Pitner, who had been a member at Polk Street for 57 years, said its disaffiliation was “a very painful process, for all of us.”
McNeir began attending the church after moving to Amarillo in 2014 with her husband. A 1984 graduate of Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology, McNeir had served as a pastor at two churches in North Texas before retiring in 2002. Three years after she arrived in Amarillo, Polk Street Methodist asked her to join the staff as the executive pastor.
McNeir, who said she never expected to “fail retirement” so many times, came out of retirement again this spring, after Polk Street decided to leave the UMC. McNeir led services until the Rev. Robert Burke joined this summer, and McNeir retired for her third time.
The 3-month-old Amarillo United Methodist Church is bursting at its seams, with more than 150 people attending its 9 a.m. service, with nearly half under the age of 60, but the congregation is still getting organized. “We barely put a leadership council together just for the chartering service,” Burke said.
Burke says members are working to create their own identity while merging different churches.
“For me as a pastor at a county seat church before this, trying to get people to do stuff is sometimes challenging,” Burke said. “But here, (people ask), ‘What can I do to help out?’ Everybody’s eager to try to jump in and do their part and use their gifts and graces to serve the church, and I really haven’t seen that for a long time.”
But members are still grieving their buildings and church friends left behind.
“Some of this decision-making in disaffiliation got co-opted, if you will,” said Pitner. “What’s taking place in the country with the culture and the politics, the red, the blue, left and right, the Christian nationalism stuff clouded, shaded and impacted decisions that were being made, and quite frankly, confused people as to decisions that were being made by local churches in our part of the world regarding disaffiliation or staying put.”
This article originally appeared here.
