April 19, 2021
(Dallas, Texas) The Texas United Methodist Historical Society is pleased to announce that the 2020 Kate Warnick Award for Excellence in Local Church History – Small Church Category – has been awarded to Hedley Station: A History of the First Twenty-five Years of the Hedley Methodist Church, by Rev. Stan Cosby. Hedley UMC is in the Northwest Texas Conference of the UMC.
The Society also has given Honorable Mention to First United Methodist Church of Brackettville: One Hundred Years 1920 – 2020 by Mary Ellen Miner. First UMC Bracketville is in the Rio Texas Conference of the UMC.
These histories explore the strength and resilience of small churches in rural communities west of the 100th meridian. Each contain the testimonies in words and actions of the determined Anglo settlers of these tough lands, including their ministers.
Hedley, Texas, sits about 75 miles east southeast of Amarillo. “God’s people of Methodist faith have made their witness from this corner of Donley County for 115 years,” begins Rev. Stan Cosby, current pastor of the church there, whose wife’s family has been involved in the Hedley church almost from its beginning. Cosby weaves a wonderfully well-written story of the church in the first three decades of the twentieth century using a wide array of primary resource from the church, the conference records, ministerial obituaries and online genealogical resources. The book contains wonderful scans and useful images of original source material. Although these materials sometimes put the ministers in the center of the story, Cosby seeks out the laity and provides a detailed account of the founding families of the church. Typical of the faithfulness recounted is the story of Dr. J. W. Webb: “Dr. Webb was a Methodist, not a very good church member as the Methodists saw it, but he saved our baby’s life. Dr. Webb never took a penny. He was a true friend of the community.”
The Methodist presence in Brackettville, which is 30 miles east of Del Rio in the Rio Grande Valley, dates back to the nineteenth century and is tied to historic Fort Clark. The author, a “Winter Texan” who spends the rest of the year in Michigan, has taken great care to assemble an extraordinary collection of materials documenting the surprisingly tumultuous history of this faith community. She tells of both the Anglo and Hispanic nineteenth century Methodists and details the rise, near fall and rise again of the Anglo congregation that met regularly starting in the early twentieth century. In the 1950s, the church hosted Rev. Rena Mahler, then the only ordained Methodist female minister in Texas. In the 1980s, the congregation split between conservatives and moderates. Recently, the congregation has expressed its hope through mission to its community. The history includes short films and a series of articles ready for publication in a newspaper.
“The life of the faith is expressed in and around the local church,” said Kent Roberts, Chair of the Kate Warnick Award Committee of the Texas United Methodist Historical Society. “These wonderful new histories capture the vitality and challenges of the local church in smaller towns. One hates to have to choose between them. Both books also instruct other local church historians on the wealth of materials available to reconstruct detailed histories of even small organizations.”
The Texas United Methodist Historical Society established the Kate Warnick Awards in 1978 to encourage the publication of exemplary local church histories within the eight Annual Conferences of the United Methodist Church that constitute the Texas United Methodist Historical Society: Central Texas, New Mexico, North Texas, Northwest Texas, Oklahoma Indian Mission, Rio Grande, Rio Texas, and Texas. The Award is given in the Large Church, Medium Church and Small Church categories. This year, no awards were made in the Large Church or Medium Church categories.
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Press Contact:
Kent H. Roberts