in search of frontage

exit the witnesses

we cling tenuously

they serve communion every Sunday

 sounds promising

It's Lantern must of been in a park

before the exit of the witnesses

origins, Williston United Methodist

a sign without a message

a swine and some pearls

The journey of faith these years in Lake City has been wrought in much turmoil and anguish of soul, interspersed with some moments of joy and worship. While we have moved all around in search of frontage, along the way we have left many, many dear friends to this day. We wish that we could have from the get go all remained in one accord, but in the Baptist circles, Accord is something you get to another church in. In the early days I would hear this preacher on the WGRO radio on the Lantern Park Hour, the Rev LE Peterson, greatly loved, the man eventually baptized me into the Baptist faith. Melanie and I were looking for a church other than Methodist at the time and I was intrigued with the preacher with the long,slow southern drawl.
We attended and were welcomed with open arms. We loved the people, but it was the doctrine that did me in. I had of late been talking with Rev Richard Harding of Faith Baptist Tabernacle in Williston where Melanie went to school. He opened my eyes to some of the fallacies of the dispensational doctrine widely held in most Baptist churches. Rev Peterson I soon found was a staunch Dispensationalist, holding the teachings of Cyrus Scofield and his bible. That is when the trouble began when I started sending the deacons brochures against the doctrine. It came to the point where Brother Peterson said from the pulpit there was a person in the church, he would not expose, the poison man, that was spreading false doctrine. If he did not stop, he would expose him before the church. Instead of allowing a confrontation, we quietly stopped attending. It was a sad day for the people to this day we still love dearly. On hindsight, I suppose I could have put up with the doctrine, but I had recently drawn much heat over a letter to the editor against Mormons, with Mormons calling for my job, causing a storm of letters to the editor, so I was not, in my youthful exuberance, one to back down.
We trod soon there after to the Southside where mostly the over seventy presided, mostly kindly ladies not too intent on giving up their seats to the young Lanterns. We attended the young married couples Sunday School and enjoyed it. We even liked the red-headed song leader for his wife worked at JCPenney and played the organ wonderfully. I just do not recall why we left other than Rev Brown and Keith left and I suppose we did too soon after.
I was born into a United Methodist ministers home in Vicco, Kentucky in 1955. We soon moved to Sopchoppy, Florida that same year and I remained a Methodist this entire time up until I met Melanie and we married in 1988 at the Whitehurst Memorial United Methodist Chapel on January 8th by my late father, the Rev. Luther Ray Stokes.
We became Baptists since that was the faith Melanie grew up with and at the time, i was quite dis-allusion ed  with the liberal Methodist politics and their Armenian theology.
We stayed with Southside all the while looking about. Still leaning Wesleyan, we landed at the First Nazarene church run by the Vann family, their son marrying the Pastors daughter. We enjoyed the small congregation and the times at the Vann's after services until the daughter decided she had had enough and left the Vann man for another man. It pretty much did the church in and it hasn't been a Nazarene church since all this, with the Pastor moving on.
We again went out in search, spending time at the Christian Heritage under the then living Wayne Hancock, another unfortunate excellent pastor whose wife left him for another man, then over to Ramona Park for a time, mostly to their sings, the women at the time all wore doilies upon their  heads, there was no one pastor but a group of elders who ministered. The most humble and loving people we have ever had the privilege of knowing. When Melanie was sick in 2009 with H1N1 and we were on the bottom financially and every other way, these great believers came through for us.
For a time we thought perhaps we should support the church nearest the house, that being Hopeful Baptist three miles up the Price Creek Frontage Road. We enjoyed the friends we knew there, having migrated like us there from various other baptist churches. But, the dispensationalism crept into every sermon, along with the accept Jesus theology and we just did not want to undertake another letter writing campaign. We quietly bowed out again.
For a brief time, over to First Christian on the US90 downtown frontage, next to the buffet for first dibs after services. They partook of communion every Sunday and somehow, after the Pastor was later caught down at the lake with some other fellows, well...we cast no stones, but we kind of left quietly again.
Parkview Baptist for a few Sundays, the mother church of Westside. Great cantata's but just a bit too big.
Wesley Methodist. I liked Wesley back before I was married, especially if you want to really know the truth, Carl Brooks daughters. We had a great time on the church softball team, even had Randy Mackey before he became a politician and forgot us. Tom Harkelford, the fellow who drove the little Porsche with his scarlet fever and road rage fits if you pulled up behind him, meekly served coffee before services, totally masking the rage upon the highway. When we attended as a couple, I do think it was either a magician or a motorcyclist pastor, but either way, we just didn't click like I did will Carl and the girls.
Once or twice over to First Methodist, that proud First church upon the frontage of Marion, home of many, many friends from the two years my father was there, before being run out after two years by the staunch pillars who just could not savor his penchant for Goodwill clothing and Fanny Crosby, eschewing the vestal robes and fighting tooth and toenail with the choice of music. It was just more than he could handle. It drove him to retire from the ministry and go into evangelism to small churches.
We had all but given up on the prospect of finding a place when upon passing each week on US90, we said, let's try Westside next Sunday.
The church on the US90 frontage road, the mission church of Parkview Baptist, then called Westside Baptist, then Grace Covenant and sundry other names,  formed not out of schism or protest, so we visited  one Sunday with Elmer Crews the pastor, whom we loved and love dearly with his wife.  We felt this a good fit for our then young two sons. We got involved in Sunday School and Awana, which we helped in at Lantern Park.  The choir was talented with great special music. Elmer and the elders seemed on the same page, off the same page, and one Sunday he blind-sided the congregation at a time they were off the same page. He was immediately resigning and taking the Pastorate of Wellborn Baptist, a nice, new pink brick structure on the same frontage road. A gasp went up. We tried Wellborn once or twice, but no matter, we felt we were betraying by slipping over.
After many in the church followed Elmer, the remnant formed a Pastor search committee and somehow wound up in the panhandle listening to one Russell Taylor, of whom Dwayne and Patti knew. After the trial sermon it was agreed to call him. And so that day as I was about a month or two from getting canned at JCPenney after 19 years, Christina his wife came in looking for a sport coat for her husband and his first Sunday.  It was my last coat sale.
So, with no job but a new pastor, the church carried on, minus many but adding others. At some time in the growing, we merged with the Liberty Baptist Church with their Pastor Milton Smith. With co-pastors, I could sleep every other Sunday for Milton was quite above my head. We grew to the point a well-known church architect and planner was called on, one of our artist ladies drew a grand rendition of this new cathedral and so most voted to sell the frontage property and move, building the first of three phases structure, a nice sanctuary with fellowship hall.
And then amid the moving plans, one of the saddest things ever happened. The wonderful song leader and extremely humble and talented musician, Dan Clark drown in the Gulf, his wife almost drowning trying to rescue him. It was total devastation. It was one of those, how could we ever go on without Dan. I still grieve that. Fortunately his daughter Lani and son Tim took over the reigns of worship.
Despite that, the plans to move continued unabated. I knew from past experience if we were outgrowing the building now, just wait, like most Baptists, it would not be long before a group would up and leave.
Kind of like having children. We think we need to build a huge house so all can have a room, regretting it in later years when the kids leave.
But, on deaf ears. It would be a grand move. We would grow and grow. 
When all the men met in the fellowship hall to put it to a final vote, all the men were required to speak a yea or a nay for moving and why. Of the two nays, I was one. Again, what did I or Tom know?
And so more men became embittered and moved on, leaving even less to carry on. But with the money from the sale of the property and buildings, the new first phase was begun down the road a piece, off the valuable frontage road.
In the meantime, Milton had resigned under scandal and this took a few more with him. He later left his wife, breaking the trend of wives leaving the pastor husbands.
With the new building completed, a youth pastor was bought in after going down to Brooksville to see first hand the funnel program. John came and things went well with a growing youth group. It was about into year two that a group came to visit from Providence Baptist. And then for some reason, after the painful falling out with the home church people, one after another standing up and announcing their loss of confidence, it was the plan to start an eldership training class.
Candidates were put forward and a group was formed, meeting weekly. This went on for awhile and eventually it came to the point it was clear some of the elders in training were progressing faster than others. Elders were assigned to a group of members, each one having a certain number of people they looked over and prayed for, etc. When a survey was put forth to the church to grade the elders, a move we felt unfair, since we did not feel we had the knowledge to grade any elder other than our own,  many came away with bad grades and strange things said about them. It all got out of hand quickly and came to a boiling point at a meeting where the elders who got the bad reports felt things were handled improperly, which they were. It all should never have gotten to this point. More humility should have been shown. When one receives a bad grade, it is prudent to consider it to have some truth and not bristle, but go to the knees in contrition. Not so.
In the fire that ensued, accusing Russell of this and that, accusing Vicky the secretary of this and that, Russell resigning. Cleveland the youth pastor already left. And so, with only two elders, Gary and Brandon being recommended as elders, Brandon became the minister, Gary left to join with Russell and the church changed the name from Grace to Grace Life and went under the leadership of the umbrella church out in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The radio station Gary worked so tirelessly to obtain finally received a license and went on the air.
And so, thinking Russell to be moving away to the panhandle, at the urging of some members not pleased with the results of all that transpired, asked if he would remain. He thus stayed and began a church called Christ's Fellowship, affiliated with the Beulah Southern Baptist Association, meeting in the green spray foamed garage at his home off County Line Road, about a mile from the frontage road. This small group had a good first service, but never grew. They finally moved out of the dank garage and to the new Columbia County Community Center off Birley Road. It was not the first choice, as the fellow who owned the empty Missionary Baptist Church down on the frontage road, out from Wellborn would not sell or rent. Talk about frontage waste(along with old Westside Baptist). Anyhow, we soon left Grace and went with Russell, troubled with the elder situation. I told Melanie, it was just a matter of time. So sure enough, recently, a matter of time arrived, Russell publicly announced plans to sell the house, move to Navarre and start a church plant.
Today, donations were requested on Facebook for the plant. Melanie and I said, once this phase is over, we are all but done.
We ponder sending our tithes to Mike and Libby Wild in Indonesia, working with the Wano tribe translating the Bible into their language. Landon went to stay a month with them several years ago. We have grown to love them and their boys.  We may send Jordon over, or go ourselves. We may never join another church. I could get used to wearing a hand-painted gourd!
Yet, despite it all, I am again leaning toward returning to some sort of connectional congregation where the pastor is not at the whim of deacons, a search committee, a vote or a pastors own ambitions. One who is appointed and if he moves on, another will come along in his place.  I'd just as soon sit under a lady pastor with a doily on my head at this point than sit wondering when the split or resignation will take place.
But I doubt Melanie will go along. She just doesn't savor the standing up and down, reading responsively,  saying apostle creeds, robes, organs and stained-glass. Too much austere Baptist in her.
Too much Methodist left in me. She wants to sell all and move away. Oh those Baptists!