I joined the Methodist Church[1] at Bradford’s Chapel in Macon County in 1958 at age 16 on profession of faith.  I had been involved in the Methodist Youth Fellowship for several years.  My cousin Ralph Segrest, a local pastor in the North Georgia Conference was preaching a revival at Bradford’s when I made the decision to join.[2]  The preacher at Bradford’s at that time was Pruitt (Bill) Willis.  In those days the Sub-District concept was widely practiced, and youth from groups of churches came together on a monthly basis for a Sub-District meeting.  Preacher Willis told me that I really needed to join the church, since I had already been elected president of the Philip Embury Sub-District.  I was also serving as president of the local MYF in the La Place Circuit, of which Bradford’s Chapel was a part.  I had been attending the church all my life, and had strong commitment to the tenets of faith embraced by the Methodist denomination, but had never gotten around to joining.  I had no hesitancy about joining on profession of faith.

            The First Methodist Church of Tallassee was a part of the Philip Emory Sub-District, as were East Tallassee and Carrville that are both located in Tallassee.  My earliest contact with The First Methodist Church in Tallassee, where I have been a member for over 40 years, was through the Sub-District meetings.  Rev. Cliff Abbot was the Preacher at Tallassee in those days.  I recall a bit of a controversy in the Sub-district about the fact that people (like me) were too young to come.  I was probably 11 years old at the time.  Brother Cliff, if I remember right, raised the protest.  Roy Sublette was the preacher at Bradford’s Chapel and I had only recently started attending MYF.  He settled the controversy by explaining that it was his car and his gas, and if he could get us to attend, he was going to do so.  Of course, that was several years before I was elected president of the Philip Embury Sub-District.

            I’m sure that my early church involvement entered into my decision to attend Huntingdon College, a Methodist institution.[3]  Mrs. Steele Bibb, my high school principal, was one of the Methodist saints who directed my path to Huntingdon.  I had played basketball at the tiny Shorter High School and thought I was pretty good.  It was probably Mrs. Bibb that somehow, induced Coach Neal Posey, Huntingdon’s basketball coach, to recruit me and offer a scholarship a scholarship of sorts.  Later I realized that a high ACT score had a lotjj more to do with my recruitment than my athletic skill.

            Regardless of the reasons, and despite some protest from my family, who felt that I should attend Troy State Teachers College[4], where my older brother Wade and cousins Dean and LaRue Spratlan had attended, I enrolled at Huntingdon in the fall of 1960.  I dropped out of basketball the first semester.  Near the end of the first year, my bride to be, Betty Menefee nominated me, and I was elected class president for my sophomore. I was elected again for the junior years.   During my third year, I was elected president of the Student Government Association and served in that position my senior year.[5]  I received a $500[6] National Methodist Scholarship that year, which allowed me to discontinue my work in the dining hall, where I had loaded lots of dishes into the dishwasher and cleaned lots of tables during my first three years.

            During my Huntingdon years, I attended First Methodist Church in Montgomery. Dr. Joel McDavid was pastor and Johnny Trobaugh associate pastor during those years. Johnny had been the preacher at Bradford’s Chapel, and would later serve as preacher in Tallassee, so he was my preacher at three different locations.  I became an affiliate member First Methodist in Montgomery. There was a Sunday School class for Huntingdon Students, and transportation.  On campus, I was active in the Huntingdon Christian Association.   I am certain that the fact that I attended Huntingdon contributed greatly to my later involvement and commitment to the United Methodist Church.  I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to repay that National Methodist Scholarship.

            After I graduated from Huntingdon in 1964, Betty Menefee and I were married at the La Place Methodist Church in Shorter, Alabama.  La Place and Bradford’s Chapel were both on the same “Charge” and shared the same preachers. Betty and I were both born and reared in Shorter, where we met in the first grade.  We attended twelve years of public school at Shorter, MYF and Huntingdon together.  She was a cheerleader and I a basketball player at Shorter.  I suspect that the fact that she decided to go to Huntingdon had as much to do with my decision to go there as anything else. 

            So, in the fall of 1964, Betty and I moved to Tuscaloosa and I began Law School at the University of Alabama.  We attended Church at Trinity Methodist Church initially and later attended Forest Lake Methodist Church.  There was a chapter of Huntingdon Alumni in Tuscaloosa, and Betty and I participated.  Betty worked to try to pay our way.

            After completing Law School in 1967, we returned to Montgomery where I started law practice with the law firm Hill, Hill, Stovall & Carter.[7]  We joined Whitfield Memorial United Methodist Church.  Betty and I sponsored the Jr. High Youth group.  Starting with three members we grew to over thirty members.  I also served as a trustee at Whitfield.  Our sons Philip and Mike were born and baptized there.  I became involved in Huntingdon Alumni work almost immediately after returning to Montgomery.  But, in 1970, we moved our residence to Shorter and our church membership back to La Place and eventually Bradford’s Chapel.

            During the 1970’s I did legal work for the old Montgomery District of the United Methodist Church, for Huntingdon College, and for a number of local United Methodist churches.  I served for a period of time as a trustee of the old Montgomery District.

            In about 1970, I became a certified lay speaker in the United Methodist Church.  Over the years, it has been an honor to speak in numerous United Methodist Churches all over the Alabama West Florida Conference.  Unfortunately, I didn’t keep a diary of those engagements, but the number would probably be one hundred fifty or more churches, quite a number of them on more than one occasion. 

            While living in Shorter, Betty and I were quite active in both Bradford’s Chapel and the La Place United Methodist Church.  For a period of time, we entertained a Men’s Fellowship for the La Place United Methodist Church with a monthly breakfast in our home.[8]  Betty and I sponsored a Youth Group at Bradford’s.  I taught Sunday School and chaired the finance committee, among other activities and offices at Bradford’s.  I occasionally served as a delegate to Annual Conference.

            In 1979, we moved our membership to First United Methodist Church in Tallassee.  This was before we actually moved our residence to Tallassee.  A strong attraction to the Church was its music program.  Philip was especially interested in music, and the strong music program appealed to us.  Soon Betty, Philip and I were all involved in the choir.  Philip and Mike were involved in the children and youth programs.  Betty and I served for a period of time as sponsors of the Youth Group.

            In 1982, I was invited to serve on the Board of Trustees of Huntingdon College.  I served in that capacity continuously until 2004.  I chaired the Board from 1995 to 1999.  The College fared quite well during my tenure as Chair.  I feel that my role on the board was to strengthen the relationship with the United Methodist Church.  The College has a stronger and more meaningful relationship with the Church at the time of this document was initially written[9] than it has had for many years. That relationship has continued and improved down to the date of launching this website, in 2020.

            Sometime late in 1984,[10] I received a letter from a man named Huey Emfinger, who was District Lay Leader of the Mariana-Panama City District.  He was on the nominating committee of the Board of Laity, and wanted me to send biographical information, so that they could consider nominating me as Conference Lay Leader of the Alabama West Florida Conference.  The letter surprised me, to say the least.  I had never served in any capacity at the conference level of the United Methodist Church.  I had no idea what a Conference Lay Leader was supposed to do.  My brother, Wade, had served as District Lay Leader for the Montgomery District, so I called him to see if he was expecting to be considered for Conference Lay Leader.  He said no.  Betty and I prayed over the matter, and sent the requested material.  I didn’t even know Huey Emfinger, and really did not expect that I would be nominated.  I had no idea how my name had come to the attention of the nominating committee of the Board of Laity.[11]  In the Spring of 1985, I received word that I had been unanimously nominated for the position. 

            I took office as Conference Lay Leader at Annual Conference in June of 1985, and served until 1990.  I served, ex officio, on the Boards of the Children’s Home, the Homes for the Aging, the Conference Council on Ministries; and numerous other Boards and Agencies.  I attended their meetings.  During this period of time I spoke in churches throughout the conference 20 to 30 Sundays each year.  The pace was hectic.  I would often find myself in a strange pulpit on Sunday morning without having had any opportunity during a busy week as a trial judge to prepare anything.  I arrived at one church in Mobile with only the old worn out tennis shoes that I wore in our motor home.  I borrowed the preacher’s shoes and told the congregation that I could never fill his shoes!  All in all, I learned to speak from the heart, and to filter every word through personal experience.  It was a great experience. In 1990, I made the Laity Address to the Alabama West Florida Conference.  I attended district conferences in every district with Bishop Lloyd Knox.  In 1989, I spoke at the Laity Luncheon at the North Georgia Conference in Augusta.  In 1989, I spoke with Bishop C. W. (Handy) Hancock in every district conference on the subject of stewardship

            During my tenure as Lay Leader of the Alabama West Florida Conference, I became a member of the Southeastern Jurisdiction Association of Conference Lay Leaders and the National Association of Conference Lay Leaders.  I served as secretary of the Southeastern Jurisdiction Association and as treasurer of the National Association of Conference Lay Leaders.  Needless to say, I attended the meetings of those groups and came to know lay leaders throughout the denomination.

            One of the tasks of the Conference Lay Leader is to plan for the Laity Banquet for the Annual Conference Session.  This includes inviting speakers and entertainment.  To my knowledge, I invited the first woman speaker; the first black speaker, and the first black entertainer to participate in the event.

            The Alabama West Florida Conference is one of the few Annual Conferences in the denomination that had a consistent pattern of growth over the twenty five years while I was active at the conference level.  When I took office as Conference Lay Leader, the Conference was badly divided, ostensibly along theological lines, between evangelicals and liberals.  The church trial of Dr. Tom Butts had just occurred in 1984.  It was the first Church trial in many years—perhaps ever—in the Alabama West Florida Conference.  Dr. Butts was a prominent liberal, and had a large following.  Suspicions and paranoia ran at a high level.  As conference lay leader, I avoided theological issues like the plague.  I felt that the division between Liberals and Evangelicals had more to do with church politics and the appointment process than with theology.  I urged the laity to remain aloof from all the niceties of the theological differences and to gently but firmly be mirrors, to reflect and feed back to the clergy the embarrassingly petty nature of their differences.  I didn’t use those kinds of words, you understand. The “mirror” was our behavior and reaction and feed back.  It was existential.  It seems to have worked.  And to all those “Liberals” and “Evangelicals,” now that I am publishing these impressions—I love you all!

            Lest I be misunderstood, I never felt that theology is unimportant.  It is extremely important.  Each of us is called to faith at the highest level of which we are capable. An adequate theology for some of my uneducated friends may not be adequate for other friends, but remains an inspiration to me.  None of us “see through the glass” perfectly.  Theologically, I am a neo-conservative.  I believe that we must fully engage the powers of our minds and understand all that we can.  But ultimately our understanding fades away before the ultimate mysteries of our own existence, our consciousness, and the living, infinite God.  We are ultimately relegated to faith—pure faith. (link)  Faith provides the substance with which our intellects engage.  The glimpse of the infinite God revealed in Jesus Christ is the apex for our faith.  Neither the liberals nor the evangelicals would have been wild about my theological position—but that really doesn’t matter.

Huntingdon College awarded me an Honorary Doctorate Degree in 1989.  The actual presentation was made at the 1989 Annual Conference Session.  To my knowledge, it was the first Honorary Doctorate degree ever actually presented at the Annual Conference.  Since then, both Huntingdon and Birmingham Southern have occasionally awarded degrees at the Annual Conference.

            In 1988, I was elected to General and Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church on the first ballot at the Annual Conference.  It is my understanding that I was the first Conference Lay Leader ever to be elected to General Conference from our Annual Conference, and the first lay person ever to be elected on a first ballot. 

By virtue of being elected first, I was one of our delegation leaders, along with the clergy leader, Dr. John Ed Matheson.  Delegation leaders met with the leaders of other delegations from the Southeast on a number of occasions. I came to know both clergy and lay leaders from the Southeast, including many bishops and bishops-to-be.  I was elected to General and Jurisdictional Conference again in 1992, 1996 & 2000.  In 1996 I was again the first lay person elected, and a delegation leader.

            Lay candidates for General and Jurisdictional Conference are nominated by the Districts.[12]  Each of the nine districts[13] traditionally nominated five candidates.  In 1992 at the district caucus for the old Montgomery District, six names were lifted as possible nominees.  Edna Williams, a black lady from Bowen Chapel in Tuskegee was among the names lifted up.  She was well qualified.  She is the niece of a Bishop in the United Methodist Church.  She had just served as chair of the Council on Ministries in our Conference.  She was also the sole black person in the group.  When the voting was complete, I was nominated and Edna was not.  I withdrew my name, so that Edna could be included.  Someone asked if I would be willing to accept a nomination if it should occur that any nominee were unwilling of unable to accept nomination, and I said yes.  A few days later, I learned that one of the nominees had been a member of the United Methodist Church for only two years and therefore was ineligible, and so my name was included.  I also offered to withdraw my name after being elected that year at annual conference, when it appeared that neither Edna nor any other black person would be elected, but eventually Edna was elected without my withdrawal.

            In 2000, I was not nominated by my District as a candidate for election to General and jurisdictional conference.  I accepted that result with equanimity.  I had been privileged to attend in the past, and knew that although it is an honor to be elected, it is very hard work.  There was a procedure for nominating candidates at Annual Conference, although it was not used very often, and when used, seldom resulted in election.  I was nominated from the floor 1n 2000, and elected to both General and Jurisdictional Conferences.  I did not solicit that nomination, and have never solicited a nomination to church office.

            As mentioned previously, I was the first lay person elected to General and Jurisdictional Conference in 1888 and 1996.  The first lay person and the first clergy person elected to General Conference traditionally serve on the Southeastern Jurisdiction Episcopacy Committee.  That is the group responsible for the assignment of Bishops to conferences.  I served on that committee along with Dr. John Ed Matheson from 1988 to 1992, and we participated in the decisions concerning assignments of Bishops in 1992.  I was instrumental in bringing Bishop William Morris to the Alabama West Florida Conference.  He was the first Black Bishop to serve our conference.  From 1996-2000, I served on the Southeastern Jurisdiction Episcopacy Committee with Dr. Karl Steagall.  Karl and I participated in the decision to bring newly elected Bishop Larry Goodpaster to our conference, and to send Bishop Morris to the Tennessee Conference.

            While serving on the Episcopacy Committee, I was one of the draftsmen for rules to bring about a fundamental change in the way we elected bishops in the Southeastern Jurisdiction.  The implementing policies prohibited the vote swapping and block voting that had been widespread in our Jurisdictional Conferences in the past.  Delegation heads accepted the responsibility of education the delegation and bringing about compliance.  It worked.  It is now generally accepted that the plan we forged dramatically improved the process by which we elect Bishops.  Later I was asked to chair a subcommittee that continued to study the process and make recommendations.  By avoiding the temptation to overextend the power of peer pressure and moral persuasion, we protected the gains that had been made.  But you can’t take politics out of politics.  The process for electing Bishops in the Southeastern Jurisdiction is much better than it once was.

            In 1996, I was named by the Council of Bishops to a task force called the Connection Process Team.  The CPT was created by the 1996 General Conference and consisted of about 38 persons from throughout the denomination.  It was assigned the task of studying the organization of the denomination and recommending changes.  The bureaucracy of the Church had become unwieldy, unworkable, and burdensome.  While organizational structure cannot, in and of itself, bring about success in an organization, faulty structure can certainly impede success.  That much was clear to me from my familiarity with the operations of corporations in general. I was excited about the prospect of rethinking the way we do church.  I sought the assignment—the only church job I ever asked for.  The actual experience was challenging, to say the least.

Individually, the membership was a talented group of people and it was a pleasure to get to know them.  However, politics had preceded the organizational meeting, and two or three people managed to get elected to positions of leadership in the early stages of the process who probably should not have been the leaders.  The whole process should have been open, and group driven, but it was not. The leaders had their own agendas and did not want to address the central organizational problems.  They may not have realized that such was their motivation.  Others were either fellow travelers in commitment to the status quo, too piously “Christian” to disenfranchise the unfaithful leadership, or like me just too bewildered to find an effective solution.  As a consequence, we failed to fulfill our charge.  I was the voice crying in the wilderness, and became, no doubt, increasingly unpopular with a number of members of the group.  We did not produce a viable plan.  We did not assess the dynamics that were mal-functioning in the organization.  We did not address the structural flaws and deficiencies.  I actually wrote a proposal and presented it to the group, but it was unsuccessful. (link)  We never developed a shared vision for our Church.

I tried with all the energy I could muster to keep the process focused on what appeared to me to be our assignment.  I was unsuccessful.  However, the Lord indeed works in mysterious ways.  The Connectional Process Team united the Church in opposition to the plan it presented!  I must confess that I felt a sense of vindication as a result of the overwhelming defeat of the proposals of the Connectional Process Team by the General Conference of 2000.  Despite my disappointment in our product, that the four year, intense study of the denomination, its history, its theological grounding, its organizational structure, and its ministries, offered me unique opportunities for learning and spiritual growth.  The meaningful change for which I contended are effectively mandated by laws of economics that apply to our Church’s organizational structure, and if the church does not respond, the result will be disastrous for the denomination.  After all, God created the laws of economics.       

            In 2004, I was again nominated from our district as a candidate for General and Jurisdictional Conference.  Usually, after the first couple of ballots the candidates who receive the greatest number of votes tend to continue to receive more votes until they are elected.  In the process of balloting, three persons had been elected I was fourth in line for election, and was only one vote away from election for a fifth consecutive quadrennium.  The persons elected were all white males, two of them over sixty years of age and all seasoned leaders.  Good people, but the prospect was not good at that time for the election to General Conference of a woman, a black person, or a young person.  There was an excellent chance that unless something happened to change the course of the election process, all seven candidates to General Conference would be white males.  Experience told me that the composition of our delegation would affect our credibility and effectiveness at the conferences.  I withdrew my name from consideration, with a plea for a more inclusive delegation.  The delegation to General Conference eventually included a young person and two women, including my friend Edna Williams, the black lady from Bowen Chapel.  I was elected as an alternate to Jurisdictional Conference, and actually attended as a delegate.

            Certain office holders, including the conference lay leader, district lay leaders and delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences, are designated as members of the Annual Conference, in order to balance and equalize laity and clergy representation.  I served a member of the Alabama West Florida Annual Conference by virtue of various offices continuously from 1985 until 2010.

            At the conference level, have served on a Task Force to Study the Location of Annual Conference Headquarters; the Conference Episcopacy Committee (the equivalent of the staff-parish relations committee in the local church), the Committee on Investigations (which would investigate charges against preachers, if necessary) and the Conference Committee on Resolutions.  At the District level, I served as a trustee—including one year as chair of the district trustees.  I served on the board of Church and Society, which also makes me a member of the District Council.  I served as District Lay Leader and on the Board of Laity for three years in the early 1990’s.  I have served as legal counsel for the Montgomery Prattville District, and incorporated quite a few local churches and actually dealt with litigation and other legal issues, such as matters pertaining to church properties.  I did not charge for my legal work.

            At First United Methodist Church in Tallassee, I have serve as a trustee, chair the Long Range Planning Committee, a total a five years as chair of the Council on Ministries, one two year term as chair of the Administrative Board, and a two year term as Lay Leader.  As lay leader, I served ex officio on most of the boards and committees within the Church.  I served as a Lay Speaker for over 40 years, and have been privileged to speak from our pulpit a number of times. For the past three years I have served as delegate to Annual Conference from our local Church. I teach Sunday School occasionally.

During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s I served on the Board of Directors of the University of Alabama Wesley Foundation.  And I served on the Board of Directors of the Tuskegee University Wesley Foundation for several years.

To say that I have enjoyed my relationship with the Church would be a misuse of words.  Enjoy is just not what you do with the most important things in your life. Enjoy is much too temporary and superficial.   The relationship that I am describing is much deeper than that.  I have lived my relationship to the church and to the invisible, immortal realities that it represents.  To use James Fowler’s phrase, what I have described here is a large part of the myth of my personal existence.  It’s the good part.  It is what gives meaning.

The only Church offices that I ever remember seeking out were the certification as a lay speaker and the position on the Connectional Process Team.  I never campaigned for any office in the Church.  But I have been slow to say no.


[1] The denomination became the United Methodist Church in 1969, when it merged with the Evangelical United Brethren.

[2] Ralph is the only Methodist Preacher that I know of in my generation of the Segrest family.  Some of the earliest Segrest emigrants to this country were preachers, according to family tradition, but I have never verified this.  A preacher with the Segrest name was appointed to First Methodist in Tallassee early in the 20th Century, but I do not know the family connection.  A distant cousin, Neil Segrest, twin brother of the late attorney Broward Segrest and son of Florida and Henry Neil Segrest late of Tuskegee, is a Presbyterian Preacher.  A great grandfather of Ralph and me, Rev. James Elizabeth Downing Braswell was a Circuit Rider and is buried at Bradford’s Chapel Cemetery.

[3] Because the College is affiliated with the Church, I count my activities with the College as part of my church work.

[4] Now Troy University

[5] The enrollment at Huntingdon that year was about 1100, if I remember correctly.  There were many “town students.”  A few years later, the establishment of AUM dramatically impacted on Huntingdon’s enrollment.

[6] Tuition, room and board were about $1100.00 per year at that time!

[7] Now Hill, Hill, Carter, Franco, Cole & Black

[8] At the request of the pastor, we discontinued the fellowship in order to try to develop an even stronger circuit wide group at Bradford’s Chapel.

[9] December, 2004

[10] I was elected Judge in Alabama’s Fifth Judicial Circuit in 1982, and took office in January of 2003.

[11] Although I still don’t know how my name was suggested or by whom, I know that Dr. Roy Sublette (the one who insisted on bringing me to the Sub-District Meetings when I was 11) was director of the Conference Council on Ministries, and Marvin Ennis, a preacher who was at Huntingdon when I was there was on the nominating committee.

[12] For many years, the Alabama West Florida Conference has elected seven lay persons and seven clergy persons to General Conference.  Election to General Conference is also election to Jurisdictional Conference.  An additional seven lay and clergypersons are then elected to Jurisdictional Conference, for a total of 14 lay and 14 clergy.  The first persons elected to Jurisdictional Conference are alternates to General Conference.  Usually 4 alternates are elected for Jurisdictional Conference

[13] The number of Districts was reduced from nine to eight in 2004.