Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Part - 19.d.- Church

RAISIN'


19.d. CHURCH


Granddaddy and Mother Minnie were among the charter members of Millry Baptist Church. Daddy and Mrs. Louise Hill were the first additions to the church. They were both away at school on the Sunday that the church was started, so they joined the next Sunday.

Daddy and Mother were always very active in the church. Daddy served as a Deacon for over fifty years and was always ready to do engineering type chores, like drawing up plans for remodeling the old building, and reworking the drawings for the new building to make it more feasible and to fit the needs of that particular church.

He served as Head Usher for a number of years, greeting everyone as they came in by giving them the bulletin. He made sure that no one decided to sit in his special place: On the aisle end of the fifth pew from the front on the right side of the building.

Mother played piano, taught Sunday School, taught Bible School and her "thing" was to sing in the Choir. She sang in the choir until she was eighty-six. She and Claire sang a special when she was eighty-eight.

As a memorial to Mother, a fund was started and soon completed to buy new Choir robes. As a memorial to Daddy, a fund was raised to buy a new organ and piano for the church. As a memorial to Claire, a fund was raised to buy and install a stained glass window in the baptistery.


Soon after we moved to Cottage Hill, we started going to Cottage Hill Baptist Church, but didn't move our letter from Conway for quite a while. It just so happened that we joined the same day our new pastor, Don Watterson and his family did, in 1964.

Don was pretty good at remembering names of people. Well, he never forgot to call me by the name he learned mine was....Bill!

I was ordained a Deacon on October 23, 1977 at CHBC. Andy was licensed to preach by CHBC, then ordained into the ministry on November 15, 1980. Deb devoted her life to Full-time service at CHBC, and was later married there. So, CHBC has been a Large part of our family's life.

We stayed at CHBC until we moved to Oak Ridge, in 1979. So, it really is the kids "Home Church."

When we moved back to Mobile, from Oak Ridge, in 1992, we moved our letters back to CHBC. We had only two Pastors and two interim Pastors during the years at CHBC: Pastors Don Watterson and Fred Wolfe and Interims Dr. Dobbs, professor at Mobile College and Dr. Roy Fish, professor at Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dr. Dobbs really preached interesting sermons....the first time through. Being a teacher, he went over it again! During the second round, many people were asleep.

Dr. Fish filled the six-month gap when Fred Wolfe went to Lubbock, TX, then returned. He recently returned after Fred went into full-time ministry service to Pastors.

I served as Chairman of the Security Committee for several years. During that time I was responsible for having someone in the parking lots at each nighttime service and for parking, especially for special services such as Easter.

We only had one small paved lot at the time, so it was quite a chore getting folks to park in some sort of alignment to keep from blocking someone in and to utilize all the space we had to park as many cars as possible.

It was also hard to get volunteers to fill all the time slots needed for the patrol, so I spent most evening services in the lots. The Deacons finally added to the Deacons-of-the-Week duties to assist in patrolling the lot.

After we left for Oak Ridge, they split the duties of the security committee and organized a parking committee. Things are pretty well organized now, with all the paved and marked lots, and the parking committeemen are equipped with two-way radios to advise others where spaces are available.

There would be members of the security committee assigned to a week each month to be responsible for getting volunteers to assist him. The Second Sunday crew was Lucky Lutz, G H Nichols, Howard Rayburn and I. We started out going to one of our homes after Church for refreshments. That didn't work out too well, as all of us had to be at work very early on Mondays. So, we changed to having a Dinner at one of our homes each Saturday night before the second Sunday. We really enjoyed this. The ladies would decide on the menu and what each was to bring, so we always had lots of GOOOOOD food! Besides, we really enjoyed sharing our friendship.

Sadly, Howard Rayburn died last year of esophageal and liver cancer, only a short time after being diagnosed with the disease.

At Central Baptist in Oak Ridge, I served as Deacon for several years. I did quite a bit of work, first running in-house and radio broadcast sound, then working with the TV Ministry in the new building.

On the second of January, 1991, I was released from work by Rust as a large project I was to go to was cut back. I didn't find work again until September 30, 1991, when I went to work with Farnell and Associates at Courtaulds Fibers TENCEL SL1 plant.

While I was off work, I assisted in building a "Living Flag" prop for patriotic services on July fourth. I led a work crew for two weeks during the daytime hours, and then another crew would work in the evenings. When the program was performed for the second time, I had a crew of eight men, and we completely piece marked, disassembled and stored the "Flag" for future use and had the Sanctuary ready for services in one, eight hour day.

After the Flag work, I worked with Mr. Eddie Carrol, a retiree from the X-10 plant to install a complete new television system, including new control room, new cameras and I began Directing TV services for broadcast, Live on the local cable channel and for the ACTS TV network nationwide. That was really an enjoyable and a valuable learning experience that I have used in making Safety training videos for work.







No comments: