A church resurrected
04/02/10Heather Hahn
Editor
SEDGWICK — Two years ago, Sedgwick United Methodist Church was drawing close to death. Regular worship attendance had dwindled down to only six people, and the congregation had little hope for growth in this struggling Delta town about 18 miles north of Jonesboro.
What once had been a bustling farming community now had only about 100 residents.
Many of the family farms lie fallow. Stores have closed, and vacant houses are boarded up. When residents’ children go off to college or the military, most do not return.
By 2008, Sedgwick had no school, no gas station, not even a place to buy a stick of gum. And Sedgwick UMC was at risk of having no pastor.
That spring, Northeast District Superintendent Kurt Boggan had the unhappy duty of informing the congregation that he didn’t have a local pastor or student pastor to appoint to Sedgwick when the church’s current pastor departed in June.
He did have a certified lay speaker and pastoral candidate whom he could send, but by Boggan’s admission, Marilyn Neal was unlike any preacher the congregation had known. She had a history of substance abuse.
“The congregation was at first resistant to the idea,” Boggan said.
One member already had told the district superintendent that the congregation might have to close by Christmas. Now that seemed all but inevitable. Boggan told the church to prepare to shut its doors and left.
“They were in a state of grief,” he said. “There was this sense that we’ve carried on as long as we can this weight and responsibility of a church. Both the physical and financial energy they had for ministry seemed spent.”
It was a familiar situation in the Arkansas Conference. Over the last six years, 34 of the state’s United Methodist churches have held their last worship service — seven shut their doors in 2009 alone.
But this is not the story of another church’s death. As with so much in Christianity, this is the story of a group of believers finding new life.
The day after Boggan’s disappointing visit to Sedgwick, he got a call from a church member. The congregation — which had taken great pride in being the first appointment of several Methodist pastors — had decided to welcome Neal after all.
Two years later, Sedgwick UMC has seen its weekly worship attendance more than triple, and children’s sermons have become routine. On a recent Sunday in March, about 25 people of a variety of ages filled the pews.
The congregation also has expanded its outreach to the surrounding community, starting a food pantry that has served up to 40 people a month and a ministry to help pay the water bills of people in need. At the 2009 Annual Conference, Sedgwick UMC was named one of the Northeast District’s churches of the year.
As the church prepares to celebrate Easter on April 4, the members who’ve long made their spiritual home at Sedgwick UMC now share their faith with a new generation of youngsters.
“This is a resurrection story,” Boggan said. “They are in an isolated community, but they are doing effective ministry in the name of Christ.”
Road to redemption
Churchgoers say Neal played a large role in the congregation’s reinvigoration.
“She helped us look outward,” said Mike Doyle, the church’s song leader. “Her feeling was that if we look outward at the needs of the community that that would be a good thing for us.”
But just as the Sedgwick congregation was in need of resurrection, Neal was in need of redemption.
The daughter and granddaughter of Methodist pastors, Neal quit going to church at 16 and like many preachers’ kids, she rebelled. She started drinking, using marijuana and having problems at school.
As she grew older, her problems grew worse. She started using harder substances and eventually became addicted to crack.
“Every day and every night was about getting high,” she said. “The things that I experienced during that period of time were a living hell. And so when I see people doing what I did, I feel it in my inside. I know the pain that they’re in.”
At times, she was homeless and had nothing to eat. On one such occasion, she stumbled upon a United Methodist church in Dallas with an open food pantry. A counselor at the church helped her get food, an apartment and a change of clothes so she could look for work. She found a job the next day, and she got sober for a while.
“I didn’t stay clean,” she said. “But it helped me see what the church could be.”
By 2004, her addictions once again had overpowered her. Her life had gotten so bad, she said, that she didn’t want to live. She finally hit bottom one night when she was badly beaten up.
A police officer took her to Potter’s Clay, a shelter for abused women in Hot Springs. That was Neal’s turning point. She hasn’t gotten high since.
After a brief stint at Potter’s Clay, she enrolled in a substance abuse treatment program that works through Little Rock’s Center for Women in Transition. There, she became friends with Sister Lee Ann McNally, a Catholic nun who serves as the program’s executive director. McNally continually assured Neal that there was good in her.
“That was hard to believe because I had done so much that was wrong,” Neal said.
Still, McNally’s words and letters of encouragement as well as, the strong support from her family kept Neal going as she continued her treatment and eventually moved back in with her father, Jim West, who by then was the pastor of Cherry Valley and Vanndale United Methodist churches.
For the first time in nearly two decades, she started attending church regularly. She worked as a hairdresser, but she also began to discern a call to full-time ministry. In 2007, she became a certified lay speaker.
“It was a process, and it wasn’t one I wanted to accept too easily,” she said. “The way things have fallen in place for me since I made that decision has amazed even my dad. … It’s just mind-boggling to see how much God will do for us and the doors that will be open when we begin to take action to live right and learn more.”
Today, Neal — who also pastors nearby Pleasant Hill UMC — is a licensed local pastor and a second-year student at Memphis Theological Seminary.
Ministry growth
Neal knew before taking Sedgwick’s pulpit that some in the congregation were leery of her. But on her first Sunday, people who had not worshiped at the church in months were sitting in the pew.
“I think they heard there’s a woman preacher and she has a colorful history,” she said. “They wanted to see what I would be like.”Mike Doyle, the congregation’s song leader, agreed that the appointment of a woman pastor proved a source of curiosity in the small town.
“We actually had someone visit from the Baptist church just because he wanted to see a woman preacher,” he said.
Nobody left because of Neal. In fact, Sedgwick UMC increasingly began to see the return of people who had grown up at the church but for one reason or another had quit going.
Among them were Tim and Angie Nichols.
“We now feel a sense of community that had dwindled over the years,” Tim Nichols said.
The couple was instrumental in starting Living Waters, a ministry that helps about three people a month with their water bills and last winter helped a man pay his propane bill.
The ministry honors Tim Nichols’ father, the late J.G. Nichols, who worked for the water company for many years and was a devoted member in the church.
Sedgwick UMC had always been mission minded. Even when the church was at its smallest, the congregation always scraped together $300 each year to send to Methodist Family Health at Christmastime, said J.S. Fielder, who served as the congregation’s treasurer for 37 years.
Neal said she wanted to start the pantry because of the help that United Methodist church in Dallas gave her when she had no other place to go. She said Sedgwick members have been equally enthusiastic in taking on new projects.
“This congregation is wonderful,” she said. “If an idea comes to mind, and I present it to the board, they go for it. I don’t have a person here who’s against doing more outreach.”
Neal acknowledged that Sedgwick UMC still faces an uncertain future. The town’s population is still shrinking. But there are signs of life. A new convenience store recently opened in town, and big events at the church draw as many as 40 people. Those who do come to church also seem eager to share in its Christian work.
Libby James, the daughter of Mike Doyle and church pianist Robyn Doyle, used to only attend the church once a month or so. Now, she and her husband, Zach, can be seen each week in a pew near the front where she helps lead music with her parents.
James said she takes great comfort that the church’s steeple still lights up each night and illuminates people’s way.
“That’s what our mission is,” she said, “to be that beacon for people. We reach out into the dark corners.”
