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First 150 Years u \s!#*I^JLi.%J. CSLl. ,1 ¥M.%Z%JLu\p $»JL JLc£ 1* \h^JLi.liJLJL%w'JLE ;,; 3 • • - zgsnspjf-2*L2jpix&T±_JL<h W^ ^^^ ( . : :4*fl*, NsTSfis. Sr~— ' fe* :>i. i3% ."•? .<* r rt wsejjl ^;* ** jj^& I W?7't-ito PI : - •• ' Adv. JC/ •• iy y— ift'vi •< I • ' v,f' M •••£' .fr^rwrsi ^^^J^i-Lu^Mm 1870's Map of Monroe united Methodist Church 1844 1°|C|4 HAYkjr ST. $ SUKJSET an DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES Gift Of Virginia Kendrick !n $|yy mm* mm wwnn rinnnnr* nnnnpf^ Eflsf Window in Old Sanctuary, 1902-1969 n ACTS 29: The First 150 Years Of Central Methodist Church Monroe, North Carolina 1844-1994 By Virginia A. S. Kendrick in Copyright® 1994 by Central United Methodist Church V 801 S. Hayne Street Monroe, NC 28112 704-289-3186 Library of Congress Catalog § 94-71354 Printed in USA by Delmar Printing Co. Charlotte, NC IV TABLE OF CONTENTS page Introduction vi Preface ix Chapter 1: 1 Central's Beginnings: From Wesley to 1865 Chapter 2: 14 The Young Church Struggles: 1865-1871 Chapter 3: 21 The Church's Gradual Growth: 1871-1874 Chapter 4: 26 Methodism Grows With Monroe: 1874-1894 Chapter 5: 34 Momentous Changes: 1895-1905 Chapter 6: 42 Missionary Spirit: 1905-1918 Chapter 7: 48 Expansion of the 1902 Church: 1919-1923 Chapter 8: 54 Our Missionary Family in Japan Chapter 9: 61 A Problem Debt: 1923-1941 Chapter 10: 74 The Forties: 1941-1950 Chapter 11: 89 Prelude to a New Church: 1951-1970 Chapter 12: 105 A Modern Church for a Modern Ministry: 1971 to present Appendices: 144 Central Methodist Preachers 145 1871 Roll of Church Members 148 Tribute to T D. Winchester 149 Reverend Ware's Pastoral Letter 150 Central's Veterans 151 Symbols in our Church 155 Present Officers of our Church 158 List of Present Members 161 Index 169 INTRODUCTION One person's dream becomes another person's heritage. History may have no larger commission than to affirm that. The past not only reveals the footprints that led us to the moment but suggests as well the directions the future must take to contain the moment's fondest dreams. In his essay "Self-Reliance" Ralph Waldo Emerson remarks that "an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man." Today we would add "or woman," but more accurately to assess the institution that has become Central United Methodist Church, we would want to say, "several men and women." The dream that became our heritage was — and is — a progression in which each "dreamer" took his or her heritage and formed a new dream as a fresh legacy. A Methodist Society "over Winchester's store" became Monroe Methodist Episco- pal Church (1844), which, at the General Conference of that year in New York City, became Monroe Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which became Central Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1897), which became Central Methodist Church (1939), which became Central United Methodist Church (1968). This heritage we celebrate after a century and a half is the continued and expanding dream of more persons than we will ever be able to count. A large part of our sesquicentennial celebration of Central United Methodist Church is the publication of this History. Church history is the Church remembering itself. Gratitude, per- haps the most demanded and least practiced virtue in historiography, is the natural precipitate of honest memory. When in his work on heroes and worship of them, Thomas Carlyle declares history to be biography, he has in mind the lives of prominent leaders and others whom history records as heroes. The history of the Church is more accurately the biography of all who have served it, whose service sustained it and whose dreams became a part of our heritage. Most of Central Church's "heroes" were lay men and women. That remains true today and will be true tomorrow. Pastors tend to receive too much credit for the Church's successes — and sometimes too much blame for what is perceived as failures — when in truth, while pastors come and go, the Church abides. Laypersons are the staying power of a congregation, and that we celebrate now with profound gratitude. The dreams of countless laypersons became my heritage as a pastor, here and in other places — any good pastor would affirm this — and to affirm that was always a part of my dream. The Church is persons — faces, names, lives — and the Church is not the Church merely when it is assembled and practicing its vi collective religion. Wherever an individual member is acting on her faith, whether Sunday, Tuesday or Saturday, the Church is visible and alive. I would like to think that it was not mere co-incidence that Union County, the town of Monroe, and Monroe Methodist Church were all established at about the same time. Some of the same people were working to establish all three, Christian men and women acting out their faith and able therewith to know that in community, whether religious, political or civic, people find larger security and more vital good. It is still true in Monroe, and other places, of course, that leaders in local churches are also active contributors to their larger communities. As I write this, a dozen observations remind me that today is Veterans Day, 1993: flags waving on front porches; newspaper colum- nists remembering the wars whose veterans sustained our right to wave flags and, as some say, to burn them; news accounts of a new memorial to women's participation in the nation's struggles; and video accounts of the traditional presidential wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I make such remarks as a demonstration to a point: any church which gathers as a congregation for worship and instruction also scatters — singly or by two or more — to give the same congregation, as well as the Church Universal, expression in all its many forms. In Central's story which follows, one of the longest chapters will tell of the 1940's as a time of the congregation's busy involvement in a critical decade of its history and America's. The scores of Central's youth who marched away in uniform and the several who died in battle were no less the Church at Normandy and Iwo Jima than when teaching a class or attending worship on peaceful Sunday mornings. And as men and women of other states, other towns, other churches came to Camp Sutton near Monroe, perhaps to await their own turn at war, Central Church served them in many ways, opening its facilities and its volunteers to make, as nearly as possible, a home for them while they were away from their own. Wherever its members' compassion become an expression of faith and a show of love and concern, whether collectively or scattered, there is the visible Church responding to the call of its Lord. It cannot, I believe, be overstated: the religion we practice at its designated places and in its appointed times may or may not have much to do with the faith we practice in all the places we live. Carlyle Marney once remarked that a person is always like his/her lord. Jesus said it much earlier in a different way: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6: 21). Whatever is most treasured in one's life, whether gold, status, power, or the eternal Christ, is free to practice lordship over the same life. It is simply impossible to live a Christian life in the temple, for one lives so little of one's life there. Surely, it is truth that we do what we vn truly believe. And since what we do is largely done in daily living, there will be seen what treasures our lives seek, what lord our lives follow. It is lives lived with Christ as Lord which tell Central United Methodist Church's true history. That history is the biographies of all the members who followed faithfully the lead of Christ and became the Body of him who is Head of the Church. Thus, because Central's members, for a century and a half, have scattered into every corner of the life they shared in common, our celebration of Central's history is a celebration as well of Monroe City, Union County, North Carolina, the United States of America, and Earth itself. A Christian may find peace in the thought that God does not demand our guarantee of results in the Church, whether the Church is acting collectively in its place or individually in its scattering. God's only requirement is that those who are the Church be faithful in the tasks to which they are called. If the goals the Church sets for itself are compatible with the eternal and indestructible Purpose God has revealed in Jesus Christ, the Word that sends us, as suggested in the Old Testament, will not return empty and without meaning. Such faith sought and practiced was the dream of that century and a half we now celebrate and is the heritage we do well to accept. What our children's children's children celebrate in the year 2144 will be another 150 years whose glory was begun in the dreams we establish upon our heritage. We will be appropriately grateful to the past if and when the future finds grounds for similar gratitude to us. But the ultimate gratitude in any century, where the Church remembers itself, is to almighty God, who called the Church into being as the People of God, gave it ministries worthy of divine Purpose, and promised to be with the faithful to the end of every age.

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