We have had the JOY of knowing each of the senior ministers of SLUMC and each has had a positive influence on our faith journey. Our family of four joined SLUMC in the summer of 1963, having moved to Houston from Oklahoma City where we were actively involved in our small Nichols Hills Methodist Church. I recall saying to our children’s director that our logical church choice would be SLUMC, as we had bought a home on Bellmeade. I vividly recall moaning to her, “But it’s so big!”  Her comment was “the bigger the church the more corners there are where people can hide – get in there and volunteer.”  As a family, we took her advice seriously and it has continued to urge us to serve in various ways. However, our personal history/connection with SLUMC dates more than 10 years prior to our move. Rev. Durwood Fleming performed our wedding [...]

It's no secret to those close to me that I don't like to venture far from home when I don't have to. So when I made the move all by myself from suburban Moorestown, NJ to Houston, TX, it was a big deal. I had just finished graduate school and accepted a full-time position as organist and worship coordinator of a large, Houston-area church. Not long after moving here, my now-wife Grace and I got engaged and she moved to Houston to be with me. We got married a year later and things were going pretty well. However, just a few months after we got married, our lives were turned upside down. Seemingly out of the blue, the church where I was working laid off several staff members due to financial shortcomings. I was one of them. We didn't know what we were going to do. There weren't many jobs in my [...]

I have been involved in the life of the church since May of 1959, most notably in our woodshop and as an outreach volunteer on mission trips. Starting in 1986 with a trip to Jamaica, I have been on 24 St. Luke’s sponsored mission trips in a variety of countries over almost 30 years. My professional training as a nurse was utilized during many of the trips, but I was called into service to do anything that needed doing like installing siding, carrying wheelbarrows of rocks and painting. One thing that was immediately apparent anywhere we traveled was that though we lived in different circumstances, we had commonalities. On a trip to Mozhaysk, Russia in 1994 we were stared at as we made our way around town; they had only been open to visits from foreigners for a year and were still unused to seeing outsiders. Our task was to restore [...]

St. Luke’s PM Pals grew out of an experience five volunteers had at a program called Night OWLS at Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas. I decided to volunteer at Night OWLS because I was new to Dallas as a recent college graduate, and I was looking to meet people and thought I would “get out of my comfort zone” and volunteer with children with special needs. I quickly grew to love the program and the children. After several former Night OWLS’ volunteers moved to Houston for different reasons, Natalie Kubik called us up and asked if we wanted to start a Night OWLS-style program in Houston. I quickly told her that I would happily help the program get started, but was not interested in leading the program since I thought it was too big of a time commitment.  It is funny how God leads us out of our comfort [...]