves giving the financial report, which he still does...Brother Garrett helping hoe cotton the year it rained all spring and the grass got ahead of us...The annual Christmas play, and how I envied my Cousin John M., who was a few years older and always got to be Joseph while I had to settle for the third Wiseman.
The year Abb Burch and I won the janitorial contract at fifty cents a week and saved up enough to buy a tent from Sears-Roebuck...Being relieved when the preacher didn't call on me to pray...The owl that took up residence in the belfry and beat me to the draw when I climbed up under his roost and tried to dispatch him with my .22 rifle...The summer my mother let me skip the last two nights of revival when a visiting evangelist convinced me the Devil was hot on my case.
Helping my Uncle John Harp collect a washtub of honey when bees made a hive in the weather boarding...The annual Christmas cedar tree, and how good it smelled...Slipping inside to admire the new electric lights when the government sent rural electrification but didn't quite make it down the road to our house...Sundays when we got to sing out of the Cokesbury Hymnal instead of the big songbook...The 23rd Psalm...Being shocked to learn that some churches had preaching every Sunday and not just once a month as we did, sharing a pastor with Brooks, Union Chapel, and New Hope over the river in Clayton County.
For going on to two centuries the good folks of the Inman Methodist Church have done the Lords work about as well as imperfect mortals can. I believe salt of the Earth is how you say it.
As the church grows and keeps up with the times I hope it hangs on to some of its past.
Methodists, like everyone else, are being asked to accept new ideas. We had to get rid of our old song books because all the old hymns were in English. I guess I understand why we need new languages, although most Methodist around here, including some from Ohio and New Jersey, speak fairly good English. You can never tell when a visitor from Hungnam might drop in and be offended.
The old hymns referred to God as He, and that had to be fixed. We were thankful to get past Easter without having to sing Up from the Grave She Arose. Personally, I don't think gender changes are necessary or accurate. Even my wife agrees God can't possibly be female because the Bible itself says right there in Psalm 103, Verse 3, that the Lord is merciful, and slow to anger.
Excerpted from Jim Minters book, Some Things I Wish We Wouldn't Forget.
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