In 1921, the former United Evangelical Brethren Church started a mountain mission on the Red Bird River at Beverly, Ky. In 1973, mission work done by the former Brethren and Methodist Churches came together under the auspices of a new

Red Bird Missionary Conference.

Mission work in this region began under the leadership of two teachers, Myra Bowman and Eveline Welch. Local people built a school. The mission grew to include a hospital and medical ministry, an early childhood development program and work camps where people restore and repair homes.

In 1925, the Rev. Hiram Frakes opened a school and a church on what later became the Henderson Settlement, the only agricultural mission agency of The United Methodist Church in the United States. It provides the Frakes Community Day Care, senior care, food services and a craft shop where local artisans market their crafts.

Today, 25 churches comprise Red Bird. The conference also established three outreach centers: Joy Center (1970), Faith Ministries (1983) and Cranks Creek (1990). A fourth, Annville, was chartered as a United Methodist congregation in 1994.

Bringing Academia to Appalachia

You could feel "the electricity in the room from the beginning." That’s how George Morris describes the first meeting eight years ago of a task force on ministerial education in the Red Bird Missionary Conference. One member, Ruth Wiertzema, had envisioned a school to equip "indigenous people to serve among their own folk."

Wiertzema, now council director of the Red Bird Missionary Conference, says the idea was "to bring the seminary to the mountains" with teachers who were "in tune with Appalachia."

Also attending that meeting was the late Earl Brewer, professor of sociology and religion at Candler School of Theology.

Plans were made to train local pastors and lay missioners for the development of congregations in Appalachia. A date was set in 1990 to enroll the first class of the Appalachia Local Pastors School at the Henderson Settlement in Frakes, Ky. Hoping for a dozen students that first year, Morris was worried when only seven enrolled. "I asked Earl if we should cancel. But he said, ‘God has given us seven students.’"

"I was disciplined by that encounter," Morris says. "From the beginning, God was in this with us."

The faith and perseverance have paid off. Today there are 77 students, only 12 of whom are from the Red Bird region. Others come from Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.

Both full-time and part-time local pastors may attend the school for two years; after that, only part-time pastors may attend.

Joan Haney had been a library aide for 15 years in the John Glenn School System in Walkerton, Ind. As her own children were graduating from high school, Haney discovered an ever-increasing call to the ministry. An active member of her congregation’s United Methodist Women, she had spoken at churches on a number of occasions. Finally, her husband Jim said, "You ought to be a preacher."

Haney, now pastor of 841-member First Church in LaPorte, Ind., is enrolled in the Appalachia Local Pastors School. The school is a program extension of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, and its instructors must meet the requirements for adjunct faculty at Candler.

Among the members of that faculty are those who brought the dream to reality, such as Wiertzema and Morris.

Haney praises her instructors. "They teach, eat, walk and talk with us. Not only do they share their knowledge and expertise, they share their personal faith journeys. We come out inspired to share our love of Christ and to lead others to Christ and the church."