“Road Trip”
Jennie and I are making a three-hour round trip to go to church these days.
For eleven years, I’ve been in a Wednesday morning Bible study with friend and colleague Rev. Kenneth Golphin. Ken is Presiding Elder of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches in Kentucky. A month ago, he asked me if I would be willing to preach at St. Paul AME Church in Manchester, KY, a congregation currently without a pastor. Glad to help one of my brothers in Christ by serving as interim pastor for a church in his statewide flock, Jennie and I made our first trip to St. Paul church two Sundays ago.
Directions to Manchester: drive east out of Lexington for ten miles, south on I-75 for sixty miles to the London exit, then east for twenty miles on the Hal Rogers Parkway into Appalachia. Exit the parkway at Manchester, pass McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Long John Silver’s and Eastern Kentucky University’s one building Manchester campus, follow Goose Creek on your right into town, turn left on Town Branch Road past Pat’s World Famous Snack Bar, and St. Paul will be a couple hundred yards on your right. There are two parking places at the base of the walkway steps/ramp leading to the front door, four parking places on the side of the road in front of the church, and overflow parking in a lot adjoining Veteran’s Memorial Park one hundred yards to the east.
After worship, Mr. Jimmy Lyttle (pronounced Little) led me from St. Paul’s sanctuary (nine pews on each side of a center aisle, each pew capable of holding a half dozen worshippers) to the intimate anteroom accessed at the side of the chancel – a fellowship hall of sorts. He pointed to a framed black and white photograph on the wall. Fifty people stand in front of a building under construction – St. Paul church circa 1949. Pointing his finger proudly to a woman standing in the midst of the gathered congregation in her Sunday dress, Mr. Lyttle said, “That is my mother. She is with child. The child is me.”
Do the math. The photo was taken 76 years ago. St. Paul is the only church Mr. Lyttle has known in his 76 years. He is proud of it, loves it dearly, and hopes for a new minister to be appointed who will pastor the congregation into the years ahead. There were nine in worship that Sunday including Jennie and me.
Jennie and I have done this before – taken Sunday morning road trips of an hour or more to serve a small congregation of God’s people. So it was that our drive to Manchester was a trip down memory lane, though the lane we remembered driving four decades ago was four-lane – I-40 east out of Nashville to Carthage, TN, a sixty-mile drive.
Many times, I have written about my three years at Carthage Christian Church, the church I served while a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School from 1982-1985. I wrote a book about it: It Don’t Get Any Better Than This: Stories from a Small Town Church. You don’t forget your first love. The two dozen folks at Carthage loved their church like the folks at St. Paul love theirs. Jennie’s and my drive to Manchester brought us full circle. Our ministry and marriage began with a weekly road trip to serve a small church. We’re back where we started. And loving it.
I began my ministry at Carthage before I met Jennie. During my first nine months, I made the hour drive solo. But after our eighty-something-year-old pianist and (Wurlitzer) organist Miss Margaret Westmoreland's foot got stuck on the accelerator while trying to back out of her driveway, sending her car hurtling in reverse into a sprawling, centuries-old live oak tree, her into the hospital, and us without a keyboard player, Billie Ruth Read came to me with a proposition.
"David," she said, "We need a pianist."
She was right. It was obvious I was not cut out to be an a cappella song leader. What's more, our repertoire of the half dozen songs to which we could (sort of) carry the tune was getting old. Our "We're Marching to Zion" was dragging. Our "Bringing in the Sheaves" was coming up empty. "Amazing Grace" had become routine. We needed a "Blessed Assurance" that some enlivening accompaniment was on the way.
Billie Ruth directed me to go back to Nashville, post a "Help Wanted" ad in the vicinity of Vanderbilt, and select from among the applicants who would best fill the position. When I inquired about salary, she said she and her husband Mr. Bill had talked it over and were willing to pay ten dollars a week.
I thought to myself – an hour's drive over, an hour of worship, and an hour's drive back to Nashville for ten bucks? And I was to decide for myself among all the applicants? All?
I kept my skepticism to myself. I smiled and told Billie Ruth I'd advertise the position. I would even be willing to match her and Mr. Bill's munificence with an offer of my own. The lucky person selected from our teeming pool of applicants would be offered free round-trip travel to and from Carthage in the passenger seat of my 1978 Chrysler LeBaron. Billie Ruth said she thought that would be wonderful. I smiled again.
There were no takers. I figured as much. Who in their right mind would make a 120-mile commute to play a Wurlitzer Funmaker or its piano partner sidekick for a congregation of a baker's dozen, let alone having to listen week in and week out to a greenhorn preacher? We carried on a cappella for the next several months until Margaret finally returned.
A few months after Margaret was back, I met Jennie. After we dated several times and I got my nerve up, I told her I was serving a little church out in Carthage and would she like to go with me some Sunday morning? Talk about a slick come-on: "Hey baby, wanna hear me preach?"
Jennie said yes.
When I found out in time that she played piano and asked if she would consider playing at Carthage some Sunday, she said she would. Margaret welcomed her with open arms (one of which was still rehabbing from the accident). She played one Sunday. Then another. And another. On one of our Sunday morning drive dates, she mentioned she remembered seeing a piece of paper several months earlier advertising the need for a pianist at a small church and had almost followed up on it out of curiosity before forgetting about it altogether.
"Little did I know," she said.
Little did either of us know. Jennie Taylor ended up making the round trip to Carthage with me in the LeBaron Sunday in and Sunday out for a year and a half until we got married and another year after that. She received ten dollars a week for her piano playing and from Lib Collette, church member and seamstress, she received the handmade wedding dress she wore on our wedding day.
Though we only had nine on our first Sunday at St. Paul, I’m confident we’ll reach double digits in attendance in the weeks ahead. Said Mr. Lyttle, “Our numbers have gone down during these months we’ve been without a pastor, but I’m hopeful.” I am, too. I know for sure we’ll have a gala Sunday on December 21. Our kids and their kids, our grandchildren, will be in Lexington for Christmas and we’ll all caravan down to Manchester together that day. A dozen Shireys plus a resurgent St. Paul congregation ought to number us well into the twenties that day. My knees will be knocking behind the pulpit for sure looking out at all those people. Each and every one of them beloved in God’s eyes. And mine. And Jennie’s.
If you’re ever within a couple hours of Manchester, KY, on a Sunday morning in the months ahead, come worship with us. We’ll save one of the parking places at the base of the front door walkway just for you.
