| Rudisill returns home to lead Cumberland-Hagerstown District By John W. Coleman Jr. UMCONNECTION Staff  The Rev. John W. Rudisill Jr., pastor of Union Chapel UMC in Joppa, will become superintendent of the Cumberland-Hagerstown District July 1. Appointed by Bishop Felton Edwin May, he succeeds the Rev. Kenneth Lyons, who after five years on the district, will become senior pastor of Severna Park UMC.
 Rudisills first appointment after seminary 19 years ago was a three-point charge that needed help from the conference to pay its new pastor. One of the three congregations, with 25 members, feared the conference was planning to close it down.
I wasnt sure what the conference planned to do, but I asked the members what we should do in the meantime to be faithful to our mission, recalled Rudisill. We began to look at our possibilities for ministry rather than focusing solely on survival. With that change in perspective, according to Rudisill, the tiny, out-of-the-way church gave leadership to the whole charge and did so well, it was able to decline the conferences equitable compensation grant for the second year. Rudisill, now the pastor of 460-member Union Chapel UMC in Joppa, looks forward to helping churches and pastors in the Cumberland-Hagerstown District discover their possibilities for ministry when he becomes superintendent there July 1. For Rudisill, a husband and the father of three daughters, the move will be a homecoming. He fondly remembers the lessons he learned from family members, mentors and friends while growing up at Grace UMC in Hagerstown, where his father was Sunday school superintendent. His mother is still an active member there after 45 years. Overcoming an initial resistance to the call to ministry, Rudisill became a youth leader at Grace and later the youth director at Emmanuel UMC in Hagerstown during and after college. He attended Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., and graduated from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, in 1984. After serving the three-point Texas Charge in Phoenix, he served Smithville UMC in Dunkirk, and then came to Union Chapel in 1994. Rudisill is especially proud of Union Chapels active membership, including its youth. He gives credit to the many small-group ministries there, including study, prayer, discipleship and fellowship groups. I have a heart for youth ministry, for children and for encouraging others in ministry, he said. I try to help them utilize their spiritual gifts and maximize their strengths rather than focus too much on their weaknesses. That same approach has gbwc_superusered Rudisills leadership as a 10-year member of the conferences Commission on Equitable Compensation, which once helped pay his salary. He has been chairman for the past three years. Rudisill has helped the commission shift its role away from providing minimal life support to prop up churches whose situations seem virtually hopeless. Now, he said, the commission tries to help struggling churches rediscover their purpose and revive their potential for vital ministry. We identify high potential churches that just need one or two key elements to become thriving again, he explained, and we help them get the training and coaching support they need to turn things around. In concert with the conference Board of Congregational Life, the commission enables pastors from Equitable Compensation churches to attend the Academy for Initiative Pastors, Individual Ministry Action Plans (IMAP) Camp, the national School of Congregational Development and other leadership training events. Spouses and laypeople often attend also to emphasize their partnership in ministry with the pastors. No other conference is providing this kind of training through Equitable Compensation funds, Rudisill said. We also provide funds to allow experienced pastors to start new churches without suffering a pay cut. John has compassion for small-membership churches like those in the Cumberland-Hagerstown District, said Bishop Felton Edwin May, who announced Rudisills appointment. Also, he has strengthened and helped shift our understanding of Equitable Compensation from a welfare enterprise to a missional opportunity that fosters evangelism and stewardship development among all churches. | 
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