Grace United Methodist Church, Saint Louis, Missouri, September 13, 2019

Dale Patterson’s report—a summary can be found in the Late Fall issue of the 2019 Historian’s Digest.History of Grace UMC was offered by John Wright. This church was on a different street, close to the cathedral—along a main thoroughfare. The congregation decided to build west where people were moving. Brick by brick, the foundation was moved to this present location.The character of the congregation has changed with the neighborhood. The chapel was built in the 1950s. In the 1960s white flight impacted Delmar Baptist, Grace, and the Catholic Churches. They were hardly speaking with each other. But the neighborhood has stabilized thanks to the University, which owns most of housing. Now the three congregations work together holding a joint carnival in the Catholic school yard. Church members began to embrace the neighborhood. Most of the wealthy members have died. The city had 900,000 people down to 318,000.The associate pastors’ house was where the parking lot is now. There was an early childhood program and a vibrant youth program—but not as many kids in the neighborhood. At one time the church owned a van to bring students to church—more African American and Asian kids walk from campus now. The church has served as temporary homes as Koreans, Somalians, and others use the sanctuary until they can establish their own churches. Women are active, youth group is growing—some of the former youth are here with their kids. John’s first African American families who joined the church. Multiracial/multi-cultural now. About ten years ago a gay pastor was invited to talk about her relationship—lost a few members then. Now there is a clear statement of inclusion. Worship attendance is growing with two services. Both are the same. Tried contemporary worship, but it wasn’t embraced. The building was rehabbed a few years ago. The neighborhood is more diverse, but property values are going up leading to gentrification. Outreach includes food pantry; share the building with other churches; 12-step.John Finley mentioned picking up records from Union—this was an expansion of Union—a satellite congregation. Union put up a Union flag on their steeple during the Civil War. Germans moved to IL Conference—rest of the state went southern.Ivan then noted that this was the thirtieth anniversary of the Historical Society of the UMC and called on Pat Thompson to give a brief overview of the history of the organization. It was not until 1968 and the organization of the United Methodist Church that General Conference finally mandated an agency to care for the history and the records of the Church—the General Commission on Archives and History. Prior to that, for many years, there were individual historical societies across the denomination—some conference-wide, some located in larger cities. In 1923 the Association of Methodist Historical Societies was formed to coordinate the work of the societies. Other predecessor denominations also had historical societies as well.In 1940 General Conference did officially recognize the Association of Methodist Historical Societies and encourage that group to arrange for branches in the jurisdictions. In 1968 when GCAH was mandated as one of the general agencies, General Conference also made provisions for the organization of a denomination-wide historical society. The first annual meeting was held 1989 at Lake Junaluska with the largest attendance that we have ever had at one of the meetings. There were over 1,000 charter members at the time. Since then, we have held meetings across the country from Boston, MA, to Chicago, IL, to Portland, OR, and Seattle, WA, and most recently in Anchorage, AK, as well as in Delaware, the Carolinas, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, and Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Colorado. In 2004 we even met in Kingston, ON, Canada.Every four years we have held a major convocation that focused on some major aspect of Methodist history, including Knowledge and Vital Piety, one on Charles Wesley, one on John Wesley, and one at St. Simons Island in Georgia that focused on the various studies funded by the Lilly Foundation that led to a series of books by Russ Ritchie, Jean Miller Schmidt, Ken Rowe, and others. We have focused on African American and Native American history as well. Originally there were sections: local church history, genealogy, commissions and historical societies, and education and research with a section eventually added for archivists. These became rather bulky and difficult to manage and gave to a Program Committee with responsibility for planning activities and programs of various interest to the members. Historian’s Digest, which was originally a EUB publication, became the newsletter for the Society, published three or four times per year.Over the years, the Society has brought alive both denominational and local United Methodist History to a broad audience of friends and members in a combination of scholarly presentations, discussion groups, and tours of local UM history sites to help us celebrate the Ministry of Memory in new and exciting ways. The Historical Society has also developed two annual awards to supplement the GCAH Distinguished Service Award—the Ministry of Memory Award, which recognizes the work of individuals, and the Saddlebag Selection, which recognizes publications of value to the UMC.Following introductions, eighteen people were recorded present. Methodist work in Russia—we kept records to show government and Orthodox Church that we existed prior to the Revolution.Budget—Treasurer’s Report: see handout—hard to project dues—we are going to start asking a registration fee to cover honorarium for speakers at our meetings. Approved.Suggestion that Humanities Councils in different states provide grants to organization for speaker fees. Would need to appeal to a broader audience.Dan Swinson—moved that we take a free will offering to give to McKendee toward their 200th anniversary and their plans for improving the landmark so we could take in the name of the Historical Society in honor of Fred Day, our General Secretary who is retiring. Approved.Ask editor of Historian’s Digest to put the McKendee project into Historian’s Digest with an explanation and address as to where to send donations. Accepted by the editor.Chief Janith English of the Wyandot will be giving a presentation. She would like her travel expenses to be applied to benefit a person or project it would benefit the most. Doug makes a motion that it would support the upper Sandusky Wyandot mission property transfer in her honor. This would come to about $300. Approved.With the increase of our dues, it hasn’t shifted finances or membership greatly overall, but no one has taken us up on the $800 life membership. Would we like to make it lower? Is there a more reasonable amount? It used to be $500. There are nineteen currently. We don’t have membership records going back thirty years—just the past several years. Would we like to do something different? Returning to $500 for cost of life membership? Pat isn’t a fan of life memberships—if you join young and live long you cost the organization money. Sustaining member is a better way to get the publications, membership, and someone can donate without writing another check. If someone can afford $500, they can afford $800. We’re deciding to wait another year and see what happens. Maybe list life members and sustaining members. List sustaining and life members in every publication—highlighting the sustaining members, which is more helpful in the end. We can print this list once a year at the end of the minutes and/or the budget.Action—bring this back next year.Membership Report—Chris Shoemaker membership secretary. Total current membership is 213. Methodist History is published in traditional print, 39 subscribe to the Methodist History digital edition, 12 receive print journals with joint membership with Annual Conference, 16 hold joint membership and receive 16 getting digital copies, 5 $100 sustaining members (3 print and 2 digital copies), 1 student who gets a digital copy, 19 life members: 18 get print copy and 1 a digital copy. There are now 11 new members. There are also recovered/restored memberships—those who lapsed before 2019—total of 37 members who have returned after lapsing. They solicited every member on the list.2018 recovered 18 members out of 67 envelopes sent. Sent 207 members who were on the list—19 came back—about 10 percent. Some people sent notes letting us know that members had died or no longer had control of finances. Chris made use of the US Post Office’s “address service requested” feature to track down addresses of people who had moved. Some members renewed after an absence of more than a decade. Chris worked with Michelle at GCAH—who sends e-mail with names and amounts paid before mailing the checks that come in. Chris also reported that 14 people have switched from print to digital, but no reasons have been given why.Doug and Ivan will be writing a letter trying to replenish our financial reserves and include a membership form. We need to get it on website and Facebook page.If we are serious about having money available that is sustaining, we could establish an endowment. We don’t have facilities, but it could help with Minister of Memory awards.When Chris drafts the next membership forms, he’ll make a line where life membership could be given as a gift.Recognition of Fred Day—we have had some comments about his retirement. Donation will be made to McKendree Chapel in his name. Encourage everyone to send him a card or e-mail to affirm his ministry as General Secretary.Election of Editor of Digest and Membership Secretary—Pat has a plea to think of someone who likes to write. Bring it up in commission meetings. We reelect Pat by acclamation. Maryellen has an idea—Nicholas Campbell—close to retirement. Approved.Chris Shoemaker—bylaws now have membership secretary as a voting member of the officers. We can fill the vacancy and then have an election at the next annual meeting when new officers are elected. No need for an election now.2020 Meeting at St. Simon’s Island, Georgia w/SEJ is August 4–7—walking in the footsteps of John Wesley, looking at his time in the GA region and how time there effected Aldersgate. Ann Packard is director of the museum. The January issue will have the registration after Doug passes on the information.2021 NE Jurisdiction Probably in Western PA in May—each Jurisdiction meets at different times from the others.2022 Western Jurisdiction—opportunity to Nome, Alaska, and see end or Iditarod trail. Asking Larry to find out where Jurisdiction planning to meet this year. What can we be thinking of to celebrate something significant?2023 Kingswood School, England, celebration in conjunction with Oxford Institute and Wesley Pilgrimage—exploration of possibilities here 2004 we met in OntarioOther Business—archiving our own records.Someone would need to pull records together and decide a place to keep them. Who will organize all the records—thirty years of history? We can’t do it as an official part of the board—not in our bylaws—maybe someone would take on that task.Dale has a list of what is at Drew, not a complete set of minutes or Historian’s Digest. Forensic work would be required to gather everything—a special focus could be charter members and others—like Nell Thrift or Rob Sledge. Who will work on this? Doug suggests that Ivan contacts Dale, Elizabeth Terry, and some other archivists and ask what procedures and policies (best practices) are to recover past records. What do we need to do? Barb Duffin and Barret’s chapel – NE Jurisdiction. Dan Swinson is willing to take the lead on organizing the work we need to do. Include nominees for Saddlebag and Ministry of Memory nominees, including winners. Linda asked for a certificate to send to nominees. Chris will design one. Ivan will check with Nell Thrift and Dan will check with Rob Sledge.Saddlebag Selection Award: Linda Schramm showed those of us at the meeting what she purchased to give to Ashley Boggan Dreff later that evening for her book, Entangled: A History of American Methodism, Politics, and Sexuality.The Ministry of Memory Award was given to Nell Thrift from Florida, who was unable to attend this meeting. The Award was presented at the annual conference by Fred Day. Though Nell could not be with us, we are glad that Larry Hayden was also nominated is with us from Alaska.We prayed for John Gooch who is in the hospital and extend gratitude for the work done to get ready for this conference—also appreciate the presentations who have been invited and John Gooch’s in particular.We need to elect two new at large members to replace Joyce Plyler and Phil Lawton—should we wait for Historian’s Digest to broaden the pool? There are four at-large members on the board. We can elect people via e-mail. That can be the first order of regular business at our next face-to-face business meeting. At-large are elected by the board, but we solicit names. Duane Coates and John Finley are willing to serve, representing North Central and South Central Jurisdiction. All in favor; Accepted.

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