Moving into a World House through United Methodist Volunteers In Mission

I graduated from Candler School of Theology in the spring of 1977 with a master of Divinity degree.  I was ordained an Elder in the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church that June.  I was appointed to serve the Coaling and Woodstock United Methodist churches.  They were located between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.  Preaching, Bible study, choir practice and pastoral care was nowhere close to a fulltime work load there. I was very much into church growth there. It was the current trend in ministry. It was mostly assimilating folks who looked and thought like you into church membership.  That was a limited field to harvest and there was not much success.  Both congregations were family congregations with a long history in their communities.  Even with two churches it was not much of a work load.  I missed the stimulating engagement with the seminary professors and other students.

One of the leaders in the Woodstock UMC was the principal of the Brookwood Elementary School.  He was looking for teachers and was impressed with Nancy and encouraged her to apply for a teaching position there.  Her application was successful and she began teaching there in the fall of 1977. She continued to teach there in the Tuscaloosa County School System until she retired in May of 2000. 

Nancy had been active in the United Methodist Women since we married.  She had served as the president of the unit at Forrest Lake United Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa while I was in the Engineering School there. We were now back in the Tuscaloosa District and Nancy became connected with the District and Conference United Methodist Women again.  One of the United Methodist Women leaders at the Woodstock United Methodist Church served on the District Mission Team.  She asked Nancy if she would take the district office of Christian Personhood as the result of a mid-year resignation.  Nancy agreed to serve in that position.  Nancy’s sister Harriett Ann Williams was serving on the Conference Mission Team of the United Methodist Women at the time. She also served on the North Alabama Conference Cooperative School of Mission Planning Team. The North Alabama Conference Cooperative School of Mission had never taught the “How to Teach Mission to Children.”  Harriett Ann being aware of Nancy’s skill as an educator and her passion for the needs of children recruited her to begin teaching the children’s studies in North Alabama. Nancy began teaching them in 1978 and continued for many years.  Nancy’s excitement about this mission education opportunity and our conversations about the powerful experiences she was having at Regional Schools of Mission began to trigger a great deal of interest in me.  Aware that I could meet my need for continuing education credits by participating in the Conference Cooperative School of Christian Mission, I began to develop a strong interest in participating.  I attended the Cooperative School of Christian Mission as the teacher’s husband in 1979. I was deeply enriched by the quality of the courses and highly inspired for the global mission of the church through the experience.

After one of the plenary session that year the Rev. Austin Boggan challenged me to lead a Volunteer Mission Team to Iquique, Chili to rebuild a Methodist Church building that had deteriorated to the point that it had been condemned by the local authorities and could no longer be used by the church for worship, study and fellowship.  Austin shared the need of the church in Iquique and the responsibilities of a Volunteer In Mission Team Leader with me.  The building project was exciting to me and resonated with my engineering experience.  I knew I could handle the construction work and team leadership.  When I worked for the Alabama Power Company I had served as the team leader for two Alabama Power Company line crews that were deployed to the Mississippi coast following hurricane Camille and understood how to manage and direct that work for several weeks.  I was very successful in the effort.  However Alabama Power Company supplied the personal and resources for the task.  For this Volunteer In Mission Work I would have to recruit the personnel for the team and financial resources for travel and construction materials.  The magnitude of those tasks seemed absolutely impossible to me.  I told Austin that I would pray about it; which was more of a response to delay saying no, than any commitment to see if it was the will of God for me.

I was moved to find a quiet place to pray about this challenge to lead a mission team to Chili.  I went to the Elna Sanderson Deck behind the Eva Walker Lodge there at Camp  Sumatanga where our Schools O Christian Mission were held.  I sat on the built in benches on the deck under the short leaf pine trees growing out of the large rocks behind the deck.  Prayer for me is more about listening than pleading, interpreting rather than manipulating.  In the quiet there I looked up into the limbs of the short leaf pine trees and saw an amazing sight.  There were some small spiders in the limbs of the trees.  They were jumping off of the limbs of the short leaf pine tree on my left and spinning a thin single strand of web behind them and the light breeze that was blowing was carrying them to the short leaf pine trees on my right.  One after another they would jump and sail to the limbs of the adjacent tree.  I was lost in awe at their willingness to risk such a thing.  Then impressed on my consciousness was this word from God, “Lawton if those spiders can trust me to ump and sail from one tree to another, you can trust me to carry you to Chili and back.”  Empowered by that word from God, I got up to go find Austin and tell him I would accept the challenge to lead the Volunteer In Mission Team to Iquique Chili; but before I got off of the Elna Sanderson Deck, God said something else to me, “Lawton you see that freshly poured and set concrete side walk around the side of the Eva Walker Lodge?”  I said, “Yes.”  God said, “Lawton can you trust that sidewalk and walk on that sidewalk?” I said, “Sure, what a silly question, of course I can.” Then God said, “Lawton you can trust my Word, you can walk on it.”

Immediately after that School of Christian Mission I returned home and began to make the needs of the Church in Iquique, Chile known in every channel of relationships I had in the connectional church of the Tuscaloosa District of the United Methodist Church and beyond.  I communicated the cost of the mission trip for travel and other related expenses for each individual team member and the total amount of construction money we needed to raise for the project. It was a joyful experience to participate in the response God gave in accordance with the promises received on the Elna Sanderson deck behind the Eva Walker Lodge at Camp Sumatanga.  The team was filled with the number of missioners with the needed skills and the full amount of construction money was raised.  At the appointed time we landed on the air strip in Iquique Chile, where we were met by Kay and Ed Bowers, the United Methodist Missionaries serving the Iquique English College, a secondary school established by the United Methodist Church.  Most importantly we were received in love by the church community there.  In a foreign country, a foreign culture, with a foreign language we were at home in Jesus there.  We worshipped together, we sang together, we ate together, we worked together; an awesome spiritual experience.

The construction task we had been assigned was to pour the foundation for the new church building.  The members of the Iquique church were to have taken down the old building and cleared the site for the foundation work.  When we arrived the demolition work had not been started much less completed.  Their old church building was a too significant part of their past for them to have the capacity to take it down.  Our presence gave the gift to move beyond the past into the possibility of a new future and together we took the building down. 

Iquique Chile is located in the Atacama Desert where it never rains.  It was a completely new and challenging experience to be in a barren mountainous desert where it never rains. In Iquique it never rains.  This is so radically different from Alabama where all the mountains are covered with trees.  Because there are no trees all the wood for building had to be shipped in by boat.  The lumber for the old church building came to Iquique as ballast for the ships that would carry copper and other raw materials back to the West Coast of the United States.  That lumber was a precious thing.  We took it down one piece at a time, removed the nails and stacked it for use in the new building.

Iquique is located on the beautiful Pacific Ocean surrounded by the desert mountains.  One evening after a hard days work we climbed one of the mountains with no trees south of the city. Most of the trip was made by car.  At the end of the road we made another 200 yards or so and found a place to worship together.  It was an evening whose beauty was beyond words. It was the time of the full moon.  As we celebrated the Lord’s Supper together we experienced a Holy Communion with one another, the Lord and all of His creation. The huge full golden moon was rising in the east over the Andes Mountains and the flaming red sun was setting in the Pacific Ocean.  Below us to the north was the jewel of the city of Iquique with its lights beginning to sparkle as it sat above the sand dragon at the foot of the mountain.  We knew ourselves to be one in the Lord.

At home again we told the story of the love and joy experienced by risking ourselves to be sent on a mission of the Christ.

A year or so later Bob and Rosa Caufield, General Board of Global Ministries missionaries to Bolivia were itinerating in their home conference, the North Alabama Conference. At the time they were serving in the Alto Beni region of Bolivia.  At one of their mission interpretation programs at a church in the Tuscaloosa District, Bob shared that they were in need of electricity at the dormitory for the mission school located about a mile and a half from their mission home.  The children there had to study by candle light in the evening; a considerable barrier to their success in school.  At the end of the program I shared my business card with Bob and my history as an electrical power distribution engineer and my willingness to put together a United Methodist Volunteer In Mission Team to help with the work of installing a power system to meet his needs.

It was not many months later that I heard from Bob.  He had purchased two used diesel powered 120/240 volt electric generators from a US contractor who was building roads in Bolivia.  Bob wanted me to organize a Volunteer In Mission Team to come to Bolivia to install the generators and build the power line and install transformers to get electricity to the children’s dormitory. I agreed to come.

Following the pattern of team development and fund raising for the Iquique project, I went to work.  The team came together including a diesel mechanic and a good number of hard working men and women.  The required funds were raised.

When we arrived in Bolivia we discovered that the US contractor had sold Bob a pile of junk.  The diesel engine and generators were slap worn out. We finally got one of the two grnerators to run using parts from the other.  We build the mile and a half of the overhead single phase power line with a ladder truck we build ourselves on an old flatbed truck with an engine with a head that Bob had glued together with super glue so that it would run using untreated poles. The children had lights at night for a while, how long I don’t know.

We met some wonderful Bolivian people; a pastor and his wife who worked night and day serving the needs of the sheep for whom Christ had died.  They lived in a small one room house with a dirt floor.  They taught me what being a servant of Christ means. Their faithfulness reoriented my ministry to serving the needs of the poor and marganilized and not seeking a career among the affluent.  The Letter from the Birmingham City Jail began to make a great deal more sense to me in this context.

I had a deeply held stereotype that South American people were lazy people.  That stereotype was shattered on this trip as I observed strong dedicated people working from dusk to dark raising pineapples on the sides of steep mountains.  I understood how blessed we are in Alabama to raise crops on flat rich river bottom land.  Their productivity was not limited by their lack of intelligence and hard work; it was limited by the natural resources at their disposal and the left over junk they had to work with.  I had washed in the pool called sent and could see new realities (John 9).

During this time I was grateful to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for the privilege to serve as the Chairperson of the North Alabama Conference Task Force for United Methodist Volunteers in Mission.  I worked with the Rev. Tom Curtis who led the Southeastern Jurisdiction United Methodist Volunteers in Mission (SEJUMVIM).  We received guidance from them to ensure the effectiveness of our North Alabama UMVIM Teams and to make connection with Christian communities in third world countries that were interested in receiving volunteer work teams to strengthen their ministries of love and justice.  The SEJUMVIM was an invaluable resource. The annual gathering at Lake Junaluska was a great spiritual joy and technical resource for all of us involved in this lay mission of the church.

The Spirit of Christ places a yearning in all our congregations to be in mission.  How could it be otherwise given the Great Commandment and the Great Commission?  Ms. Mary Jack McNeal, a member of the McCoy United Methodist Church in Birmingham had parents that were missionaries and in their memory regularly gave money to a mission fund at the McCoy Church.  The money accumulated across the years and was never used. Rev. Tom Curtis with SEJUMVIM made us aware of a need in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.  The church there needed help building a school for children in one of the more seriously economically depressed areas of that city.  Mary Jack and the McCoy Church were willing to use the mission fund to provide seed money for the project.  Dr. Neal Berte President of Birmingham Southern College was also interested in the project and wanted Dr. Stewart Jackson, Birmingham Southern College Chaplain to participate to gain invaluable experience as the college was preparing to develop their international service learning program.  The team was successful in all of its goals. 

Members of the team stayed in the homes of the members of the church in Santo Domingo.  I had the privilege of staying in the home of a professional accountant.  Every evening after dinner he would share with me the pain of the economic oppression of the people of the Dominican Republic by the multinational sugar corporations based in the United States.  He showed me from every angle why the people of the Dominican Republic could not work their own land to raise sugar cane, but had to work for the multinational corporations at starvation wages.  He demonstrated to me over and over why the harder they would work on their own land the more money they would lose and would eventually lose their land if they worked it.  The price for seed, fertilizer, equipment, the interest rates on loans, the monetary exchange rates, the tariffs, and market prices were controlled in such a way to guarantee that they would lose money on every pound of sugar, no matter how many pounds they produced.  I think about the lessons I learned in the Dominican Republic about economic justice every time I buy cheap sugar at the grocery store.  I also renew my commitment to the mission of the church as justice not charity. 

Reverend Curtis with the SEJUMVIM made me aware of need in Juarez Mexico. They needed construction teams to help build a school for children in their city.  We were beginning to take more seriously the need to build relationships and understanding with the church community that was requesting Volunteer In Mission assistance before we began recruiting teams.  This reconnaissance work would help in our ability to share love for one another across cultural barriers and to enable more efficient and effective work to complete the projects. Harold Wilson, a member of the Forrest Lake United Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa was active in our conference VIM Task Force.  When he heard about the possibility of a project in Juarez Mexico he suggested that we do a road trip, driving to Juarez, to check out the work and begin building a strong relationship.  I agreed.  Beth Ann, Nancy’s and my daughter wanted to make the trip with us. So we arranged for her to get out of school for several days, an excused absence because of the educational value of the trip to Juarez Mexico.  So we got up early and left.  Harold’s religious orientation bordered on what Jon Wesley termed enthusiasm. He had the three of us listening to the whole New Testament on tape as we traveled in his car across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.  Harold had family in Dallas Texas and we spent the night with them and were off again.  We made the border crossing without any difficulty and arrived in Juarez.  There was great need there.  United Methodist Volunteer In Mission work purified my conscience to see and feel the call to support the worlds peoples struggling to be all they could be.  The project there was a very large one.  It was beyond the resources that we could provide at the time.

We made a discovery there that broke our hearts.  This heartbreak also contributed to our decision not to accept the project for the North Alabama Conference UMVUM.  A US corporation had donated steel beams to be used for the ceiling joists in the construction of the building.  The community in Juarez had discovered that the steel was radioactive.  It could not be used.  If it were used all the children would have ben exposed to harmful levels of radiation while they were in school.

We were warmly received by the church there and shown loving hospitality.  They treated us to a wonderful lunch.  We ate at a small local restaurant.  We were served the most delicious chicken soup.  The finely chopped vegetables, green onions, celery, tomatoes yellow and green squash were brought to us in heavy round well-worn ceramic bowls.  Then they served the boiling rich well-seasoned chopped boned chicken and broth that was ladled into the bowl over the vegetables, creating the most awesome chicken soup one could ever desire. After lunch we spent some time in local shops purchasing some souvenirs. Then we were off for the long ride home.

After Juarez came the Jones Chapel United Methodist Church in Jackson Gap Alabama.  Jones Chapel is a historically and totally Black United Methodist Church in the North Alabama Conference.  The condition of that church facility, the fruit of the 1901 Alabama Constitution and the Jim Crow it made legal, was worse than anything we saw in Chili, Bolivia, The Dominican Republic and Mexico.  The roof leaked rivers of water when it rained.  There was a potbellied stove in the center of the sanctuary for heat.  The building was unpainted, bleached gray by the weathering of the years.  The building was sitting on square brick foundation columns that gave the appearance that one shove and it would fall into a heap of rubble. The wooden steps were warped and broken, the hand rail wobbly.  This facility was holy ground for a vital worshipping people, where they expressed their love to God and were strengthened by the Spirit in their struggle for life.  They requested a new modern building for their community.  We said yes!

Jackson Gap Alabama is located east of Lake Martin, north of Dadeville, just east of Highway 280.  In developing the structure to organize the volunteer in mission teams needed to construct a new church building for the Jones Chapel United Methodist Church we made an appointment with the pastor and lay leadership of the Dadeville United Methodist Church to make arrangements for work teams from around the North Alabama Conference to stay in their fellowship hall as they contributed skill and labor for the construction of the new facility at Jones Chapel. They declined to host the work teams.  The fundamental reason for the decline was their fear that there might be some black people on some of the teams.  They did not want blacks in their church.  This response is typical of many if not most white United Methodist Churches in the North Alabama Conference.  When it comes to racial inclusiveness, our conference and its lay and clergy leadership is more faithful to defending the values of the 1901 Alabama Constitution than defending the values and teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Based on the response of the Dadeville United Methodist Church we decided to recruit teams that were in driving distance for a one day work time or to teams that could use campers that could be parked on site.

In many ways the Jones Chapel project in Jackson Gap was the most challenging project that I had the privilege to organize.  In a sense the North Alabama Conference United Methodist Volunteer In Mission Task Force (NACUMVIM Task Force) was the organizer of the work teams and the fund raiser, as well as the host organization for the work teams.  Local projects always carry this double burden and require extra time and effort. The church or agency receiving the teams has to be organized and trained to receive teams and the work teams have to be recruited and trained to do the work and the money has to be raised for construction materials and travel.  The capacity of a volunteer organization to effectively accomplish all this detailed and important work is never adequate and causes difficulty and creates serious problems that have to be overcome.

Prior to the NACUMVIM Task Force’s involvement in the project, other groups had prepared the ground and constructed the forms for a concrete slab to be poured for the new building.  A careful visual investigation of the forms and site preparation for the slab indicated that it was in good shape.  We then began raising money and recruiting the teams needed to complete the concrete slab.  We were successful.  The required materials were purchased and we arrived as early as possible to put down the reinforcing wire and be prepared for the cement trucks that were scheduled to arrive by 12N.  We met our schedule and were ready to pour.  1PM arrived and no cement trucks.  We called and they informed us that they were behind schedule but would be on site before 2:30PM.  Thirty minutes after we called a huge thunderstorm blew in.  It poured rain, a real gully washer.  The team that was to pour and finish the slab left.  “They are certain to not bring the concrete in the rain,” they said and headed home.  It did not rain in Alexander City at the cement plant.  We called to try to cancel, but the trucks were on the way.  30 minutes after the pouring and finishing team left the two cement trucks came rolling up the gravel road to the construction site.  They would not take the cement back.  We had to pay for it whether we used it or not.  They would dump it on the ground there at the site if we did not put it in the forms. 

The two of us that were left looked at one another and said, “Well let’s try to pout it.” The hard rain had made the construction site a muddy, slippery place.  The cement trucks could only get to the front right corner of the forms.  We had to use wheelbarrows to move the cement to the back and other side of the forms.  That was the hardest day of work I have ever done in my life.  I expected to fall dead and be buried in the wet heavy cement at any moment.  Moving wet cement with wheelbarrows and hand shovels and finishing it with long handled wooden finishers is exhausting work.  We finished and were finished about dark.  We collapsed and had to rest an hour before the drive home.

A month or so after we finished the slab the team showed up to put up the walls and trusses for the building.  Mid-morning the day they arrived I received a call from the team leader.  He said, “Lawton did you know the back right hand corner of the slab you poured is 8 inches lower than the front left hand corner?”  “We can’t put the walls up on that slab.”  I was devastated and heart sick.  They said they were headed back home.  I was depressed for days.  The good appearance of the forms and preparation for the slab had caused us to accept without checking the level of the forms with a transit.

With the help of the Lord and the support of the NACUMVIM Task Force leadership strength was regained, money raised, teams recruited to form up and re-pour the slab to make it level.  The form was well checked this time and an adequate crew was present to pour the level slab.  It was poured on top of the unlevel one making sure the thickness on the high corner was adequate to keep it from flaking off.

The team we recruited to put up the walls and trusses had suggested to me that they could build the trusses for the building for much less expense than purchasing prefab ones.  After much consultation we agreed for them to proceed with the plan for them to build the trusses.  They assured us they had built a lot of trusses like the ones needed for the Jones Chapel facility.  They completed their work and it looked good.

Two or three months later the team arrived to put on the siding and roof decking for the building.  I got a call that morning from the team leader.  “Lawton did you know the trusses have sagged and the walls on both sides of the building are out a foot and a half. It looks like the whole building is ready to fall in.”  They said they would stack and cover the materials on the slab and asked me to call them when I figured out what I was going to do.  I was not ready for another such call.  I was ready to give up on the whole project.  But after a few days I gathered my strength and drove down to Jackson Gap to check out the situation.  It was like they reported it to be.  I called a dear friend and longtime builder and UMVIM team leader, Mr. Ed Cowden from the Palmerdale United Methodist Church for help. Ed had led many UMVIM mission teams to Haiti for many years.  Ed figured out a way to use cables to pull the walls plum and to reinforce the trusses so that the framing would have the necessary strength to hold up the building.  The team returned and put on the siding and roof decking.  The windows were installed and the electrical wiring completed.  The building was finished and dedicated.  It provided a dry warm and safe building for the Jones Chapel United Methodist Church in Jackson Gap Alabama to worship God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and to fellowship in the Holy Spirit. 

I am sure that many projects all over the world suffered the deficiencies and challenges faced at Jackson Gap Alabama.  But all of them, like us were grateful for the gifts and services offered.  And by the support of the Holy Spirit and the Grace of God in Christ Jesus working through it all needs were met for the world house of the family of God.