by RICK DANLEY // February 17, 2015
NEOSHO FALLS — Sitting at a long table beneath the fluorescent lights of the Senior Center in Neosho Falls, Thelma Bedenbender, 84, searches for something amid a pile of papers.
While she does that, the Rev. Russell Anderson, the soft-spoken, genial pastor of the town’s United Methodist Church, asks Bedenbender to recall an aspect of local history: “There were five different churches in this town at one time,” Now they’re all gone. We’ve been the only church for a long time. There’s nothing even left of those other five, is there?”
“Oh no. Not a brick. Here it is,” she says. “Listen.” She smooths the yellowed pages of an old copy of the Iola Register, and begins to read: “Neosho Falls’s story began on April 6, 1857, when two men in an old buggy pulled by one horse came upon the broad ledge of the rocks across the Neosho River forming the falls.’”
From that date the town surged into vibrant life — banks, restaurants, a train depot, telephone company, dance halls, a hotel — until one week, in 1951, floodwaters closed in over the city center, floated the pews of the Methodist church, and wiped out the town’s plans for a prosperous future.
THESE DAYS it’s not always easy to tell which houses in Neosho Falls are inhabited. A house or trailer you dismiss during the day as abandoned, will have a lamplight shining from one of its windows at night. The empty old buildings on Main Street are held together by branches and vines. There is a sign in the yard of a house in the center of town on which someone has spray-painted the words: “Welcome 2 the Jungle.” Across the street a pony with a gray and white marbled coat and white mane gallops in wild, stir-crazy circles along the perimeter of a chain-link fence. The bar on Main, open as recently as last year, is now boarded up, fingered as a meth shop by law enforcement in February. To the extent that Neosho Falls is known, it’s known as a ghost town. No highway comes near the place. There is no cell phone service. Large dogs roam the dirt roads, dying for a car to pass so they can give chase.
“When somebody asks me how many people live in this town, I say 100 people and 50 dogs,” said Bedenbender, who has lived in Neosho Falls since she was nine. “And that’s about the truth of it.”
Today, to be over-simple, there are two Neosho Falls. The first includes residents like Bedenbender, and families like the Chriestensons and Bruners and Leedys, whose lineage connects them to the booming river town of old. Then there is, many of the long-time residents report, a semi-invisible transient class, people who arrive for the cheap rent or vacant lots or the unsupervised air that pervades the town, and then depart before ever meeting their neighbors.
“They move in and they move out,” says Bedenbender. “Sometimes they come and they get a postbox, and the next day they come in and take the postbox out. They say, if you want to hide, go to Neosho Falls.”
Anderson agrees. “My little saying is that Neosho Falls is a great place to go if you don’t want people to find you.”
And yet, later that afternoon, as we’re standing at the top of the steps in front of the church, Anderson will look out on a part of town that would strike anyone else as textbook desolation. “Look, it isn’t dead yet,” Anderson says. “All you’ve got to do is stand here and look and go ‘Good grief, there’s ministry everywhere to be done in this town.’”
IN THE SPIRIT of the old black-clad Methodist circuit rider, who traveled on horseback from one country church to another with a Bible in his satchel, Anderson, after his small worship service in Yates Center lets out, makes the drive every Sunday to an even smaller congregation of about 20 in Neosho Falls.
The congregants gather over coffee and cookies at the back of the church before worship begins. Most of them are the descendants, either directly or through marriage, of one woman, the church’s matriarch, 93-year-old Juanita Chriestenson.
Arriving for the 11 o’clock service, Anderson climbs the dais and rings a little bell, signaling the start of service.
DURING THE WEEK, however, when the 100-year-old church stands empty, the building’s heat is switched off. Pacing the limber floorboards on a winter day, you can see your breath in the air. The sanctuary is bowl-shaped, with curved pews and high molded ceilings; its floor slopes down toward the pulpit and a flood of blonde light washes in through the east-west stained glass windows. The church lost its pianist recently; there is a small stereo cabinet in the corner and, on Sundays, the congregation sings along to hymns on CD. Past the sanctuary, behind a heavy wooden door, is the nursery: a couple of tables, a small sandbox and a handful of kid-sized Windsor chairs. The water in the building gets shut off during the workweek, too, except in the small bathroom near the nursery, where a small electric heater runs throughout the week.
ANDERSON’S challenge, as he sees it, is to use the church to help bridge the distance between the two sets of residents. “We’re the only church in town, and so you become the community’s pastor, whether the community realizes it or not. I don’t know how many funerals I’ve done where there was no connection with the church other than they were a member of the town.”
But of course Anderson would prefer to get to these folks before they make their final exit.
“The church here decided that every fifth Sunday — we get those every three, four months — it would do a potluck. One of my dreams, though, is, instead of it just being us, we go out and help those people who have the yard full of eight kids and debris everywhere, and let’s clean up their yard for them. And then invite them to the potluck. Because to me that’s what it’s really, ultimately, about. It’s that thing: ‘I’ve been forgotten about.’ Why can’t the church go ‘No, you haven’t been forgotten about. You’re still loved. Come and have a meal. Oh, and we’ll clean up your yard for you, too.’ How cool would that be? I think it would be a great ministry to start. You ready to do it, Thelma?”
“Oh, I couldn’t bend over to tie my shoe,” Bedenbender says, laughing. “I might say, ‘Hey, little boy, you want to pick that up for me?’”
But, like any pastor, Anderson has challenges in his own congregation, too. He recalls a young man, probably in his late-20s, not a member of the church, who has shown up twice for worship in recent months. “Just coming in on his own. Actually, the last time he was here was the Sunday we took down the Christmas decorations. I kind of stood around and was watching. Even though he’s pitching in and helping, still, nobody here talked to him…. Our challenge — and we’ve talked about it — is how can we be more welcoming and accepting of people who come into our church from outside.”
ANDERSON’S compassion for the outcast, or for the tentative loner, is personal; there’s a wound in Anderson’s own past which, by never allowing the memory of it to heal completely, provides the moral energy for much of his ministry.
By the time Anderson was in his twenties he’d already been laid off from his job at the Coleman Company in Wichita; he was recently divorced and was journeying headlong into a blackness of alcohol and drugs. “And then, when I was probably 28 or 29, I just really had an awakening in my life.” He was living in Oklahoma by then and decided one Sunday morning to take himself to church. “I was pretty shabby-looking. Long hair, beard, a T-shirt was probably the best shirt I had, and blue jeans. One of the things I remember well — it was the First Methodist Church, everybody in their suits and nice dresses, and I walked in looking like I did. The pastor, at the beginning of the service, said ‘Turn and greet your neighbor.’ I’ll never forget. The person behind me reached right past me, like that, to shake hands with the person in front of me, and neither one of them said hi to me. I just picked up my stuff and was heading out the door when a young couple intercepted me and invited me to their Sunday school class. And that has been in my heart ever since then. I have felt that’s part of my call, God saying ‘Look, that bothered you? You will serve a church that learns not to do that.’ So, if I do anything, that’s the greatest thing I could do in any church, to help the church members understand: God loves that person that looks like me.”
In time, Anderson moved to El Paso, where he began his preaching career, making 100-mile trips in the hot West Texas sun to minister to a church of five people; heeding the call in earnest, he eventually enrolled in Saint Paul’s seminary, in Kansas City, where he met his wife — Trudy Kenyon-Anderson, pastor at Iola’s Wesley United Methodist Church — and after a series of appointments, the pair ended up in Iola.
Today, Anderson is finishing the work that will earn him his doctorate degree: “The track that I’m working on is ‘vital congregations.’ How do you take a small, dying community church and how do you make it vital? How do you have a church in such a place?”
ONE THING a rural pastor does, as vital a part of his remit as any, is visit worshippers who are bedridden or whose knees or hips or back won’t allow them to climb the steep church steps.
Before leaving Neosho Falls last Thursday, Rev. Anderson met with an elderly woman at the Senior Center, and sat across from her at one of the tables. A communion glass with red juice and a small piece of bread on a saucer lay between them. “Well,” Anderson said, saying the woman’s name, “I brought communion for you. As you know, the bread, the juice. Even though you are unable to make it to church all the time, this is still the church coming to you.” He takes her hand in his. “It is Christ’s way of being present with you. Even in the midst of change, Christ is still there, guiding us through all that change. And now, through the bread, through juice, through love and forgiveness” — he indicates the glass — “which is what this is, it is grace, poured out just for you.” The Senior Center is a low-ceilinged room with hanging light fixtures. At this point in the Holy Communion one of the fluorescent bulbs, directly above the woman, flickers like a bug zapper then suddenly doubles in brightness. Anderson continues, chuckling: “And, see, Christ says ‘Hey, look, I’m going to turn a light on and shine brighter in your life.’”
The woman laughs and wipes her eyes. “Oh, it comes on every so often like that.”
“Yeah, because Jesus shows up,” Anderson teases. “They do call him the light of the world, you know.” He hands her the bread and she takes it in cupped palms. “This is the body of Christ, which is broken just for you. The grace of our Lord. And the juice, the cup of Christ, forgiveness.”
She sips from the cup. “Thank you,” she says.
“You’re welcome,” he says. “Shall we pray?”
Originally published as “A few souls keep town vital” in the Feb. 17 edition of the Iola Register. http://www.iolaregister.com/news/a-few-souls-keep-town-vital
RG danley 