Saturday, June 14, 1997

Tiny church's charm is an advertisement for old-fashioned weddings

By JACQUIELYNN FLOYD / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - Bride-to-be Louise Grissom is skipping the veil and flowers and sugary white cake - too frilly, she said, for a 70-year-old woman and her 68-year-old groom.

But Mrs. Grissom knows where she wants the wedding to be held. She knew last week, the minute she laid eyes on the Wheatland United Methodist Church.

"I just fell in love when I saw it," said Mrs. Grissom, a widowed computer-supply saleswoman. "I'm Baptist, but as long as I have an ordained minister, that's where I want it to be."

Brides have been falling in love with the little white church hidden in a cedar grove off South Hampton Road for generations. Now, its congregation shrunken to a handful of devoted senior citizens, the church depends on the marrying business to stay afloat.

"If you were a businessman, you'd say it was nonviable," said Ted Shepardson, a member of the church for 30 years and chairman of its finance committee. "The weddings definitely help us out."

Marie Libby, who volunteers her time to write the church bulletin, also serves as one of two "wedding ladies" who handle the inevitable queries from couples who want to get married at Wheatland.

The church has had designated coordinators for 20 years but has grown increasingly dependent on the modest $250-per-wedding fee to meet its expenses.

Screened from the street by a concrete school building, the Wheatland church is an anachronistic gem in its Red Bird neighborhood.

Barely a block from the new pawnshops and gas stations along Interstate 20, it hasn't changed much since it was built in 1912 - except for the power lines and the faded weatherproof carpet at the entrance.

Architecturally, it's an exercise in early-century prairie church simplicity: white clapboard with gabled porch overhangs and cupolas.

But the neat plainness is punctuated by a series of magnificent stained art-glass windows, like a trim elderly lady with a halo of blazing red hair.

The windows are complex pictures, each showing religious symbols and inscribed with the name of its turn-of-the-century donor (The Woman's Home Mission Society, a long-dead Sunday school superintendent, "Class No. 6" - the latter accompanied by the understated motto, "We Do Things").

The building actually represents the church's more recent history. The congregation started in 1847 with a log cabin called Wesley Chapel on land now occupied by Red Bird Mall.

The church moved in 1856 to its present site in what was then the little farm town of Wheatland, which originally was stuck with the less-lovely name "Sprowls" after an early settler. The town was renamed because the post office kept mixing it up with another Dallas County community called Sowers.

Long since overrun by Dallas, all that remains of Wheatland is the church, a neighboring cemetery and the chunky school building out front that now houses a private academy for students with learning disabilities.

Church lay leader Gene Hudson, a member since 1967, can remember when membership topped 250 and it took two services to accommodate everyone. The choir filled the loft overlooking the curved rows of oak pews, and after church there were youth programs, classes and covered-dish suppers that filled the fellowship hall to overflowing.

There are no classes any more, and no choir. The official membership count is 58, but active membership stands at 22. The sole activity is a one-hour service on Sunday morning, conducted by a part-time pastor the church shares with a congregation in nearby Hutchins.

There used to be a foreign-exchange student who played the organ, but the congregation has been singing a cappella since she went back to Poland. Hudson, 77, estimates the congregation's average age to be about 70.

"If we just keep going along as we are, we're going to die off a little bit at a time 'til there's nothing left," he said. "It's really been a struggle to keep going."

Until last week, church members feared they might lose their pastor. But they won a reprieve Thursday on learning that local Methodist administrators will continue assigning them a part-time minister for another year.

Demographic change accounts for most of the drop-off. The area's African-Americans seem to prefer the predominantly black congregations nearby, politely declining invitations to join Wheatland.

And a few years back, a disastrous rift occurred when a new pastor tried to introduce a nontraditional style of worship - an odd fit for the historic church, and one that drove dozens of the remaining members away.

The church's only income is from member donations, weddings and rent that the private school pays for use of the church-owned school building.

There was a little unexpected manna a few years back, Hudson said, when a television production company used the church to shoot a TV movie. The film was awful, he said - "about a preacher's wife who leaves her husband and starts smoking cee-gars and drinking whiskey out of the bottle" - but the stipend the company paid was gratefully accepted.

Members are in the process of selling off a church-owned parsonage in suburban Duncanville, to pay off their debt for a new roof on the school building.

"We used to do catering, but now that there are so few of us, they have to get their own caterers and florist," Mrs. Libby said.

Church members are uncomfortable with the idea of weddings as a money-making concern. They'd much rather attract young families to reverse the membership decline.

"If somebody comes to us and can't afford the $250, I'll work with them," Mrs. Libby said apologetically. "I won't turn them away."

She won't advertise, either. Engaged couples find the church by word of mouth or, sometimes, by blundering off Hampton while they're looking for someplace else.

There have been five weddings at the church this year. Five more are scheduled, none of them involving church members. Few of the wedding couples, in fact, are Methodists.

The congregation has discussed turning the church and its seven-acre site into a weekend retreat for Methodist conferences. But because of the church building's historic designation, there would be legal obstacles to its demolition.

Technically, should the church lose its pastor and income, the congregation would be left with no choice but to disband and join other churches. That's an option most members don't want to consider.

"I don't believe I'd have an interest in going anywhere else," Shepardson said. "We've hung together this long. I believe we'll stay here and try to keep the church alive."

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Distributed by The Associated Press