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By Linda Worthington
UMConnection Staff

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16 clergy remembered

• Rev. John P. Buchheister
• Rev. Leon Dage
• Rev. Basil Boyer Day Jr.
• Rev. Orin Bill Dooley
• Rev. Warren Ebinger
• Rev. Bob Edgar
• Rev. Jack Ewald
• Rev. Khrista Ferguson
• Rev. Mildred Holliday
• Rev. Don Howard
• Rev. Ernest F. Johnson
• Rev. Kathryn Hames Letto
• Rev. Ramon McDonald
• Rev. Howard Nash
• Rev. Ernest Twigg
• Rev. Horace Wallace

Lay members remembered

• Dorothy Belt
• Phyllis Butler
• Mary E. Chase
• Sheila McCracken

22 Clergy spouses remembered

• Hannah Brown
• Valerie Betty Burchell
• Mary Ellen Dage
• Tom Dols
• Sylvia Frum
• Alberta Gruver
• Marguerite Hall
• Margaret Haus
• D. Allen Hetz
• Iwanda Jay
• Dorothea Jordan
• Grace Sellars Jones
• Gordia Lanman
• Alice Mae Milbourne
• Valerie Moser
• William Rains
• Evelyn Sims
• Lawrence Staten
• Terrellyn Taylor
• Ray D. Walton
• Elizabeth Washington Waters
• Helen Wolfe

2 Bishops remembered

• Bishop Leontine Kelly
• Bishop Mack Stokes

5 Bishops’ spouses remembered

• Jane Colaw
• Marjorie Duecker
• Marian Hancock
• Violet Kulah

Billie Jo SandersSinging “When the Saints Come Marching In,” as she approached the podium, Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball was joined by many in the audience.  “Come, Holy Spirit, continue to be in this place, with these families gathered here,” she prayed.

Thirty-eight families of clergy and clergy spouses who had died in the past year came together at the annual Service for the Saints May 30. They had a chance to reminisce and remember during dinner preceding the service.

“We pause to remember, honor give thanks and be encouraged by those who have gone on,” Bishop Ball said. “They are not forgotten.”

In keeping with the sower and seeds metaphor of the conference, she said, “They cast their seeds wherever they could sow and some here could witness that God really does do miracles.” 

Some of the years they served were on rocky ground, where harvest was little, when the budget left little, when disgruntled parishioners complained, “we’ve never done it that way before.”

“They believed that God knows us, that God needed them, and that God needs us,” she said. “Those before us were faithful in their words, prayers and witness. They will be transformed in the next phase of life, those who have followed God’s Son.”

Bishop Steiner Ball didn’t stop with the words of comfort, but continued with forward-looking words of encouragement. We’re connected to those who sit at the Lord’s table in Heaven, we’re each counted with God’s holy people, she said. “Are we helping others to claim their place as part of the recognized and transformed community?

“Are we sowing God’s seeds broadly enough or are we limiting our field work?”

As the Rev. Mary Jo Sims, the conference secretary,  read the name of each person being remembered, the Cokesbury bell was struck and the attending district superintendents lit a candle on the altar as family and friends stood. The congregation prayerfully sang, “It is in our living; it is in our dying … we belong to God.”