McLemore Christian. I know Lindenwood well.
Well, shoot, I knew you were a good ’un!
My mom’s family started in a Methodist church somewhere around Linden Avenue, but there was a doo-dah about the Wednesday evening meals, and my grandmother left in a huff for Linden Avenue Christian Church, which moved and became Lindenwood. My parents and aunt and uncle (actually, two aunts and uncle, after my uncle’s first wife died) were married there, and all us kids were baptized there, and husband #1 and I were married at my mom’s house by the minister there.
Disciples story: the first time my mom cane to visit in Knoxville, we went to church (First Christian Church, 5th and Gay.) I skipped choir that day to sit out in the congregation with her. When the time came to pass the communion dishes, she nearly dropped the “wine” (Welch’s grape juice.) Lindenwood had long since moved to aluminum collection plates, for fear of theft, while we still had silver. She wasn’t used to the weight of the silver as it came through.
I was appointed as a deacon (I dunno, I must have been out of the room at the crucial time), and this coincided with our new snow-white choir robes. I served communion up in the choir loft, and my silent diaconal prayer was always, “Please Lord, don’t let me spill the grape juice on the new choir robes.”
I know many will doubt this, but I’m still very much a Christian, in my own semi-wacko-Disciples way. We are defiantly non-creedal, and I like it that way. I’d rather try to figure out what - on an hourly basis - the Holy Spirit is trying to tell me, than slavishly follow what someone up in the pulpit tells me I must do.
—always happy to hear educated guidance from whomever is up there, but in Disciples tradition, it’s guidance, not do-this-or-be-damned.
Pesky Campbellites!
