RELIGION Baptism by Fire

WHEN WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN III took over the pulpit at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in June 1995, he faced a tough transition. Previous pastor Don R. Benton was a fatherly bear of a man who rilled the podium not only with a strong physical presence but also with polished sermons that left listeners feeling uplifted and inspired to do battle with the world for yet another week. “Listening to Don was like hearing the magisterial voice of God,” says one member.

Listening to Bryan, says another, is more like hearing a history lesson by a school-marm: chatty, informative, but delivered with a wagging finger. “Tsk, tsk, tsk…You can do better than that.”

The shift from Benton to Bryan has caused turmoil at Lovers Lane, a 52-year-old North Dallas institution that is the spiritual home of many influential, prosperous families who feel called not only to support their church but also their city with time, energy and money. Lovers Lane is a flagship among United Methodist churches. The pipe organ is larger than the one in the Meyerson Symphony Center, and the church has a 25-piece jazz band. Last summer, the world saw the exquisite sanctuary, with its modern architecture and walls composed of abstract, contemporary stained glass, when Mickey Mantle’s funeral was broadcast on CNN. Bryan shared the podium that day with Bob Costas, Bobby Richardson and Roy Clark.

But in the past year, Bryan’s style and one particularly controversial decision-to baptize two baby girls conceived by a surrogate mother for two homosexual men- have caused a number of staunch, high-profile members to take themselves and their checkbooks to other churches. It’s the biggest conflict seen at the church in several decades. Channel 8 anchor Tracy Rowlett and oilman Ray Hunt have started attending other churches since Bryan took over. though both decline to say why. Attendance has dipped, now averaging about 1,300 per week, with membership at 5,500. During visits to a few of the 11 o’clock Sunday morning services-one of three identical services-the crowd was thin.

“Everything is not bright and beautiful,” concedes one longtime church leader. “Jesus went through a wilderness experience. Maybe Bill is going through that now.”

Perhaps the struggle was inevitable, given the nature of Lovers Lane, which is located not on that street but at Inwood Road and Northwest Highway, in the heart of affluent Preston Hollow. Unlike many large United Methodist churches where the pastors are replaced every dozen or so years, Lovers Lane has had only two preachers from l945to 1995.The first, Tom Shipp. died in 1977 of a heart attack while in a building committee meeting. Brought in by the bishop to help the members grieve and move forward. Benton ended up staying until his retirement in his mid-60s- he’s now head of the Dallas Kindness Foundation-and in the process, built up a large, loyal following.

Bryan, now 45, had spent 12 years as a pastor at Grace United Methodist Church in East Dallas. That congregation is predominantly poor or working class-a mix of whites, Hispanics, blacks and Asians. At Grace, he was the 29th pastor of an 80-year-old church. Much of the church’s mission revolved around meeting not only the congregation’s spiritual desires, but their physical needs, with a food pantry, inoculation clinics and English classes.

At Lovers Lane, physical needs are not a significant problem. Much of the challenge involves helping members meet deeper spiritual longings and getting those in the pews out into the community to help others. To be appointed to serve as the pastor of rich, powerful Lovers Lane United Methodist was like being called up from the minor leagues to pitch for the Texas Rangers in the year they went to the playoffs.

Many of those who have watched Bryan struggle in his first year give him high marks for trying hard. “I think it’s gone better than I expected,” says Karen Meeks, chairman of the administrative board when Bryan came in. “Organized churches are struggling. People shop churches. People shop preachers. It makes it more and more difficult to reach and retain members.”

Church lay leaders anticipated a tough transition when they agreed on the Bishop’s selection of Bryan. “It’s been a steep learning curve.” says Frank Jackson, chairman of the long-range planning committee. For one thing, at Grace, Bryan had a tiny staff. When he started at Lovers, there were 40 to 50 employees. “Bill’s gaining familiarity with the membership,” Jackson says. “He didn’t know the history, how the people think and react to things. He’s getting to know his congregation.”

But others choose their words carefully when talking about why they’re thinking about looking for another church. “It hurts to think about leaving,” says one longtime member who has been a generous donor for many years. His wife has left the church and he is visiting a different church with her most Sundays. “I’m trying to satisfy my own longings.”



A DIFFERENT STYLE

PICKING BILL BRYAN WAS AN UNUSUAL selection for Bishop Bruce Blake to make when Benton announced his desire to retire. Bryan’s commitment for more than a decade has been to Christian activism within a multicultural, multi-ethnic congregation. Almost exclusively, highly educated, upper-middle class whites sit in the pews on Sunday mornings at Lovers Lane. “You might see old Ann Richards bumper stickers on cars, but it’s still pretty conservative,” says one member.

Lovers Lane is a strong, conservative, stable congregation in a denomination whose national membership is declining. The Bishop and the nine lay leaders on the staff parish committee realized the church needed to appeal to couples struggling with careers and raising children by giving them someone with whom to identify. Bryan has a 13-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son. His wife Corinne, a CPA, works outside the home. Lean, with graying hair. Bryan likes bicycling and playing basketball and has a keen, dry sense of humor. He grew up dishing out ribs and chopped beef at Sonny Bryan’s on Inwood Road. “You take 85 years of barbecue and Budweiser and you get a preacher.” he says about his family. To Bryan, the appointment as the first Dallas-bom pastor to lead Lovers Lane United Methodist was an awesome opportunity-and a challenge.

Parishioners quickly realized that Bryan would give them no freedom to feel complacent in those red-cushioned pews. He initiated the practice at the beginning of each Sunday service of having the congregation read a “prayer of confession and words of forgiveness” that he writes each week. Most of Bryan’s sermons include a call to reach out to those less privileged, less blessed-and less white. “I would be happy with more racial diversity,” says Bryan. “I’ve seen that and I’ve been blessed by that.”

It isn’t the message, but the manner in which it is delivered that has ruffled feathers, says a woman who began attending the church in the early ’80s. “He’s a good preacher; he’s funny and he manages to work barbecue into almost every sermon,” she says. (Like many interviewed for this story, she asked that her name not be used. Married, she is a white professional in her late 30s, making her a bit younger than the average Lovers Lane member.) “But every once in a while, there’s that feeling of the finger being shaken at you.”

She gives another example: At a performance of a choir from the church’s Trinity River Mission project, Bryan introduced a Hispanic girl who was valedictorian of her high school. He mentioned that it was nice to see such diversity in the audience, which that day was filled with parents and friends of the students. “And you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Bryan said. Though Lovers Lane has long had a strong commitment to outreach, Bryan began emphasizing it even more. The implication was that Lovers Lane would have to change, to embrace more cultures, to become less lily-white. “He pushes a little more than people are comfortable with,” she says.

And Bryan’s style in the pulpit is dramatically different from Benton’s. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Rice University and master’s and doctorate degrees from SMU; if he had not gone into the ministry, Bryan would have become a history professor. At Grace, preaching to people with 10 languages among them, Bryan had used symbols, parables, stories. At Lovers, the man who sits in the fourth pew is the former dean of SMU’s business school; CEOs, lawyers, doctors and other well-educated professionals are looking to Bryan for an inspirational message.

So initially, he shifted to a more scholarly approach. He mentioned people like Augustine, St. Anthony, Thomas Jefferson. People complained that they couldn’t follow his sermons, that they were over their heads. But he also employed dramatic touches-like jumping from the pulpit- that struck some as not in keeping with the dignity of his position.

“I made a mistake when I came here,” Bryan admits. “I talked more ideas, fewer stories. My preaching stumbled that summer,” Bryan adjusted, with feedback from church leaders, he de-emphasized the history lessons and the big ideas and went back to more anecdotes and parables. But history is still a big part of Bryan’s delivery. In one sermon, called ’”Digital and Analog Forgiveness,” he outlined the arrival of the telephone in Dallas and used it to illustrate Jesus’ call to forgive not seven times, but 70 times seven. “Forgiveness is not digital,” he said, ’*it is analog-a reflection of God’s forgiveness.” He quoted Jane Austen and the poet William Blake: “Mutual forgiveness of every vice, such are the gates of paradise.” Well, maybe you had to be there.

But no matter what he did, Bryan still wasn’t Don Benton. Churchgoers who loved Benton’s warm, informal, fatherly approach squirmed at Bryan’s cooler, more distant method of delivery. They chafed at the more frequent mentions of sin. They didn’t leave the sermon feeling uplifted; they left feeling guilty.

Benton might have been able to help smooth Bryan’s rocky transition. But the older pastor stopped attending Lovers Lane when Bryan came on board. Those close to Benton learned that the younger man had privately asked his predecessor not to worship at Lovers Lane any longer. Though not widely known, Bryan’s request made him seem discourteous and insecure to many of the longtime members who were friends with Benton.

Bryan acknowledges that he asked Benton not to attend Lovers Lane, just as he made a commitment to make a clean separation from Grace United Methodist. “When we change appointments, we need to move on,” Bryan says. “You let the new person have a chance. That’s just Methodist etiquette. You bless them and move on.” (Benton did not return phone calls.)

Halfway through his first year, Bryan and the church faced a major crisis. For five of the previous seven years, the church had been operating with a budget deficit, a residual of the ’80s bust when many parishioners struggled with business failures. Church debt was rolled over from year to year, but contributions weren’t keeping up with expenditures. The target budget for 1996 was $3.1 million. To get the church out of its hole, Bryan and the budget committee slashed spending to $2.5 million. But that forced Bryan to cut employees’ hours and to ask the staff to give up its internal pension for a year. Hardest of all: Bryan had to lay off 13 staff members.

Though several staff members offered to take the heat, to be the “black hats” who did the actual firings, Bryan insisted that it was his responsibility. Though the church leaders worked hard to make it clear in meetings and church publications that the lay offs and cuts were not Bryan’s fault, inevitably, there was anger. Furious that several beloved employees got the ax. some members left the church.

“This was one of the tasks that had to be done,” Bryan says. “This year, we will pay back a significant portion of the deficit. We finished the summer without having to borrow any money. We’re a lot stronger now.”

In fact, many staff members like Bryan’s method of management. “Don Benton made more decisions himself,” says Karen Meeks. “Bill is more inclusive of the laity and staff. He likes lots of input, lots of ideas. He’s opened up new avenues for lay leaders to get involved.” As Christmas approached, it looked as if the fallout from the budget crisis had passed, that the congregation had accepted not only the stringent spending, but also its new leader.

Then came the Cable-Barber twins incident.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, which fell on a Sunday. Bryan stood before the congregation, dressed in his holiday finest, and announced that it was a “historic occasion.” He first held up tiny Olivia Joy and then her twin sister Catherine Grace, wearing matching white dresses, sprinkled their heads with water and baptized them in the name of the Father. Son and Holy Spirit. To his left, their parents. Dr. Lawrence Barber and Dr. James Cable, beamed.

Many at the service that morning didn’t initially realize why it was a significant event. Two babies, two daddies. But word spread quickly: The two fathers are a homosexual couple who had paid a surrogate mother in California to bear a child through artificial insemination. The fraternal twins were bom in July 1995.

The United Methodist denomination regards homosexual conduct as sin and does not recognize same-sex marriages. A UM minister in Denton was forced to resign his ordination last year after he performed a marriage ceremony for two gays. In baptizing the two infants, some felt that Bryan was condoning the men’s relationship and the method of the babies’ conception. Outraged, they began writing letters and calling church members, lay leaders and the Bishop to complain.

Barber, a clinical psychologist, has been a member of Lovers Lane for about eight years. His partner James Cable, an orthopedic physician, has been attending regularly for a year. They are bound together just short of marriage, says Barber, by legal documents dealing with power of attorney and guardianship.

Determined to be parents, the two men tried for four years to adopt a child. After eight attempted adoptions fell through for various reasons, they turned to a California agency for surrogate mothers. A married woman who knew they were gay agreed to bear their child. Only one of them donated the sperm used in the artificial insemination; they won’t say which partner is the biological father. Both flew to California to for the girls’ birth by Cesarean section.

Barber was baptized as an adult by Benton. In fact, Benton was the reason Barber joined the church. “Don was the most moving preacher 1 had ever heard,” Barber says. He had been to the Metropolitan Community Church of Dallas for services but thought the sermons were ’”too gay.” Neither man is involved in homosexual activism. “There’s more to my life than what I do in bed,” Barber says.

Even before Olivia and Catherine were born, says Barber, he knew he wanted them baptized as infants in the church. (Barber says that Benton did not know Barber was homosexual when the minister sprinkled him.) Bryan had taken over the church at about the same time the girls had been born. In the fall, Barber and Cable asked Bryan to baptize their babies on Christmas Eve. when their families would be in town.

When he took over at Lovers Lane, in order to better manage his time, Bryan decided to turn wedding services over to other staff pastors in order to concentrate on baptisms. As he does for all parents desiring baptism of children, Bryan visited the Cable-Barber home, talked to the two men about their spiritual responsibilities in child-rearing and agreed to perform the sacrament in front of the congregation on the Sunday morning of Dec. 24.

“I applied the same guidelines as I do to any baptism,” Bryan says.

“Homosexuality is a hot topic in the church. But this wasn’t about that. What they were asking for was the baptism of the girls. That means acceptance by God-God’s hug-and initiation into the church. I wasn’t asked about the relationship.”

The subsequent controversy took Bryan by surprise. Among the concerns was that gays would see the baptism as a validation of their lifestyle and Mock to Lovers Lane. “Plus, there was just the shock of it,” says Martye Simmons, who had just become head of the staff parish committee. Simmons was not at the service and had not heard of the coming baptism. Bryan didn’t feel it necessary to discuss his decision with anyone.

“Let’s face it, this is conservative Dallas,” Simmons says. “Here are two males who went way out of their way to have these children. The bottom line is those girls are going to have a tough time, no matter how wonderful those two men are. 1 think people are going to be cruel to the little girls.”

One prominent member, who has since left the church, says he and bis wife didn’t leave because of the baptism. “We would not take issue with that,” he says. “But if you take seriously the words of the congregation when the baptism is done, it’s an endorsement of that family. That is a different subject.”

Meeks, former chairman of the administrative board, also had no problem with the baptism. “A child is a child,” she says. “1 did feel it was done without some forethought. [If consulted] we might have suggested that he not do it on Christmas Eve.”

Earle Norris, 90. a founding member of the church, got a letter from one outraged parishioner encouraging him to protest Bryan’s action. But after Norris thought it over, he agreed with Bryan. “The children don’t have anything to do with it,” Norris says. “I just don’t think Christ would turn people like that away.”

While Simmons agreed with Bryan that the two babies should have been baptized, she says it could have been handled differently, He could have mentioned it to the lay leaders first Perhaps the godparents could have stood up for the children. And Bryan’s timing could perhaps have been more politic. The occasion of Christmas Eve perhaps attached a message to the event that the church was moving toward recognizing such relationships.

“We do not condone homosexual behavior,” says Simmons. “As a congregation, we pledge to support children [being baptized] in the Christian faith. There’s a contradiction there.”

Bryan declines to say what he would do differently. “When it came to the sacrament of the church, I did the right thing,” he says.

Norris, whose house was the first meeting place for the church, likes Bryan’s style. “1 think he’s great,” Norris says. “I think he’s doing a wonderful job.” He points out that Tom Shipp also faced controversy when he brought in the church’s first black members. That action caused five or six of the church’s most staunch members to leave. And when Benton took over from Shipp. it wasn’t a completely smooth transition. “To talk to people. Tom Shipp was the closest thing to God,” Meeks says.

And while some people have left the church-whether because of the baptism, the firings or Bryan’s style-others have come back now that Don Benton is gone, says Simmons. “Don Benton was a father figure,” Simmons says. “Bill Bryan is contemporary. I think Bill is where the church needs to go.”