Closing the Doors

West Side United Methodist Church was the quintessential country crossroads church. Located midway between Oakland and West Point, it was originally a Swedish Methodist church that served the rural farms surrounding it. I got the impression that its heyday was circa 1940 when the church sponsored its own baseball team that played on the field adjacent to the church building. Also on the grounds were the parsonage (there was a time when West Side had its own pastor) and the ubiquitous church cemetery. Six miles must have been longer back then, because it was apparently very natural for there to be a church equidistant between the two towns. The ensuing economy of the latter twentieth century, however, did not pass over the little country churches any more than it did the larger metropolitan congregations. Indeed, it likely had a much more significant—and debilitating—impact. In order to keep their church going, its dwindling number of parishioners had somewhat reluctantly agreed to become part of the Tri-Church Parish in order to have the services of a pastor that it couldn’t afford by itself. If it seemed complicated to reunite the Uehling church with the United Church of Christ, that was nothing compared to helping the West Side congregation accept that its time had come.