Now-closed church still changing lives

02-03-2012

Now-closed church still changing lives

By Michelle Morris
Special Contributor

Sometimes I am asked to reflect on Foundery UMC, particularly when people are starting up a new church and they want to learn lessons from the past. One of the questions people usually ask is, “Why do you think Foundery failed?” I correct them right away. Foundery didn’t fail. It closed. There is a difference.

I don’t consider Foundery a failure because we are judged by our fruits, and Foundery keeps bearing fruit in the seeds it planted in people and congregations all over northwest Arkansas. Just ask the people of Elm Springs UMC. When Foundery did close, a majority of our members ended up there, and the result has been making an already strong community stronger.

As for those of us who do not worship at Elm Springs regularly (I have membership there but live in Texas, and others joined other churches), I think the discipleship we learned at Foundery goes with us and allows us to contribute to the building of God’s reign wherever we have been planted. The tiny mustard seed has indeed grown into a huge plant.

I did not grow up going to church. My parents had both been disillusioned by their experiences with organized religion. Still, they did not forbid us from going to church. My brother and I both became perpetual visitors, going from church to church with whoever invited us that weekend.

I felt most at home in United Methodist churches because of two things. One was the quiet young man who regularly invited me to church, but who did not threaten me with damnation if I didn’t attend. He just patiently waited and offered his faith openly. The other element was the open Communion table.

I was accustomed to sitting in the pew while people around me participated in this seemingly important ritual, or even having my hand moved back to my side when I tried to take some juice from the plate going by. By the time I visited a UMC, I knew the drill. I was surprised when my friend said, “You can take Communion.”

I furiously shook my head; no, I can’t. I am not baptized, and I am not a member here. He said, “No, it’s okay here.” I did not take Communion then because I was sure my friend was trying to get me to break the rules. When I later learned it really was not against the rules, I decided if I ever became anything, it would be United Methodist.

I married a Methodist, and we began looking for a church in northwest Arkansas, but only after I had “practiced” church by watching the television broadcast of Boston Avenue UMC in Tulsa. We tried many congregations, but I struggled to find a place there.

Then I found out that my high school next-door neighbor, Elizabeth, had married a young pastor named Todd-Paul Taulbee, and he had been appointed to start a new United Methodist congregation in Lowell. I called her up, she arranged for my husband and me to meet Todd-Paul, and the next thing I knew I was being baptized in my living room. We were the fifth family to join Foundery, and Todd-Paul simply gave us no choice: We were to be leaders in this new congregation.

Admittedly, one of the things that appealed to me about a new congregation was that I figured I could sort of blend in as if I had always been in church—fake it ‘til you make it, so to speak. I was certain, however, that Todd-Paul was crazy to think I could help lead. Come on, I had never regularly attended church anywhere! What business did I have in leading one?

But Todd-Paul knew how to hook us. All we would need to do was design and update the website. My husband is a computer geek, and I am a writer, so we could handle that. Of course, that meant attending all the meetings of the Administrative Council, and then actually serving on the Council. I did not know that when I agreed to the website duties. Darn that Todd-Paul!

We also began meeting in small Sunday school groups, but within the first two months, our leader was transferred to Atlanta. Perhaps because I missed the Sunday when the vote took place, or maybe because the group saw in me something I did not yet see in myself, the group elected me to take the role of leader. I was shocked. Again, how could I be a leader of something I just started doing? I found that I loved leading Sunday school, and serving as a church leader. I was fulfilled in a way I had rarely experienced in my life.

Two years into my life at Foundery, I signed up to take Disciple Bible Study. Then, two weeks before our study began, I found myself trapped in Kimpel Hall on the University of Arkansas campus while police surrounded the building. After 45 minutes of speculation, officers knocked on our classroom door and directed us down the side stairs.

Later I learned that my graduate advisor, Dr. John Locke, had been killed by a fellow student who, like I, was pursuing a degree in comparative literature. I found myself confronting a number of questions.

Dealing with Dr. Locke’s murder forced me to ask the great questions of theodicy: Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there evil in the world? What kind of God allows these things to happen? Disciple Bible Study showed me I could ask the questions I had always had about the Bible but had assumed would get me kicked out of church if I actually voiced them.

The convergence of a serious and deep Bible study with a paradigm-changing life event and a key role as a leader in congregation led me to understand my call. I did not know why there was evil, but I did know that my God stood for peace against the chaos, and I was called to stand on God’s side. By the time we reached the spiritual gifts lesson at the end of Disciple I, I was confident I could say I was called to full-time ministry.

I finished my MDiv. at Perkins School of Theology in 2009 and have remained at SMU for a Ph.D. in Religious Studies (emphasis New Testament).  I hope to return to serve Arkansas in 2013.

My experiences at and through Foundery were instrumental to discerning my call. Could God have taken me to this point without it? I don’t know. My life makes so much more sense now, so I hope I could have arrived here in any number of ways. But Foundery opened the door, let me in when I was not so sure I was supposed to be there, and then sent me forth better equipped for the journey ahead of me. I think many of us from Foundery could say the same thing.

Foundery didn’t fail; it closed. There is a difference, and the difference is all of us.