Paradise church celebrates 100 years

Matt Unrau

It was a celebration of longevity. It was a celebration of family. It was a celebration of a church, a church that mirrored their morning hymn.

“There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood…”

They say that a church is more than just a building. A church is the group of people that attend, work and live their lives together, and the Paradise Methodist United Church has had its family together for a long time, 100 years in fact.

A hundred years is a long time by anyone’s calculations. That equals 34 pastors, over 500 sermons and countless potlucks, funerals and marriages.

“…the trees where the wild flowers bloom…”

Judy and Cliff Stephens are active members, playing piano and being a lay leader respectively, in the church now and were married in 1967 in front of the church in the shadow of a then much smaller Pine tree.

“The trees were half the size, although at the time I thought they were huge,” says Judy, who was born and raised in Paradise.

Both Judy’s and Cliff’s families have been involved in the church for a very long time, because of this it was very important to Judy to get married there.

“This is where our roots are…we’re born and raised here and it’s a wonderful place to live and raise a family,” says Judy. Growing up in the church with a mom who taught Sunday School, Judy has a fair share of childhood memories centered around the church.

As a child she says there was a cesspool located behind the building and despite her dad’s warnings she would play out there and fall into the pool.

“That’s one of my earliest memories of going to church,” says Judy. Another memory focuses on the outhouse that they used to have to use. It was either a choice of using the outhouse where he would have to “scoop spiders out of the way” or run two doors down to their own house to use the bathroom.

“…No place is so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the vale…”

More than an old forgotten outhouse or the deep roots of a Pine tree, the ancient lines of history surround the United Methodist Church. Mary Lou Hermes has been working since last Spring searching out the lines of history forming a 175 page book about the church and a little bit about the town.

Hermes says she has been searching high and low for bits and pieces of history and if she knew what a big project the book was going to be she would have started it the year before. Last week, she was in The Printery Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday making revisions to the book as it was finally printed.

Throughout all her research Hermes says the church’s history is a story of the determination of a small group of people that refused to let the church fade away with the passing years.

“What I’m most impressed with is how many times this church almost went belly up, how many times it went down to two to three members and had to be reorganized. Yet it survived 100 years,” says Hermes.

Hermes says a lot of the credit has to go to a group of local ladies that kept raising money to keep the church running. The group has been called many names in its history including Ladies Aid and Willing Workers. These days it goes by the United Methodist Women’s Circle.

“…Oh, come to the church in the wildwood…”

Fastforwarding to the present day, the lively celebration on Sunday proves that the church is still forging ahead with a lively spirit and as a family. For any stranger it would have been easy to mistake the dinner that followed the service as a family reunion instead of church dinner.

Clyde Teerrell, proved to be the force behind the celebration. Him and others spent two months preparing for the celebration, which Terrell says was spent doing a lot of planning and “of course, at the last second all of the work,” says Teerrell with a laugh.

Besides the dinner that fed 80-85 people including five past ministers, the Bishop of the Rocky Mountain Conference and Yellowstone Conference and the District Superintendent, Teerrell supervised the decorations of the Methodist Club House with Kim Burgess and was the force behind a celebratory cake in the form of the church complete with bell, steeple and fence.

Although, Teerrell sheepishly admitted to the idea of making the cake, he said it took Walt Pickering’s handiwork to duplicate the miniaturized fence.

“…how sweet on a clear Sabbath morning, to list to the clear ringing bell; It’s tone so sweetly calling…”

The friendly family spirit of the dinner was a carryover from the service beforehand and undoubtedly many services before it that created the bond.

The current Reverand of the Church, Donna J. Young, is a relative newcomer to the church, but already has strong feelings for the small town church with the small town family spirit.

“This church has a wonderful spirit in it, the holy spirit, and it also has a wonderful spirit of family. Those are the two things that are really outstanding and you can’t help but notice it when you walk through the door,” says Young.

As for the honor of standing behind the pulpit, Young, says the significance really hit her as she welcomed the congregation before the service.

“This morning it hit me,” says Young. “It was a real ‘oh my’ moment when I realized that I had the honor, all these other pastors were here and I was the one that was here at the time that it happened, very humbled and very grateful to have the opportunity to be here and to share all these years.”

“…come to the church in the wildwood, oh come to the church in the vale…”