I Know What I Believe
Read: Jeremiah 29:11-12
I didn’t go to church much when I was a kid. My dad was nominally (read: non-practicing) Catholic and my mom was raised Christian Scientist. If I did go to church I went to Grosse Pointe Methodist (not yet United Methodist at that time) because my mom’s childhood friend from Texas, Mary Edlo Thompson, was the Sunday school superintendent and another friend from her youth, Doris White, was married to the pastor. The problem was that I didn’t know any of the kids, so I spent many Sunday mornings lying in bed pretending to still be asleep until it was too late to go to Sunday school.
I started attending MYF when I was in middle school when my friend Glenn invited me to an activity and I discovered there were lots of girls in the group (one of them, Lynn Grose, eventually married my brother). I became more active at Christ Methodist Church in Detroit, joining a Sunday school class taught by Lynn’s dad Ralph, becoming an usher and even getting a part-time job there as a custodian when I was in college. While I was working there I became friends with the organist and choir director, Jim, and got interested in organ music, an interest that Jim was happy to help me develop. I also joined the choir, an activity that continues to this day.
When I became a US Postal Inspector in 1977 I was assigned to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a city I had never visited and where I knew no one. One Sunday morning I was sitting in my apartment trying to find something to listen to on the radio (I didn’t yet have a TV) and I came across organ music. Thinking it might be a concert, I listened a bit more and came to the conclusion it was a church service, specifically a Methodist church service. Having waited long enough after moving there to find a church, I went to First United Methodist Church the next Sunday and sat in a back row, off in a corner, so I could check it out anonymously. That didn’t work though, because before the service started a woman walked down the row, sat next to me, stuck out her hand and said “Hi, I’m Betty Bergeron, the church busybody. Are you new here?”
My plan to slip in and out quietly having been blown, by the time I left there that day I had joined a Sunday school class and the choir. Also in that Sunday school class was a young woman named Elizabeth Dunnam, whom I would marry three years later. She says her mother always told her she’d meet a nice man at church.
The point of all this is that, at various times throughout my life, I was presented with people who helped lead me to where I am now. My mom and her two childhood friends who were involved with Grosse Pointe Methodist, my friend Glenn who invited me to an MYF activity, Ralph who taught me in Sunday school, Jim who got me interested in organ music (I wouldn’t have paused at that station on the radio that Sunday without having that interest), Betty (the busybody) who recognized someone who was looking for a church home and did something about it, and even Libby Dunnam (who, recognizing a good thing when she saw it, rejoined the choir at her church after I did), were all gifts I received. Were these encounters merely coincidence or was the Holy Spirit guiding me through these people? You can draw your own conclusions; I know what I believe.
Art Van de Putte
Read: Jeremiah 29:11-12
I didn’t go to church much when I was a kid. My dad was nominally (read: non-practicing) Catholic and my mom was raised Christian Scientist. If I did go to church I went to Grosse Pointe Methodist (not yet United Methodist at that time) because my mom’s childhood friend from Texas, Mary Edlo Thompson, was the Sunday school superintendent and another friend from her youth, Doris White, was married to the pastor. The problem was that I didn’t know any of the kids, so I spent many Sunday mornings lying in bed pretending to still be asleep until it was too late to go to Sunday school.
I started attending MYF when I was in middle school when my friend Glenn invited me to an activity and I discovered there were lots of girls in the group (one of them, Lynn Grose, eventually married my brother). I became more active at Christ Methodist Church in Detroit, joining a Sunday school class taught by Lynn’s dad Ralph, becoming an usher and even getting a part-time job there as a custodian when I was in college. While I was working there I became friends with the organist and choir director, Jim, and got interested in organ music, an interest that Jim was happy to help me develop. I also joined the choir, an activity that continues to this day.
When I became a US Postal Inspector in 1977 I was assigned to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a city I had never visited and where I knew no one. One Sunday morning I was sitting in my apartment trying to find something to listen to on the radio (I didn’t yet have a TV) and I came across organ music. Thinking it might be a concert, I listened a bit more and came to the conclusion it was a church service, specifically a Methodist church service. Having waited long enough after moving there to find a church, I went to First United Methodist Church the next Sunday and sat in a back row, off in a corner, so I could check it out anonymously. That didn’t work though, because before the service started a woman walked down the row, sat next to me, stuck out her hand and said “Hi, I’m Betty Bergeron, the church busybody. Are you new here?”
My plan to slip in and out quietly having been blown, by the time I left there that day I had joined a Sunday school class and the choir. Also in that Sunday school class was a young woman named Elizabeth Dunnam, whom I would marry three years later. She says her mother always told her she’d meet a nice man at church.
The point of all this is that, at various times throughout my life, I was presented with people who helped lead me to where I am now. My mom and her two childhood friends who were involved with Grosse Pointe Methodist, my friend Glenn who invited me to an MYF activity, Ralph who taught me in Sunday school, Jim who got me interested in organ music (I wouldn’t have paused at that station on the radio that Sunday without having that interest), Betty (the busybody) who recognized someone who was looking for a church home and did something about it, and even Libby Dunnam (who, recognizing a good thing when she saw it, rejoined the choir at her church after I did), were all gifts I received. Were these encounters merely coincidence or was the Holy Spirit guiding me through these people? You can draw your own conclusions; I know what I believe.
Art Van de Putte
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