In July 1983, I started a new Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church in Somerset, Ohio. Our first service was held in a storefront building we rented for $100. A few months later, we rented the second floor of what was called the Landmark Building. Attendance growth was slow. By the summer of 1985, our average attendance was 50. To facilitate our expansion, we bought an abandoned United Methodist Church for $5,000. Built in 1831, the building was typical of Methodist churches built in the nineteenth century.
Over the next few years, Somerset Baptist grew to over 200 in attendance. Some of the members who attended the Methodist church when it was open were worried about our growth. Why? When we bought the Methodist building, it came with a cemetery, one that contained some of the early settlers of the area. The cemetery was a wreck, littered with toppled tombstones or stones that didn’t belong to any particular grave. We cleaned everything up, mowing the grass as needed. We were, in every way, good citizens.
Some of the people who formerly attended the Methodist church became worried that we were going to pull up the tombstones and turn the cemetery into a parking lot. They demanded we turn the cemetery over to the township, threatening us with a lawsuit if we didn’t submit. I remember being perplexed at the time. We hadn’t done anything with the cemetery other than maintain it (at our own cost).
Eventually, the township agreed to take over the cemetery. I told township commissioners that they would have to fence the cemetery and pay us for mowing the grass, which they agreed to do. And with that, the Methodists avoided the Baptists paving over the graves of former members and community residents. I never understood their paranoia over something we never would have done. Yes, we needed more parking, but turning the cemetery into a parking lot was never an option. Instead, we expanded the parking near the church building and encouraged healthy members to park along the road in front of the church and cemetery. Problem solved. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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