First Saturday of Easter
Jennifer asked another tough question, "Is faith journey the same as the process of sanctification?" This question will take some time for me to reflect on. I also need to read up on John Wesley's understanding of Sanctification. My immediate answer is, "No, they are not the same." My secondary reflection is, "But they are quite similar." If I were then asked the question, "How are they different?" I would respond, "I don't know." All of which is to say that I need to think and read and think about this a lot more.
The next phase of my faith journey was teenage years and Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF). It was during this phase that I met the single most important person for the formation of my faith, Susan Lutz Allred, who at age 22 and fresh out of a Religion major at Greensboro College, became Director of Christian Education at our church, Ardmore Methodist in Winston-Salem, N.C. Many people at University UMC, including some of you, knew her at a much later point in her career, as pastor of Aldersgate in Chapel Hill.
Susan made her mark on Ardmore Church very early in her time there. She invited the choir of a Black Church to perform a Sunday night service there. This was in 1960. The reaction was predictable. Immediate calls for her resignation went unheeded by the pastor Harold Groce, who stood behind her totally.
Susan led us in turning our Senior High MYF into something astonishing. We started my freshman year with about 20 kids and ended my senior year with about 80. Throughout those years Susan never presented a single Sunday night program. We did it. She was always there, always helpful, always understanding, always on our side, always giving as just that bit of direction we needed to spring to our own successes. (I should note that it was only well after I graduated from high school and from MYF that I realized that Susan had never presented a program herself. She never mentioned it.) She understood that if we created the program, we would own it. We did. In a September weekend planning retreat at a nearby camp, we would plan the program schedule for the entire year--subjects, Bible studies, panel discussions, speakers, activities, service projects, fund raisers. You name it.
At a personal level I and a number of other kids at different points would go to church after school and hang out with Susan for an hour or so, just talking. She took us seriously, took our boyfriend-girlfriend problems seriously, took our parent problems seriously, took our faith-doubts seriously.
During my own time of doubt, she directed me to a couple of books, John A.T. Robinson's Honest to God and Paul Tillich's The Dynamics of Faith. These books led me to other theological reading and showed me that Christianity was intellectually viable. I went from being a doubter to being a defender in a few books time.
I was spiritually ready for college. I think it noteworthy that the president of our MYF my senior year, Ellen Kirby, went on after college to an important administrative position in the Women's Division of the Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church in New York. I was vice-president and went on the ordained ministry and a college teaching career in Religion. Larry Kimel, secretary of our MYF that year went on to ordained ministry and a long pastoral career in the Western North Carolina Conference.
Faithfully,
Christian
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