#12 ROOTS

Providence Lutheran Church
(My 92 year old dad's sports car out front!)

WHERE I WENT AND WHY:
This Sunday was the 150th Anniversary of Providence Lutheran Church, the church I grew up in.  I have been looking forward to this Sunday for a long time (see blog post #9). Members of my family have been there from the beginning and my brother in law's great great  grandfather, David Shealy, was the first pastor.  AND, I was overdue for a little "Lutheranism!"  I do not plan to be objective in this blog as it was an emotional Sunday for me.

WHAT TO KNOW IF YOU WANT TO GO:
Providence Lutheran Church is located at 840 Old Chapin Road in Lexington, SC.  The service is at 11 am and there is usually plenty of parking, though we had to park in the grass, down the hill today!  Dress is "church casual".

REFLECTIONS ON WORSHIP

MOOD:

This is a  small, Southern, country  church.  Folks are friendly, and they will ask your name. (I guess that it why I judge this as a sign of welcoming as I visit other places!) If you come twice, they might put you on a committee!  And after 3 times they will have figured out who you are kin to, to fill in the seven degrees of separation! Just kidding.  But it is hard to hide in plain sight here, as everyone knows each other and visitors stand out.  They noted today that the charter in 1866 had 65 names, and that is about the number in attendance I remember as a child.  Today the church was filled with probably more than twice that!

MUSIC:

It really felt good to be back in the liturgical tradition with familiar responses and hymns.  This is where I was taught to make "a joyful noise" and was rarely on key!  My husband still squirms at the s-l-o-w pace of the liturgy (he grew up in a "city" [read mill/college town] church and the organist was a music professor at Newberry College so the pace was unequivocally "right".  LOL)  However, today, it felt just right to me!  We sang traditional hymns:  Holy, Holy, Holy, Day by Day, and Shine, Jesus, Shine, and one of my favorites during Communion:  Will You Come and Follow Me. 

While the  all-women choir sang an anthem based on the Beatitudes (Blessed are They), I couldn't help but remember all of the anthems my mom and sister sang from that choir loft while Daddy, Aunt Ellen and I listened from "our" pew.  I could look cross-eyed at my sister and we would start to giggle.  Daddy would try to stop us, but more than once we had to "excuse ourselves" to the back of the church.  Momma would then give us a second sermon after church, and try as she might, we would all invariably collapse in giggles.  She made the mistake once, of telling us that she and her brothers would sometimes "cut up" in church, so her credibility was shot. So we generally chalked it up to "making a joyful noise!"

Kathy and I were in high school together.  Mom is on the far left and my sister, Sharon, is 2nd from the right.

MESSAGE:

It has been 10 weeks (Caldwell Presbyterian) since I have enjoyed a children's sermon. (Yes, they are for adults too!)  I delighted in my granddaughters joining the pastor who Baptized them:  Abbie delivering a special "Happy Birthday Church" card proudly to Pastor Patty Sue Burton-Pye.  I also delighted in my daughter's nervousness as Abbie and Ella spoke up and answered questions during the homily and remembered that same nervousness in me, when she and her brother would tell family secrets, or be brutally blunt at that same age. (My son notoriously told a visiting pastor that he "used too many words".)   I wish I had a picture of my daughter giving the girls a "thumbs up" as they came back and shared their pretzels (symbols of prayer) and the look of relief on her face. Laughing in church runs in the family.  

My sister was the lay reader and though I sneaked a quick picture, I made sure NOT to make eye contact with her for fear we would both either laugh or cry.

The South Carolina Bishop, Rev. Dr. Herman Yoos delivered the message based on Luke 18:1-18, the parable of the widow and the unjust judge, who gets justice against her opponent through persistence (and God who is just will respond to our cries quickly).  This gave the Bishop plenty of room to talk about the persistence of our congregation through the years.  And while I revel in my church's history, for it is truly my history, his comments on prayer provided several good "nuggets" for me to consider.  One rhetorical question really struck me:  Why is prayer often our "last resort" in a crisis?  Prayer doesn't have to be mastered.  We don't have to get it right.  God is big enough to see our needs through our attempts.   He also emphasized how God uses us to answer others' prayers, again highlighting some of the social ministries of the congregation.

Bishop Yoos with Rev. Patty Sue Burton-Pye in the background
(Rev. Patty Sue gave the children's sermon and baptized both my granddaughters)

OUTREACH AND OBSERVATIONS

• As I settled into "our" pew, I thought about how we "moved up" to a pew near the front when my grandfather became hard of hearing and stayed as dad now struggles to follow the pastor's "fast" sermons.  I have often laughed to myself, especially when I visit small churches, and wonder whose pew I am sitting in.  And as I looked around, the faces were older, but the Wingards, Seays, and Harmans still sit on the left side and the Monts, Hendrix and Roberts on the right.  The difference was, all those people who looked the "same"... were really us children, who have grown older and look now as I remember their parents looking 50 years ago.
• Daddy took the girls (great granddaughters) out behind the church and showed them the steps of the original one room school that served as our first sanctuary. The old cedar flagpole is still there too. After lunch they had a "ground breaking" there for a prayer garden to memorialize the spot.
• Last week when I visited a florist in Salisbury that specializes in Christmas and Christmon ornaments, I remembered how we were one of the first churches in the area to have a Christmon tree and after it was featured on the news, it became so popular, we gave tours.  It was about the time of our 100th anniversary.  As a 15 year old Luther Leaguer, I remember giving one of those tours and later finding out that one of the participants was our Bishop (not Bishop Yoos, but one of his predecessors).  He was gracious enough not to correct, what I'm sure were my many mistakes as I explained the symbols.  
• Abbie and Ella asked to visit the cemetery and see the grave of their great grandmother and Aunt Ellen, for which Ella is named and of whom they have heard many of my childhood stories.  They were bowled over by all of the many Roberts in the cemetery and we talked about great grandparents, and great, great, great, great, etc.! grandparents.  When we passed by Uncle Bill and Aunt Sallie's graves I told them (probably again!) about picking strawberries in Uncle Bill's field and coming home with only a few, but a red face and hands.  And how Aunt Sallie and Aunt Ellen used to compete with their pies, but Aunt Sallie could never master pie crusts and truthfully we were all glad when Pillsbury came out with frozen pie shells!
• When I took a breath and settled down this afternoon to read the church history they gave us, I came to tears at the picture of my Mom watching the steeple being erected on the church through her gift to the church.  It is one of the last happy memories I have of Mom.  By then,  Alzheimer's had already begun to take her over, but that day she sat in a lawn chair and "supervised", and her church community treated her as a queen!

• My dad who is 92 was baptized at Providence, and so were my sister and me, and my granddaughters.  David and I were married there. Mom is buried there.  Dad and Sharon are still active members. It is where I received the foundation of my faith.  Providence is truly my "happy place."

My dad, Clay Roberts, sister Sharon Shealy and her husband Richard, me, Ella, Abbie, husband David, and daughter Emily in front of the 150th Banner after worship.

BULLETIN: