Our boy Steve

Slater Missouri is a small town in northern mid-Missouri with a population of about 2100 and today I was at First UMC there for charge conference. It is the church in the district that is farthest away from where I live. I have a soft spot for Slater (okay, I have a soft spot for all my churches.) And today that spot got even softer. Slater is one of the small towns in my district that still has its schools---elementary and high schools. It is my firm belief that when the public schools are still open in a town, there is always ministry that can be done there. Not that it can't be done when the schools consolidate with another community. It's just that when children and youth are still present in that town I know that there are unmet needs that a church has a unique opportunity and a unique responsibility to fill. One of the questions I have learned to ask when talking with a small town church about the town's schools is whether the kindergarten class or senior class if larger. I asked that this afternoon. The kindergarten class is substantially larger. Guess what that says? Slater is not dying. And the church has hope of engaging in needed and satisfying ministry.

There were probably 20 people at charge conference, pretty good for a congregation with about 35 regularly in worship. I think all but one person were over 50 in age---most over 70. They share a part time local pastor (he works full time and has two other churches on the charge.) The people in the church are lovely---many well educated, all hard workers, and having an easier time paying apportionments due to not paying a full time pastor. This afternoon, we did the pieces of business that we needed to do, and after Jess, the pastor gave his report, I asked the folks to share with me what ministries had gone well this past year. It was with delight that I heard about Meals on Wheels, the food pantry, and from one of the women who is on the board of the Saline County Habitat for Humanity. The church is in ministry and mission. That is good.

But something has been working on me about Slater for many months. I am convinced that God is calling the church to ministry is some way that I can't quite identify. It has something to do with kids. The church building is quite lovely. The town itself is well kept--there is pride in what the town has to offer. And something else. I found out tonight as I was Googling images for Slater, that Steve McQueen (the actor, not the pastor in our conference with the same name) lived with his uncle in Slater after both his mother and father abandoned him when he was six years old. Steve said about that experience,"I had to learn to look out for myself when I was a kid. I had no one to talk to. I was all alone. It taught me to be self-reliant." At twelve, he was sent to California and lived in a "home for wayward boys. "

So it got me thinking...If Steve McQueen were living in Slater, and was 8 years old today, and knew that neither of his parents wanted him; that he had been doled out to the only relative that would take him, how would these folks of the Slater church care for him today? Would he be invited to Vacation Bible School? Would someone knock on his uncle's door when they saw Steve's beat up bike out front and as him if Steve might want to come to Sunday School? Would they offer at his school to tutor him along with others who were having difficulty with reading? And if he came to Sunday School, the great thing is I think I know what would happen...one of the lovely grandmother types sitting around the table tonight would coax him in to staying for church by giving him a glazed doughnut from the Thriftway bakery, and would get him to sit by her on the pew in the back of the church, and would play tic-tac-to with him during the offering, and would ply him with Juicy Fruit during the sermon, and would show him that to sing a hymn out of the hymnal you have to follow the line back up to the beginning, and would put her arm around him when he got antsy and would make sure that he knew that she was coming out to his uncle's farm next Sunday to pick him up. and in short, let him know he was not alone and he had someone to talk to. I have a strong feeling that this is what might have happened. And if it wouldn't have happened then, I just sense somehow that this is what God is asking Slater to do now somehow. And that old Bullitt himself might be whispering a word or to to the Holy Spirit even tonight so that those good Slater folks might find the right ways and means to be who he needed then, and to be that now to other kids in the community just as much in need today.