speech—replaced with collection plates, organs, pianos, and singing. In time, evangelical Friends came to depend upon the services of paid pastors and even called their local meetings “churches.” The Words Friends of Jesus Church was one of these.
Winifred Smith lived in the little parsonage behind the white church. The roof leaked and the toilet flushed with the kind of diminished enthusiasm that often precedes serious septic difficulties. She had a forced- air oil furnace with no air-conditioning, the majority of windows were painted shut, and the floors were covered with linoleum and flowered carpets. The downstairs served as office space for a copy machine, Sunday school library, donation center, and church answering machine. Even the refrigerator was best regarded as communal property, with pictures, calendars, notices, and articles held to its front and sides with magnets glued to pieces of painted, colored clay, made in Vacation Bible School. The upstairs, where Winnie actually pictured herself living, like a swallow in an attic, consisted of two small bedrooms with partial ceilings.
The majority of her congregation, gray-headed and stoop-shouldered, lived under the continuing influence of Depression-era
memories. They could easily recall events—and spoke of them in earnest detail—that occurred before electricity, telephones, and interstate highways. Many had spent their entire lives (excepting, in some cases, military service) in the same geographical area, and every hill, valley, road, and building held familial volumes of association.
These frail, dignified ladies and gentlemen formed the core of her church, supporting it with near-sacrificial fervor. Though many were living on Social Security or the dwindling income from the sale of their farms, their generous giving provided the lion’s share of her salary. Their attendance at church functions bordered on fanatical, and their views on how the church should operate were tantamount to ancestral codes. As one member said during a heated business meeting, “I care more about this church than about anyone in it.” And while he possibly would have eventually conceded that the church was the people in it, he nevertheless had hit upon a significant truth.
People, Winnie discovered, related to organizations, and those institutional relationships were often more meaningful than the fleshly kind because they could be sustained over longer periods. People came and went, but the local church and its unchanging programs remained, and her duty was to uphold them.
Winnie Smith cherished her new position as guardian of traditions that were not her own, even though she feared that her acceptance was tentative, a little like the welcome extended to a poor relative. She suspected she might present something of an enigma to people whose lives rooted in family, where the first question asked in getting to know someone was not “What do you do?” but rather “Who are you related to?”
Still, she did not intend to fail.
Winnie conducted two Sunday services, one in the morning—with the largest attendance—and a less formal one in the evening. Both included announcements, a sermon, prayers, and hymn singing accompanied by Betty Orangles, an octogenarian pianist with snow-white hair, a soft pedal foot, and a narrowly construed sense of rhythm. Sunday school preceded morning worship, where Winnie taught grades two through six (three children). On Tuesday afternoons she met with the Women’s Missionary Union in the church
basement, participated in a noon potluck, and helped make blankets for people needing a “touch of sympathy.” On Wednesday night she led Bible study. Thursday nights were devoted to her youth group—two teenagers, if everyone showed up. Twice a month she visited area nursing homes, calling on residents who had once sat in the pews at the Words church and holding Protestant services for those who could be coaxed out of their beds. There
Winifred Smith lived in the little parsonage behind the white church. The roof leaked and the toilet flushed with the kind of diminished enthusiasm that often precedes serious septic difficulties. She had a forced- air oil furnace with no air-conditioning, the majority of windows were painted shut, and the floors were covered with linoleum and flowered carpets. The downstairs served as office space for a copy machine, Sunday school library, donation center, and church answering machine. Even the refrigerator was best regarded as communal property, with pictures, calendars, notices, and articles held to its front and sides with magnets glued to pieces of painted, colored clay, made in Vacation Bible School. The upstairs, where Winnie actually pictured herself living, like a swallow in an attic, consisted of two small bedrooms with partial ceilings.
The majority of her congregation, gray-headed and stoop-shouldered, lived under the continuing influence of Depression-era
memories. They could easily recall events—and spoke of them in earnest detail—that occurred before electricity, telephones, and interstate highways. Many had spent their entire lives (excepting, in some cases, military service) in the same geographical area, and every hill, valley, road, and building held familial volumes of association.
These frail, dignified ladies and gentlemen formed the core of her church, supporting it with near-sacrificial fervor. Though many were living on Social Security or the dwindling income from the sale of their farms, their generous giving provided the lion’s share of her salary. Their attendance at church functions bordered on fanatical, and their views on how the church should operate were tantamount to ancestral codes. As one member said during a heated business meeting, “I care more about this church than about anyone in it.” And while he possibly would have eventually conceded that the church was the people in it, he nevertheless had hit upon a significant truth.
People, Winnie discovered, related to organizations, and those institutional relationships were often more meaningful than the fleshly kind because they could be sustained over longer periods. People came and went, but the local church and its unchanging programs remained, and her duty was to uphold them.
Winnie Smith cherished her new position as guardian of traditions that were not her own, even though she feared that her acceptance was tentative, a little like the welcome extended to a poor relative. She suspected she might present something of an enigma to people whose lives rooted in family, where the first question asked in getting to know someone was not “What do you do?” but rather “Who are you related to?”
Still, she did not intend to fail.
Winnie conducted two Sunday services, one in the morning—with the largest attendance—and a less formal one in the evening. Both included announcements, a sermon, prayers, and hymn singing accompanied by Betty Orangles, an octogenarian pianist with snow-white hair, a soft pedal foot, and a narrowly construed sense of rhythm. Sunday school preceded morning worship, where Winnie taught grades two through six (three children). On Tuesday afternoons she met with the Women’s Missionary Union in the church
basement, participated in a noon potluck, and helped make blankets for people needing a “touch of sympathy.” On Wednesday night she led Bible study. Thursday nights were devoted to her youth group—two teenagers, if everyone showed up. Twice a month she visited area nursing homes, calling on residents who had once sat in the pews at the Words church and holding Protestant services for those who could be coaxed out of their beds. There
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