A LIFELONG MEMBER OF THE JOAQUIN METHODIST CHURCH REMEMBERS by Bro. Charles C. Freeman (age 86, Retired Local Pastor of the United Methodist Church)

A LIFELONG MEMBER OF THE JOAQUIN METHODIST CHURCH REMEMBERS

By Bro. Charles C. Freeman (age 86, Retired Local Pastor of the United Methodist Church)

The background story for this Letter can be found at:

https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2024/11/stealing-church-ending-tradition.html

My earliest memories are of sitting on the back pew of the Joaquin Methodist Church with my Mother, Britt Annie Nunley Freeman and my four older brothers Travis, Billy, J.C., and Dale (and when I was older my baby brother, Dennis).  My Mother taught Sunday School there for almost 40 years and worked in every Vacation Bible School.  Children all over the town (many now old people like me) called her “Mama Shug.”  

My Dad wasn’t a member when I was a child, but my Mother (and all the preachers) kept praying for him, and when I was thirteen and was baptized, he was baptized  with me and joined also.  All of these memories took place in the old frame Methodist Church that stood on the lot at 105 Faulkville Rd. from 1905 until 1951.

That year, 1951, my Dad, a carpenter, my brothers Billy, Dennis, and I helped the other men of Joaquin Methodist Church tear down the frame church building and erect the brick building that stands there today.   My other three brothers didn’t build because they were in the armed forces (Air Force and Army) serving our country during the Korean War.  They weren’t able to work, but they sent money to help pay for supplies.  Many Joaquin men, who were not Methodists, gave their labor or special expertise to help us.  Many in the community donated to the building project.

First ,we tore down the old building.  We saved every piece of wood and other materials from that structure.  My first job was pulling nails, so both nails and boards could be reused in the new building.  Women of the church prepared meals and served on the work site.  They also brought big jugs of fresh, cold water to the workers.

My brother Billy was the youngest and most agile of the men on the site, and he clamored to the highest point in the Sanctuary ceiling to hoist up the big exposed beams.  He also laid the shingles on the highest points of the roof.  When he later served as pastor of the church, he loved to tell funny stories about his building experiences, and remind us he was the only person who knew what the Sanctuary looked like from the top arch.

I remember so many holidays, weddings, and funerals at our church.  My brother J. C. was serving as a military policeman in the Army when we built the church.  He came home safely, but died in an accident not long after his return.  In 1955, his coffin stood at the altar under the stained-glass portrait of Jesus, as his funeral sermon was preached.  Four years later, my Grandmother, Mattie Thompson Freeman’s coffin occupied that same position in the little church.

My oldest brother Travis survived combat missions in Korea to become a Master Sargent, directing the photography team that developed photos from U-2 surveillance flights over the Soviet Union.  He was stationed in Germany and France during the Cold War.  When he died in 1964, the U.S. Air Force flew him home so he too could lie in state in our little Methodist Church, and be memorialized there.  

After almost half a century of Christian service, My Dad followed his two sons and his mother, in being buried from the little Methodist Church.  He took great pride in knowing his loved ones would bid him farewell in a church he helped to build.

My brother Billy Rae met his wife to be, Mary Lou Nixon, in Sunday School at the Joaquin Methodist Church.  They were married there in 1950, one of the last marriages in the old building.  Anne was buried after a memorial service in the church in 1989.  Billy was a teacher and coach for many years, but in 1991, he was called to the Methodist Ministry and after training as a local pastor, served the Joaquin United Methodist Church from 1992 till 2001. 

My Mother was the oldest, longest affiliated, member of the Joaquin United Methodist Church when her funeral sermon was preached to a standing-room crowd in 2005.  Her service was conducted by her nephew, the Rev. Lee Gaines Nunley of Louisiana, assisted by her two sons, Charles and Billy, both local pastors of the United Methodist Church Conference.  For much of her life she had prayed that one of her sons would become a minister.  Her prayers were not answered until late in her life, but she had two sons, not one in the ministry, before her death.

Under Billy’s ministry, four people were called from the little Joaquin congregation to become local pastors in the United Methodist Church.  These included my wife Frances and myself.  We retired from our original careers in medicine, research, and teaching, and became local pastors of the United Methodist Church, serving in both the Texas and Louisiana Annual Conferences.  

I was 13 when I joined the Joaquin Methodist Church, and 30 when I affiliated with the United Methodist Church.  Over the subsequent 55 years my wife (who became a Methodist after our marriage) and I attended and served in United Methodist Churches in five states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.  We have served as Sunday School Teachers, Youth Group Leaders and Sponsors, Trustees, Board Members, and Local Pastors.  After so many years in the United Methodist Church, I did not vote for disaffiliation, but our church is a democracy, and the will of the majority prevailed.  I cannot believe that the United Methodist Conference that I served and love, would seize and sell an historic Methodist Church, and end a Methodist tradition of almost two centuries.

I am now 86 years old.  For many years, I have assumed that my funeral would be held in the little church I helped build when I was 13.  I thought my casket would sit where my Grandmother’s, my brothers’, and my parents’ caskets had stood, before the altar and under the Jesus window.  I now face the prospect of having no home church from which to be buried.  

I only know that if the United Methodist Church seizes and sells our little church, that they have lost the spirit of John Wesley, and are unfaithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE JOAQUIN METHODIST CHURCH CAN BE FOUND AT:

https://communicatinglife2.blogspot.com/2018/05/first-united-methodist-church-of.html