Gary and Kim Shockley

The first significant crack came right out of seminary when I was appointed by the bishop to serve a three-point circuit in the Appalachian communities of north central Pennsylvania. The logging industry—once booming in these now impoverished communities—had been completely wiped out by a flood in 1912. At one time the two-mile-long lumber mill was the largest in the world. Without it the area fell into and remained in economic hardship. Though attempts were made to revitalize the area, it never recovered. Even in the mideighties, when Kim and I were living there, there was little work for people. Addiction, violence, and poverty hung over the community like a dark, impenetrable cloud. It was the roughest, rowdiest, and scariest place I had ever been. The people of the area were clannish, rugged, and brutally honest.

In the United Methodist church, clergy are appointed to their ministries by a bishop based on the needs of the local church and the particular gifts and graces of the pastor—at least that is the way it is supposed to work. I learned later that I was appointed to this parish because there was no other place for me to go.

Early on in my appointment I had to make the decision to be a bridge builder rather than a gatekeeper. A dream I had soon after my appointment solidified this for me. In my dream I was sitting on the front steps of the church. Steady streams of people were passing by. Most of them were bent over, disfigured, and dressed in rags—men, women, and children alike. As they passed by, they turned toward me and I noticed each one had the same face—the face of Jesus. I didn’t want to serve in this parish. I had never lived in a place of such poverty. I was required to be there because the bishop said so, but I didn’t want to be there—until this dream. Then I fell in love with them.

The largest of the three churches I served had about forty people attending worship on Sunday morning. My smallest church had eight. With the exception of an elderly Catholic priest who would drive in from a nearby community to lead mass on Sunday mornings, I was the only resident pastor in the entire southern part of the county. Because I served a parish of predominately older people, I had a lot of funerals. After the first six or seven of these, family members—outside of the church—who had attended one of the funerals began to ask me to lead funerals for their loved ones. By my second year I was averaging twenty-seven funerals a year. Most of these were for “unaffiliated” folks. I decided I would serve these families as if they were members of my church. In the six years of my ministry there, worship attendance grew from 40 to 120 people. We averaged twenty to thirty new professions of faith each year. Because we filled every space we could find in the church for small groups and Sunday school classes, our parsonage next door became the church annex. By our sixth year the church was filled with young families and lots of children.

When the bishop decided to visit every congregation in the Central Pennsylvania Conference (which, I believe, involved more than six hundred churches) he stopped at our church, listened to our story, and marveled at the transformation we had experienced. When he asked what was the most significant thing I had done as a pastor to encourage this growth I responded, “Funeral evangelism.” I let the funeral director know that I was willing to conduct funerals for families without a church home. I asked the women of the church—who loved to cook—to provide meals for these families in our modest fellowship hall. I coordinated visits between some of our leaders gifted with care and compassion and the families of the deceased. I watched our small, struggling church grow numerically and financially through death.

Bridge builders find ways to extend God’s love from the church into the community. Gatekeepers find ways to keep the community from coming into the church.

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Adapted from Imagining Church: Seeing Hope in a World of Changeby Gary and Kim Shockley, copyright © 2009 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.

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