Our Last Sunday at Trinity

Starbucks, May 22, 2018 - Rev. Nanci Hicks, Sheila and Terrell Shaw

May 22, 2018, at Starbucks on Turner McCall at Riverside Parkway, Sheila and I met with our soon-to-be new pastor, Nanci Hicks, who had just been assigned to our congregation, Trinity United Methodist Church. I had already checked out her preaching by listening to a couple of her sermons from the website of her last appointment; I knew Nanci could preach. In the five and a half years since she has certainly been a blessing through her eloquent, Biblically-grounded, challenging, sermons. She has also been a blessing in many other ways to me and mine during the most trying times in the history of our congregation. 

Barring unforeseen occurrences, today was the last time she will preach at Trinity before it dissolves on November 30 of this year. She preached another powerful sermon. We also said goodbye to Debra Malone our talented organist/pianist and, for the last few months, choir director. We enjoyed the powerful thought-provoking music of Nanci's son Atticus who came to support his Mom today. We shared communion.  

I snuck a picture as Rev. Hicks pronounced our benediction today. That beautiful hand-carved God Is Love pulpit dates at least to before 1939 and likely to the 1800s. It includes the logo and motto of the old Epworth League of the Methodist Episcopal Church South: "All For Christ" . The Omega banner is appropriate I suppose for a day of completion.

And after the service many of us celebrated her ministry with a shared meal and fellowship. There were tears, of course, but there were also laughs and hugs.

None of us know for sure where Nanci's ministry will take her next, but she will be a blessing wherever that is. I hope it'll be somewhere close by.

Today, October 22, 2023

Barring those unlikely occurrences mentioned above, this was also our last Sunday to attend Trinity. My membership will remain until November when it, and that of each of the other 800 or so current members of Trinity United Methodist Church, evaporates. All of us will have decisions to make. I am a United Methodist so I will find a UMC congregation. We have had folks at Cave Spring UMC, Second Avenue UMC, Mt. Tabor UMC, and First UMC invite us to visit their churches. I know we'd be welcome at any of them. And I know we will find a church home. But it is a very sad day for me. I first joined Trinity in 1962. Sheila and I began singing in the choir there in 1982. I had expected to stand, as I have done so many times since 1962, in that Nativity Scene almost every Christmas Eve till my knees give completely out. I had expected my funeral to be held at Trinity UMC.

Many much-loved and influential people in my life have been Trinity folks like Burnita Burton, Jim Smith, Annie Beth Terrell, Chastine Parker, Hugh & Jeanne Holt, Bobby Storey, Brady (Buster) Drummond, Mike Burton, Lynn Popham, Sam Evans, Wint Barton, Grant Magness, Rachel Jones, Kam Malone, and pastors like James Sanders, Scobie Branson, Paul Hanna, George Freeman, David Campbell (I could go on!) and, of course, Nanci Hicks. That's not even counting my family members.  Virtually every day of my life I will pass our former church campus as I leave or return to Avenue A. There will some pain every time I see that beautiful building but that will diminish with time, like other deaths in the family. 

But (again barring something unexpected) we will find a new church home and life will go on.

I cannot pretend not to have some anger about how all this came about -- about 15% of the membership actually cast votes to disband. The General Conference should not have allowed that to be possible. But I must admit a majority voted, whether they meant to or not, by staying home from the vote. I am trying to deal with my anger in love. I truly do love many of the very folks who made this terrible decision, I believe, out of their fear and prejudice.