The first worship service for the new Emory University Methodist Church was held on January 11, 1920, in the recently constructed Durham Chapel. Remember? The Rev. Thomas H. Lipscomb, who, like the Rev. Connor Bell, hailed from Mississippi, was the first pastor, serving also as professor of English Bible, but Bishop Warren A. Candler, chancellor of the university, preached the first sermon. You remember all that, right?
Fifty-seven people joined that first Sunday (I’m still waiting for a Sunday like that here), among them the Johnson family, the Turners, Goodyears, Meltons, Stipes, and Rev. Lipscomb’s family, of course, along with Ms. Gardner, Mr. Chan, Mr. Paik, Mr. Beeson, Mr. Starnes, and more.* Remember? I do.
I remember that first Sunday, not because I was there (I’m not THAT old), but because that day and those people are all part of the story that is now my story. And that story is yours, too. Even if you arrived at Glenn Memorial yesterday, all of the memories that fill a hundred years of history are your memories now, too. No, we haven’t arranged with the Brain Center down the street to implant anything in your head. No electrodes are needed. It’s simpler than that and more beautiful. This transference of memories is called adoption. It’s called communal identity. It’s called church.
When you join Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church, you join the story we all share. It goes way back, that story—back to circuit riders and frontier churches, the Wesley brothers and their revival, Roman roads, and traveling apostles. Remember Abraham and Sarah? That far back and farther. But this Sunday we’ll focus on the last 100 years, the good and even some of the bad.
At 11 a.m. (one service only), we will all gather in the Glenn Memorial Auditorium/Sanctuary (it was always conceived as dual purpose), where, as I’m sure you remember, worship was first held in October 1931, and there we will join in a grand celebration. Friends and family will be on hand, and former pastors will participate, along with Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson, Dean of Candler School of Theology and Interim Provost of the University Jan Love, and Emory University President Claire Sterk. And, if all goes as planned, another critically important guest will be there as well—you—in the middle of it all, praying and singing and rejoicing.
It’s so important, your presence, because who better than you to start work on the NEXT 100 years of ministry? I mean, you already have a century’s worth of experience. Remember?
In Christ,
Rev. Mark Westmoreland
*The facts I’ve shared here are from Dr. Jimmy May’s wonderful book, The Glenn Memorial Story: A Heritage of Trust. Copies are available in the church library, if you’d like to refresh your memory.