Home Sweet Home: Easter Sunday at Lenora UMC

I serve a risen Savior.

He's in the world today.

I know that He is with me,

whatever foes may say.

I see His hand of mercy,

I hear His voice of cheer,

and just the time I need Him, He's always near!

 

He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today!......

 

    I stood in the second pew on the left-hand side of the Lenora United Methodist Church on Easter morning singing one of our favorite hymns and knowing I was home. This tiny church of my childhood, nestled on a bend in the road where the town of Lenora used to be holds the memories, the people, the faith, and the love that made me who I am, and I couldn't imagine celebrating this most holy of holy days anywhere else.

A drawing of the original church building.

 

    Growing up, the little church sat down the "hill" a bit where it had first been built by the Disciples of Christ in 1903.  It was there that generations of hard-working farm families worshipped and worked to maintain a congregation through good times and bad. By 1950, when my grandmother married my grandfather and moved to the JV Flats south of Lenora, the little church had undergone a tent-revival inspired transformation and became part of the Union Baptist denomination.  By the late 1960's, though, the struggle to find ministers became such a burden that the members of the church took my grandmother's suggestion to look into the United Methodist Conference and upon hosting a dinner and informational meeting with the District Superintendent from Clinton, the district agreed to sponsor the church as a mission church and provide a minister as well as much of his salary until the church could establish a firm foundation with a Methodist congregation. In time, Lenora United Methodist Church became a dual parish with the Vici UMC and to this day, the two churches work together to fund a pastor who provides leadership for both church communities.

    In the late 1990's, members of the church voted to build a new church building due to the dilapidation of the nearly century old original, so a beautiful new metal church was erected just west of the old church on land generously donated by the family of Norman Morris. Simple white with trim of blue and stunning hand-made stain-glassed windows, the church remains quaint in size but hosts a kitchen and fellowship hall large enough to provide for any and all who enter. From funeral dinners to teacher's luncheons to an annual stew and chili dinner and auction, this little church on the plains is a church of the community not just the congregation. The money raised during the auction provides for the needs of any of God's children, and people of the surrounding communities and churches come out in droves to support the works of the Lenora United Methodist Women, knowing that through this faithful organization, they will be helping friends and neighbors with needs big and small and will be making a difference in their lives.

    And so on Easter morning in 2015, it is for the most part, the families of these original followers of Christ who fill the pews and sing the same old hymns and greet one another in the name of the Lord. It is these families who lift one another in prayer and show up to help in times of need, who celebrate one another's joys, and spend time simply enjoying one another's company. It is these families that know your name and your parent's names and their parent's and on and on, and with so much history and love between you, it is difficult to find this feeling anywhere but here. And on Easter Sunday, it is these families whose children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren gather together to hear the resurrection story and hunt eggs in the tall prairie grass and rejoice to serve a risen Savior!

    If you decide one Sunday to come Steeple Chasing here, don't expect to slip in and out unnoticed.  Be prepared to shake some hands and answer some questions and help yourself to the snacks on the counter. Grab a cup of coffee and have a seat and linger a while after church. Share in some laughter and good-natured teasing and before long you'll no longer be a stranger but a part of the family:  the family of God, the family of the Lenora United Methodist Church, my family, and yours.