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Hello Mary Kay,
How are you? My wife Elizabeth and I are surviving. I am still an
active United Methodist pastor at age 67 now. We are living in
Camden where I am pastor of the Liberty and Post Oak Charge.
I received an e-mail from Dianne Crawford about 2 weeks ago and she
had forwarded an email she had received from you inquiring about me
being pastor twice in Dancyville. That is correct. Approximately
1969 I was called to be pastor at the Dancyville Assembly of God. I
was working at the Milan Army Ammunition Plant at the time. They had
no parsonage, so I moved into one of Herbert Martin's rental houses.
Twenty years later, I was appointed to the Stanton-Dancyville-Springhill
United Methodist Charge where I was pastor for four years. I was
ordained in the Assemblies of God in 1976, and transferred into the
United Methodist Church as an ordained preacher in 1984.
Ironically, I was pastor to some of the same people at Dancyville
United Methodist Church that I had also been pastor to in the
Dancyville Assembly of God twenty years earlier. If I remember
correctly it was James and Pearly Mae Duncan, and also some of the
Tom Ferrell family.
Something else of interest is that my father, the late Reverend E.
C. Worley, Sr. was pastor of the Dancyville Assembly of God in
1953-1954. My oldest brother, Reverend Kenneth L. Worley also was
pastor of the Dancyville Assembly of God a few years later
_________
The old Assembly of God Church was next to Miss
Dorothy Moore and directly across the road from Crawford's store.
After the new Assembly of God was built, the old church was
partitioned into a
dwelling house and my brother and his family lived in it while he
was pastor of the Assembly of God at
Dancyville.
I don't think the old church was two stories, but it was built
extremely
high off the ground. I remember those high steps at the front.
My dad was a strict displinarian and I dare never act up in church
or it meant a trip to behind the smokehouse if I ever did. One night
I was sitting on the old plank pew near the back. A wasp dive bombed
down on me and went down inside the back of my shirt. At that point
the wasp had not stung me but I just knew it would. I had the
brilliant idea of smashing him first. I leaned forward, gritted my
teeth and went back on the wasp. Needless to say, the wasp stung me
multiple times. My brother Kenneth who was sitting on the pew
behind me, grabbed my arm and pulled
me out the door onto the porch. He yanked up by shirt to release the
angry injured wasp. He had witnessed the entire scene. He asked me,
"What in the world did you mean by doing that?"
My reply was, "I was afraid daddy would whip me if I caused a
scene."
I feared the wrath of my dad, more than the wrath of a wasp. huh.
Grace & peace,
Durwood Worley
"Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty
things, which you do not know" (Jeremiah 33:3, NKJV) |
