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By Melissa Lauber
UMConnection Staff

All history, it?s been said, is really biography. The Rev. Tom Starnes explores some of the larger issues of this country?s religious landscape as it has unfolded over recent years in a new, intensely personal, memoir titled 'Through Fear to Faith.'

Starnes, a retired pastor, served in the Baltimore-Washington Conference for 35 years, working for a time as a district superintendent and as Council on Ministries director. However, his memoir reflects more on his interior journey as he moved from being the child of a strict fundamentalist Nazarene church into the social action faith of United Methodists.

It was, he said, a journey from the head into the heart, and the pages of his book illuminate the fear that drove him and the hope that sustained him along this journey.

Starnes began writing the book in 2003, spending three days a week in an empty Sunday school room at Epworth UMC in Rehobeth, Delaware.

Alone with his laptop, he poured stories into his laptop. Memories resurfaced of growing up in his Tennessee home in 1936 when Starne?s father, who struggled with bootleggers and poverty, gave his heart to the Lord at a revival service.

The Nazarene church rescued the family with its eight children and instilled in Starnes a rich appreciation that God can transform people?s lives. The church?s ancient prayers and music still touch spots in his soul that nothing else can, he said.

But the Nazarenes also taught that 'God loves us, to be sure, but only to a point' and that point had to do with your behavior. Fear of damnation kept its members from dancing, going to the movies or playing cards.

As he grew older and pursued ordination in the Nazarene church Starnes worried when elders warned him about his wife, Wave, wearing make-up, and cautioned him that his wedding ring flaunted the Nazarene style of not adorning oneself with gold or costly apparel.

But it wasn?t just the rules that troubled Starnes as he became a pastor in the Nazarene church. He found himself full of unappreciated questions and hungering for grace.

Focusing on these 'trivial' rules while neglecting issues of peace, justice and equality of opportunity struck him as 'skewed thinking,' and his heart was open when an opportunity arose to make the switch to the Methodist Church.

When he was ordained a deacon in 1959, at Western Maryland College in Westminster, Starnes said he joined a community that 'believed both head and heart had to be joined in any faith worth having.'

Starne?s 231-page book explores his encounters with this faith in stories of his family and many colleagues and parishioners. He frankly explores his time in therapy and unflinchingly shares his journey into and through Alcoholics Anonymous, where he found catacomb Christianity in a number of church basements that sometimes surpassed the worship held in the sanctuaries above.

But more than anything, Starne?s memoir makes it abundantly clear that his is the heart of a preacher. At times, he confessed, he followed the advice given to John Wesley: 'Preach faith until you have it, and then because you have it, you will preach it.'

But going through the boxes that held each of the sermons he?d ever preached, Starnes also discovered that 'preaching had been primarily a faith construction project for me,' he said.

Looking back over the things he preached, Starnes aid, there are three overarching themes that have shaped his sermons and his life:
? God is faithful. God will give you what you need.
? People can change.You can be born again, and that doesn?t have to happen in a church.
? We are not alone. God is with us ? all the way.

Since retiring, Starnes has also been writing a number of articles for various newspapers, teaching a class on the Social Principles in his home church and helping with a Food Basket feeding program in Cape Henlopen, Delaware.

He is certain there are many more chapters in his life and within the church left to write. He?s also excited about watching his children and grandchildren as they, like him, find ways to tell 'the old, old story of Jesus and his love.'

To obtain a copy of 'Through Fear to Faith,' go to www.amazon.com.