Weekly Message from Bishop Will Willimon 4.24.2006

The Reverend Grandma

Patsy’s Grandmother was the first ordained woman in South Carolina Methodism. Since 1956, the Reverend Bessie B. Parker set a high standard of Christian ministry. This year we will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the ordination of women in our church. We’ll be having a number of events, including a special emphasis at this year’s Annual Conference. As a prelude to these celebrations, I offer this piece that I wrote for The Christian Century a few years ago celebrating the gift of Bessie Parker.

According to Carlyle Marney, God will use any handle to get hold of somebody.

Divine persistence and resourcefulness are, according to Scripture, virtually without limits. Bessie Parker was the handle God used to take hold of South Carolina for more than three decades until her death a few years ago. Bessie, who became a pastor in 1956, wore out automobiles the way her Methodist circuit-riding ancestors went through horses, routinely driving 30,000 miles every year. Although she had a reputation for being one of the most effective preachers in the South Carolina Conference of The United Methodist Church, she was the bane of the bishops. Churches complained when they heard that they were getting a lady preacher -and they resisted even more obstinately four years later when the bishop dared to move our dear Reverend Parker somewhere else.

With snow-white hair and a soothing southern drawl, she epitomized everyone’s stereotype of a grandmother. This she used for everything it was worth. Preachers stood in line to enlist Bessie to lead their annual mission-fund appeals. When she got to preaching, telling congregants how much they were going to enjoy sending breeder pigs down to Haiti (They will go down there and make more piggies in the name of the Lord. Bessie would giggle), pigs started packing. When one church repeatedly refused to fix its leaking church roof, the members were scandalized one Monday morning by the sight of their pastor -white hair, blue jeans and all -atop the roof, hammering away. The roof was quickly repaired with everyone’s willing assistance. It just don’t look right to have your grandmother up fixing the roof, one church officer commented.

Toward the end of Bessie’s ministry, the bishop sent Bessie to a very difficult church, one infamous for feuding, contentiousness, racism, and animosity toward the denomination. Before Bessie arrived, the church had run off two preachers in six months. Members had consistently refused to send any money to support denominational programs. The bishop seemed cruel to send Bessie there just before her retirement. Everyone predicted disaster.

A few months passed without my hearing a word about Bessie. Then I saw here at a denominational meeting and, fearing the worst, asked her how she was getting along at her new appointment.

“The sweetest people I have ever known!” she exclaimed. “Our first work team will leave for Brazil next month. I’ve got to get back early: this is our music weekend with the neighboring African American congregation.”

I was dumbfounded. Were we talking about the same church? What about its hatefulness? Its racism? Had there been no problems?

“Not really,” replied Bessie. “There was one little misunderstanding when we voted on this year’s budget.”

“Misunderstanding?”

“Yes. We got to the apportionment for the Black College Fund. When we were about to vote on acceptance, the chairman of our board said, ‘Reverend Parker, we don’t give no money to that because we ain’t paying for no niggers to go to college.'”

“Oh no! What did you do?” I asked.

I stood up and said, “John, that’s not nice. You sit down and act like a Christian.” Everything passed without a single problem.

Who’s going to misbehave in front of his grandmother?

Richard Baxter advised seventeenth-century Protestant pastors that the tenderest love of a mother should not surpass ours for our people. Bessie routinely mothered the people toward the Kingdom, using any handle she could to get across the gospel -just as God used Bessie. Thank God.

William H. Willimon