Chapter Seven

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            Every church, in its life, faces crises that seem to arise from nowhere. The Early Church itself battled almost perpetual problems: What do you believe? In whom should we place our trust? Stability often seems a fleeting thing for congregations, and yet these problems are the least discussed in the histories of churches.

            The reasons for this aren’t hard to find. For many people, it resembles the airing of dirty linen—things that should be “kept in the family.” It is embarrassing, too, and it can drive away potential new members, the necessary lifeblood of any congregation. Still, it’s a perplexing fact that few church histories deal with their controversies in a straightforward manner.

            Sometimes, it’s a matter of apportioning blame. Often, a few strong-willed people are willing to wreck a church in struggles over power. Martin Luther would have probably blamed the Devil—to him a very real personage against whom we fight every day of our lives. If we have grown beyond speaking of the Devil, we have not gone beyond studying evil and believing that it is a real and palpable thing.

            Churches rarely fall into trouble because of such things, though. The Holocaust was evil. It may seem facile to blame church problems on “personality clashes,” but often it comes down to that. Whatever the reason, as 1979 moved forward into 1980, it was clear that Holy Cross was facing perhaps the most serious crisis in its history.

            Letters started coming to the Church Council sometime during the fall of 1978. They had a single theme, according to unclear church records: dissatisfaction with Rev. Morelock. He had served for five years at the church and had been minister in charge of huge, positive changes. Holy Cross had moved from its increasingly poor location on Alps Road to a better site on West Lake Drive. Though it was still near the business district that has grown around Beechwood, it was in the edge of the residential district and buffered from the businesses by trees.

            The sanctuary was finished, and services in it deepened the spirituality of many. It seemed a holy place. Efforts had been made to increase the scope of Christian education, and music continued to grow as part of the church, with several people already saying that a real pipe organ would make a great difference in the services.

            The congregants who wrote apparently had two issues with Morelock: an alleged lack of visitations and a lessening involvement with administrative details for the church. When asked by the Church Council to respond, Morelock was contrite, saying he admitted, “to having not pursued a vigorous visitation program.” The Council asked him to become “more aggressive” in those areas until a second Council meeting could be held on Oct. 19 to further discuss the problems.

            If the Church Council was troubled by its relationship with Rev. Morelock, the Pastoral Relations Council was even more concerned. It apparently posed some questions to him in writing on September 11, but more than a month later, there had been no response. Deeply troubled, the Pastoral Relations presented a recommendation to the Council that must have stunned many:

            “It is in the best interest of both Holy Cross Lutheran Church and Pastor Kenneth Morelock for him to accept a call elsewhere.”

            The response of the congregants was swift and probably predictable. Sides formed, both in favor of and against Rev. Morelock, and a deep division opened in the church. While the congregation had had its troubles over the years since it had first become a mission outpost, no problem had come close to this one.

            It is possible some in the congregation might have been blindsided by the issue, but it is unlikely, since church records show that there had been a “year-long discussion between the Council and the pastor concerning the ministerial program at Holy Cross.” Before acting the Pastoral Relations Committee listened to concerns over a period of four weeks.

            The Church Council listened to the report and motion from the Pastoral Relations Council and approved it on a 7-2 vote and agreed to forward the resolution to the president of the Southeastern Synod. Perhaps bowing to the inevitable, Rev. Morelock on Nov. 6 asked to be put on call to any congregation seeking a pastor in either the Southeastern Synod or the Maryland Synod.

            Morelock’s one request was that he be allowed to serve through spring so that one of his children could be confirmed at Holy Cross and another graduate from high school. In a letter tinged with more than a little irony, Morelock said that it was his “fervent hope” that neither “you nor another pastor get to `enjoy’ the peculiar situation that has developed here.”

            As it turned out, Morelock officially resigned as of Dec. 31, 1979, but the problems within the congregation were now out in the open, and the church was without a pastor at all.

            By the beginning of 1980, there was, according to official records, a “chasm” in the congregation, with the church being split into three groups: those who were in favor of Morelock; those against him; and those in the middle. Wherever one stood, Holy Cross was a “deeply divided congregation,” and no solution for the problems seemed near.

            If Holy Cross issued a call for a new minister during 1980, no one answered it. A series of supply pastors that included Revs. Cole Reasin, Harvey Huntley, and James Clark would serve as interim and temporary pastors of Holy Cross for the next two years—a time of trial in the history of Holy Cross, to be sure. Reasin served for the first six Sundays of 1980 as supply pastor, and Huntley was named interim pastor after that.

            Despite its fine location and new church, Holy Cross had, according to its annual report “a lot of wounds in the congregation”—wounds that were healing “all too slowly.” Traditionally, each committee of the church presented a report at the end of the year to be included in the annual report, but in the 1980 report, presented in January 1981, seven committees didn’t present a report at all.

            The church has “little outreach, little caring for each other, no youth group, no organist, and no choir director.” Many members left the church, and some Sundays, services were thinly attended. About the only substantive changes during 1980 were the adoption of the Lutheran Book of Worship as the official text for services and the addition of children’s sermons to certain services.

            After the disaster of late 1979 and the dark days of 1980, little changed on through 1981. Rev. Huntley was still at Holy Cross as interim pastor, but he left that April, and the church issued a call to a Rev. Joseph Griffin of Quimby, S. C., and though church records are unclear on what happened, Griffin declined to come.

            As it turned out, a man who would utterly turn around the fortunes of the church stood in the wings and would become a guiding force at Holy Cross for more than two decades: Rev. David Hart.

            Hart had taken an unusual route to the pulpit of a Lutheran Church. Though his own father was a Lutheran minister, Hart had been a star high school and college football player and was always interested more in sports. After graduating from Newberry College (where he met his wife, Paula), he accepted a teaching and head-coaching job at a high school in Alabama.

             He loved coaching, but he could not get out of his mind an urge to follow his father as a pastor. Something about it was necessary to him. And so he decided to go to seminary and study to be a pastor—something that took courage and determination.

            Hart was almost forty when he preached a trial sermon at Holy Cross in the fall of 1981, and the congregants were immediately taken by his sincerity and open, friendly manner. After the problems of the past two years, he seemed, truly, to be a Godsend, and the congregation issued a call on an overwhelming vote: 66-4-1. They gave him until November 30 to decide on coming, but it was an easy choice. And at the writing of this history, some 24 years later, Pastor David Hart remains at Holy Cross, his tenure nearly four times longer than any other pastor in the church’s history.

            In his first annual report as pastor, Hart said he came to Holy Cross believing it had “much potential.” He was right. Though healing of the wounds of the past several years would take time, it began when Hart and his wife, Paula, moved to the area. Standing committees began once more, and they set regular meeting times to make sure that the business of the church moved forward. The church established visiting teams, shepherding programs, and even a weeknight Bible study. A church softball team was active during the summer.

            All that was somewhat in the future, though. Pastor Hart was formally installed as minister of Holy Cross Lutheran Church on March 7, 1982, and a new era for the church began. It is worth noting that during the times of uncertainty, Jim Hansen and Bill Bennett served as supply pastors, and two decades later, Hansen was still fulfilling the same role.

            For a period of nearly two years, Holy Cross was at the brink of division as a congregation, if not outright collapse. It’s worth remembering that though it was a traumatic time for the church, such schisms are not at all unusual, even in the Athens area, where several congregations have split, sometimes over theological issues and others over location or personalities.

After Pastor Hart arrived, a new day came to Holy Cross.

Chapter 8