A Christmas Story to Remember

Church's flock comes together for fellowship, tradition and memories

Rutland's tiny century old church was set to be closed in 1987, until its congregation fought back.

It is here, in these 100 year old pews, in the time faded stained glass and in the white washed simplicity of his chapel built on the faith of a village, that a traditional Christmas story is best told.

We begin in this little town, an unassuming place that is home to 160 people.

Theirs is a Christmas story to remember, but not because it is remarkable and not because it so different from many people's.

Because it is the same.

The Church is Methodist, but that is just a minor detail.  At the head of the modest sanctuary, the cross is simple and made of wood.  The organ is exactly for decades old.  A vast majority of these churchgoers are well over the age of 60.

They come Christmas Eve, in crisply ironed Sunday suits and with grandchildren in tow, to celebrate the most important night of their religious year.

The members of Faith United Methodist Church walk up the candlelit path to the church built in 1890.

Bundled in warm coats, they greet friends and neighbors who, like them, have come to this church on this night to worship this God they have chosen as their own.

"It is truly a sight to behold," says Pastor Russell Dilley, lowering his voice to an almost reverent tone.

Rutland wasn't much to begin with.  And today there is almost nothing left of it.

The three town institutions -- the grain elevator, the tavern and one local church-- bind the locals together.

"That's all they have left," Dilley said.

Of the three, the church is the heart of the town.  It is a mainstay of traditional values in a world that seems a little nuts to this predominantly farming community.  The chapel may be ting and threadbare, but it is mighty with heritage and memories.

As she swings open the heavy wooden doors, Alice Goodell flashes back to 1955.  She had walked through these same doors and into this same doors and into this same chapel to marry Lloyd Goodell.

And then she thinks back even further, to her childhood.  She remembers the times her dad brought all the kids here for Sunday school or the mornings they would walk from the farm if fieldwork was in progress. 

She didn't know it then, but her seven children would be baptized here, confirmed her and would someday drive all their children to Sunday school or the mornings they would walk from the farm if fieldwork was in progress.

She didn't know it then, but her seven children would be baptized here, confirmed here and would someday drive all the way from Texas to baptize their own children here.

"Oh this place has been special," she said with a nostalgic smile.  "And Christmas Eve is always the most treasured of all."

Ascending the altar steps to the organ she has played since its purchase in 1957, Carol Fish is also thinking back.

Informally the church historian, Fish has a dog-eared book where she has kept track of Sunday attendance for as many decades as she can remember.  From her perch, she looks out, counting who is there and who isn't.

"In this size of church," she always says, "we know if you're missing.  If your aren't here on Sunday, you'd better have a good excuse."

Tonight, as always on Christmas Eve, it is a full house.  About 100 people crowd the original wood pews--twice the number who come to an average Sunday service.

Fish notices whose grandchildren are getting taller, which hometown girls have new beaus at their sides and which elderly members are spending their first holiday season as widows or widowers.

She sees all, knows all and remembers all.

"I've got the records back to when we first put carpet over the original hardwood floors," she said.  "I know when they first padded the pews when . . ."

Don Hood knows a special satisfaction as he walks into the church his parents first joined back in 1939.  Seven years ago, the chapel had been on the verge of closing.  Church coffers were alarmingly low, and the end seemed inevitable.

Hood, whose grandson was baptized here with water a preacher brought back from the River Jordan, can take some of the credit for the church's survival.  On a fall afternoon in 1987, he talked with a pastor from the big Methodist church in nearby Humboldt.  "It's heartbreaking to lose a church," he told Pastor Dilley.

So Dilley helped consolidate the little church with the one in Humboldt, setting up a system under which a Humboldt pastor would minister in Rutland each Sunday.

Today, 107 years after the church was built, services continue.

This Christmas story is set in Rutland.  But it is not so different from scenes all over Iowa.  To this little church in the middle of nowhere, these people come for fellowship, tradition and memories.

"This is our family," Hood says.

The prayer at the beginning of the candlelight service is simple:  It asks that all people find light in the darkness, that all can spend holidays with loved ones and that every person finds the true meaning of Christmas.

The above article was written by Kirsten Scharnberg, writer for the Des Moines Register, and appeared on December 25, 1997.  Ferne Throndsen and Bud Schluter contributed the article.

A  post card picture of the church as it appeared in the early 1900's.