In the Spring of 1967, near the end of our four years in Hayward, I was offered the Community UMC in Millbrae, across the Bay from Hayward.

Although we were not unhappy with the Hayward situation, the Millbrae Church offered some substantial advantages, in the size of the church membership, a marvelous set of buildings, and the chance to do some experimenting in church programming.

By this time Paul was our only child living at home. Charles was graduating from U. C. Berkeley, Tim and Bill were also students there, and David wasabout to enter Stanford. The physical move from Hayward to Millbrae was the easiest we ever had, with a local mover trucking our belongings across the Bay, while we drove to our new parsonage.

But the transition was more significant in terms of our life style. Millbrae was a bedroom community, substantially occupied by young executive type families who were on their way up the corporate ladder or older people who had arrived at a comfortable level financially and socially.

In Hayward, the church building had stood on the same land for more than a hundred years, as the city crowded in around it and the church became in many ways a typical "downtown" church. In contrast, some of the "old timers" in Millbrae could remember when it consisted of a few scattered houses amid the empty expanse of flat land near the Bay and bare hills above.

By the time we arrived in Millbrae, the city had grown to a population of about 20,000. With the United Methodist Church the only main line Protestant church in the city, our church should have had a sizeable comgregation.

However, when the community growth was projected in the 1960s, much of the flatland nearest the Bay was expected to be filled with single family homes. Instead, much of it was occupied by a major shopping area and apartment buildings.

The church building committee had supervised a huge expansion of the facilities on the basis of this projection, and had incurred a debt which amounted to $160,000 when we arrived. The buildings were the most elegant and extensive of all the churches we ever served, but the prospect of paying off the debt was considerably gloomier because the potential growth was so much smaller than expected.

We also had the "competition" of the large Burlingame UMC with a big staff and many wealthy members, and other prestigious churches in the area. Most Peninsula residents were used to driving considerable distances for shopping, work and pleasure, so the church program and personnel were more crucial in the choice of a church than the location.

In the Hayward Church, we had begun to experiment with the traditional church school and worship schedule, and in Millbrae we had the chance to try out various ideas because the leadership tended to be more sympathetic to experiment than in many places.

For one thing, there were many young families, and this had resulted in having a worship service at 9:30 as well as the tra ditional 11:00 a.m. service. We worked out a plan for having the coffee time in the splendid, spacious social hall between 10:30 and 11:00, and extending the church school hour to 12:00.

In the course of time, the 11 a.m. worship attendance dwindled to the point where we abolished it, and this put even more emphasis on the variety of adult classes which were offered.

A strong youth program had been developed, and this continued through the five years we were in Millbrae. It was ironical from a family viewpoint that the best youth program in any of our churches came during the years when the older boys were gone from the house, and Paul was too young to benefit from the program.

One of the few drawbacks to our church facilities was that the church owned a shabby old house on the lot across from the church, and the remains of an adjoining building next to it. A family in the church rented the house at a token sum, and when they failed to pay the rent for several months the Trustees were able to get them to move out. This opened up the possibility of fulfilling the original purpose for buying the property: to convert it into a parking lot. To save the considerable cost of demolishing the building, we arranged to have the local fire department burn it down as a training exercise, and the rubble was removed with considerable help from a church member.

A substantial gift from the Atkinson Foundation (provided by a wealthy contractor in the Burlingame Church) helped to meet the cost of paving and landscaping the two lots, and the parking lot has been a valuable part of the whole church program ever since. In fact, a few years ago, since we left the church, the Annual Conference voted down a proposal to move the Conference Headquarters to Millbrae. Even now, a number of such meetings are held there.

However, after five years in Millbrae, when the Pastoral Relations Committee had voted unanimously to ask for our return for another year, a call came out of the blue one afternoon from our District Superintendent.

A few weeks earlier, I had made what proved to be the stra tegic mistake of telling the Supt. that I would be willing to move if the circumstances were favorable. I said this because I had never asked for a change before, and I had the impression that some of the pushier pastors had been rewarded for their ag gressiveness more than I had been for my competence.

Now the Superintendent was reporting that the Cabinet was meeting, and they would like to transfer me to Grace Church, Stockton. Just from the brief description he gave me, I could tell that this was not a reward of any kind, so I told him, in effect, "Thanks but no thanks."

He urged me to think it over, and said the Cabinet wanted to hear from me by the end of the afternoon, a couple of hours hence.

So as soon as I got off the line, I called our old friend Arch Brown, who was a school administrator in Stockton. His report was not at all reassuring, so I called back to repeat my refusal to the Supt.

At that point, he said that Bishop Golden wanted to talk to me. I had had very little to do with the previous Bishop, Donald Tippett, in terms of appointments, and Bishop Golden was fairly new to our Conference, having come out of a segregated black Conference in the South.

When Bishop Golden got on the line, he used a number of arguments to suggest that the proposed move was to my advantage in one way or another. But these were so transparently false, I persisted in declining the offer and he became more and more insistent.

I finally said, "Bishop, it sounds as if I really don't have a choice." He replied: "That's right." So I said, "In that case, I'll have to accept the appointment."

Carol was listening to this conversation, and that helped us to face the consequences without any confusion over whether I should have handled the matter differently.

In later years, we came to realize that we might have resisted more strongly. But at the time, I could only see that the alternative was to leave the Methodist ministry, and after having transferred out of the Presbyterian ministry I felt more vulnerable to another change in terms of professional reputation.