About Worthington United Methodist Church
And I Remember.Personal Church Histories
John and Isobel Young
John and Isobel Young, with their two children, moved to Worthington in 1947; the population
of the Village then numbered about 2500 souls. Two decades later Worthington was
officially a City, and the membership of the Methodist church had surpassed the
entire town's 1947 population!
John remembers when Harold Buckey, a retired Navy chaplain, was assigned to our congregation in 1951. After he had been in Worthington for some months, Rev. Buckey convened five members, including John, and told them that the Ohio Conference records showed that the Worthington Church had 600 members. "What I want to know is: where are they?" he exclaimed, and so he sent out the five to do a religious-affiliation survey of Worthington. They found 300 Methodists, a figure more in keeping with what the good pastor had been seeing on Sundays.
The congregation grew rapidly during the 1950's and early 1960's, a time that John calls "one of the greatest periods of my whole life." By 1955, the Senior High Sunday School class had about 40 members. Its teacher, Glenna Hartman, knew that she and her husband, Paul, would soon be moving to West Virginia, and she adopted a clever method for selecting her replacement. Four potential teachers were each invited to take the class for one Sunday; she didn't tell them, though, that they were being "auditioned". At the end of the month, Glenna asked the class to vote on her successor. They chose John.
Under John's leadership, the class grew to 120 teenagers, and he was frustrated because he found that discussion was nearly impossible. "I didn't want to lecture," he says, "I wanted to engage them in an exchange of ideas." He solved this problem by finding other teachers for the sophomores and juniors, while keeping the seniors for himself. John is especially pleased to recall that many of his Sunday School students also attended worship services, and he hopes that his lessons on churchmanship might have had something to do with this.
A newspaper reporter by training and trade, John worked for the Ohio State Journal and later for the Columbus Dispatch. While at the Dispatch, he wrote a short editorial welcoming Bishop F. Gerald Ensley to Ohio. A few days later, at 10 PM, John was surprised to receive a phone call from the bishop, who wanted to talk with him about communications at the Conference level. The Dispatch had scheduled John to depart the following morning for Atlantic City to observe proceedings at the Democratic National Convention, about which he would then write editorials, so Bishop Ensley urged him to meet that very evening. John drove out to the bishop's residence, where they conferred for over an hour. "That's the longest conversation I ever had with Bishop Ensley," he says, and the result was that, in 1964, John joined the Conference staff as Director of the Office of Communication.
Thus began a 17-year stint, during which John traveled all around Ohio, helping to promote local churches' programs and chronicle their milestones. "Some Sundays I'd be in four different churches," he recalls. "My talents and the church's needs seemed to mesh. I loved my work." He started a monthly paper, West Ohio News, for the Conference and prepared an Ohio Conference insert for the Methodists' national magazine. John remembers that he often expanded his "official" duties, helping pastor and district superintendents to develop informational programs in a variety of formats, such as news releases, pamphlets and brochures, and slide presentations. Initially appalled that Dr. Ensley expected him not only to write articles but also to take photographs, John eventually reached a comfort level with cameras. He now smiles when he speaks of his photographs that have come to rest on walls and on desks and in church archives. He chuckles that Bishop Dwight Loder, who was at first dismayed by the frequent bursts of light from John's camera, quickly came to appreciate the need for photographs. The bishop still calls him "Flash". John especially remembers one church that asked for his advice as they were about to start a building-fund drive. He had them make a sign that read "Future Home of . United Methodist Church", and his photograph of the pastor and committee members holding that sign, while standing in their as-yet empty field, helped to launch a successful financial campaign.
Upon his retirement in 1981, John was free once again to take up active participation at Worthington United Methodist. He wrote articles about our congregation for area newspapers, taught Sunday School classes for adults and was an occasional substitute teacher for youth ("The toughest group were the 8th grade boys, but I made them sit still and think."), developed a slide presentation entitled "Meet Your Minister, Know Your Church," and undertook to be our congregation's historian. In the latter capacity, he and his committee prepared a comprehensive history of Methodism in Worthington that was published in 1986; a supplement followed in 1996.
John's face lights up when he speaks of Isobel. He tells how she taught young children in Sunday School, and played piano while they sang, and he mentions that Isobel has been an active member of UMW, serving many years as a circle leader. Isobel was one of the original members of Jubilee Ringers; she retired after "only" 23 years with the group! John fondly describes Isobel's loving ways as mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.
John and Isobel recently sold their house in Worthington, and moved to "Worthington United Methodist, North-East", a.k.a., Friendship Village. "I was born to love people," he says. He already knows 135 other residents by name, and you can be sure that he's working on the rest!-Jean Parks Lynn, historian (jeanparkslynn@columbus.rr.com)