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Sitting beside his wife, Alice, Arnie Bennett listens to a Scripture reading at a Sunday service in Bethsaida Methodist Church.
Leroy and Karen Johnston, married 52 years, share a hymnal as the small congregation of Bethsaida United Methodist Church in Madison sings together. Leroy has attended the church, which is now struggling to hold onto its membership, since around 1933.
Darlene Carpenter serves up the last of the eggs as church members enjoy fellowship after 9 a.m. worship. Conversation is light and fun as the faithful share breakfast every Sunday, even Bethsaida Methodist Church in Madison was founded more than 175 years ago, but its congregation is shrinking. The Rev. William Clayton pastors Bethsaida and two other churches. |
Last in a series on the struggles of two small, rural churches.
Sunday: The end of White Marsh
Monday: An 'agonizing' decision
BETHSAIDA UNITED Methodist Church is looking forward to revival next week.
And members hope that this upcoming week of preaching and singing will be one that not only uplifts the spirit but also revives a dwindling congregation.
Like many small churches, Bethsaida is struggling. Some in the congregation feel that Madison County's oldest Methodist church may soon be targeted for closure by the denomination's hierarchy.
"If attendance doesn't pick up, we can't keep on," member Arnie Bennett said.
Although there are 62 members officially listed on the picturesque Brightwood church's roll, members say the average Sunday attendance is less than 20.
"There are about 15 or 16 regulars," said Lucy Hoffman.
And Hoffman is quick to add that almost every person in the congregation is retirement-age or older. Young people, the future of any church, are conspicuously missing.
"About the only time we have children come is when somebody brings their grandchildren," she said.
When that happens, there is Sunday school.
"Even if only one child is here, we have Sunday school," member Darlene Carpenter said.
The adult Sunday school, however, was discontinued several years ago because of poor attendance.
It's not that Bethsaida can't draw a crowd. Members expect the little country church, which can hold about 130 people in beautifully padded pews, to be full to overflowing for its Sept. 8 homecoming service.
But when the special musicians have packed up their instruments and the country cooks have cleared away the dinner dishes, most fear the homecoming crowd will dwindle to a smattering of worshipers when revival begins the next night.
In an era when many Christians seek churches where they are best entertained, congregations like the one at Bethsaida suffer.
For example, church members say they have a crowd on fifth Sundays, when the popular Blue Valley Boys bluegrass band plays old-time gospel music. On regular Sundays, attendance struggles to reach 20.
This worries members, be-cause 20 seems to be the magic number for Methodist officials deciding whether to close or consolidate churches.
"When you get in the teens, they begin to look," said the Rev. William E. Clayton, who is starting his third year as pastor at Bethsaida.
Today, management of the United Methodist Church is divided among 65 conferences, of which the Virginia Conference is the largest. It has 1,213 churches with about 340,000 members. Four in Virginia Beach, Richmond and Northern Virginia have more than 3,000 each.
From 1995 through 2001, the Virginia Conference organized 10 new churches, merged 24 and closed 25 for a net decrease of 27 churches.
Among those closed was Corinth United Methodist Church in Northumberland County, a 41-member church that died in 1999 and is destined to begin a new life as a funeral chapel.
In June, the conference closed White Marsh United Methodist Church in Lancaster County, ending a 250-year history that goes back to the founding of Methodism in Virginia.
Clayton, a retired Navy urologist, said he has received no word from Charlottesville District officials that Bethsaida is in trouble.
"I know financially they are not in any trouble," he said. "They are able to meet their [financial] obligations and that's one of the things the Methodists look at."
Still, age is catching up to many members, and with the younger generations attending other churches, Bethsaida regulars don't know what the future holds.
Just the thought of closing the church is painful to longtime members.
"I've been going here all my life," said 80-year-old Tommy Lillard. "And except for when I was in the hospital, I've been here about every Sunday."
Lillard's heart, history and sweat are in this country chapel. For decades, his mother was an inspirational Sunday-school teacher and leader at the church.
Lillard himself has been part of a number of Bethsaida's construction projects. He remembers using a horse-drawn scoop when volunteers dug the basement in 1947.
"We'd dig and scoop dirt every evening and the women would fix supper for us," he recalled.
Others tell similar stories of Christian dedication at the historic church. They bring up names like Belle Breeden, who cleaned and made fires in the church every Sunday until age caught up with her. Then there was Allie Yeager, who faithfully walked three miles to church every Sunday until he died.
"It's awful the way our forefathers worked to build this church up and now to think [the Methodist hierarchy] might close it," Lillard said. "It's heartbreaking."
This is not the first time Bethsaida, established in 1824, has seen hard times. In 1863, Union troops invaded Madison County and members of the 120th New York infantry camped at the church.
The Yankees used the building for shelter and the pews for firewood until Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart arrived and gave them a sound thrashing.
After the war, members repaired the damaged church and used it until 1895, when it was dismantled and the current building erected.
Attendance has fluctuated greatly in the past 50 years. While the 1970s were a decade of revitalization, Bethsaida again fell on hard times in the late 1980s.
Hoffman was away from the church for a few years and couldn't believe how low attendance had fallen by the time she returned around 1988.
"I was shocked," she said. "When I came back, there were only eight or nine people here. Before I left, the church was always packed."
The congregation was in trouble then, but under the direction of the Rev. Jim Burns, who served as pastor in the mid-1990s, the congregation grew and prospered. Within a few years, the average Sunday attendance was back up to around 50.
An active congregation began to add modern conveniences to the old building. A well was drilled, bathrooms and a kitchen were built, carpet was laid and air conditioning was installed. A covered dining pavilion was erected by 1998, the driveway and parking lot paved and new pews installed.
Those pews, filled in 1999 when Bethsaida celebrated its 175th anniversary, now sit practically empty. And with the Methodist Church eyeing disintegrating congregations for possible closure, members are worried that 177 years of work will have been for naught.
The small congregation is determined, however, that it will not become extinct.
"We've been calling and doing visitations and putting notices in the newspapers," Carpenter said.
And the church has added the fifth Sunday gospel-music services at 9 a.m., followed by a brunch that includes homemade biscuits and gravy.
Clayton isn't sure what the answer to Bethsaida's dwindling congregation problem is, nor how the Methodist Church will handle the situation.
He pointed out that Virginia is one of the most heavily churched states in America and that there are eight small Methodist congregations competing for parishioners in rural Madison County alone.
"[Dwindling congregations] is not anything new," the pastor said.
What is new is the way the Methodist hierarchy looks at congregations of fewer than 20. Still, Clayton thinks Bethsaida's fears of closure are unfounded.
"There are two other churches in the county smaller than Bethsaida," he says. "[The 20 average attendance] is just a rule of thumb."
Members of the Brightwood church aren't taking any chances. This small but active group is doing everything it can to boost attendance.
With the highly regarded Burns returning to preach the homecoming service and the popular Madison County evangelist and auctioneer Henry Daniel Aylor conducting revival services Sept. 9-12, a strong corps of parishioners is hoping to bring old members back and revitalize Bethsaida Methodist Church yet one more time.
"This is my home church," Carpenter said. "I plan to be buried out in that cemetery."
