Methodist women are a particular type. Competent, cheery, and honestly appraising. They will look you in the eye, measure you up, and it always feels good to be up to snuff. The Swannanoa Methodist Church is laid out like many older churches around here. There is a sanctuary on the top and a fellowship hall underneath. A few Sunday School rooms are scattered here and there too. Walking into the lower level this morning, I was met by pure bred Methodist Women.
They started having a meal here about six years ago, right around the time the mill burned down. There were twelve people in the congregation and six of them did not want to do it. The other six moved ahead full bore, determined. They welcomed in the people who had lost everything. They welcomed in the people who had lost a community, whether to age or to fire. Some people needed food, and other people needed company. Everybody had something to give in this case.
The church probably should have shut down. It used to be that a third of the people in the South were Methodists. It’s not true anymore. Fewer people go to church, of course, and fewer of those who do are Methodists. Were it not for a mission to serve the poor and the lonely, which is all the same at some level, this church might be gone. Without that mission, why should any church keep on going?