As mentioned earlier, in the years of our early ministry the new appointments were finalized during the week of the Annual Conference, and it was strictly taboo to leak any advance information about those decisions.

But by the time we moved to Redding, the method had changed greatly. It much more resembled the "candidate" system in other denominations, except that the candidate didn't preach a "trial" sermon in the church seeking a pastor, or have the pastor seeking committee visit services where prospective candidates were on display.

The process began when the Cabinet made a tentative choice. Then the Dist. Supt. took the prospect to meet with the Pastor Parish Committee of the new church. If they approved the choice, the deal was made subject to a similar arrangement with the other churches and pastors involved in the switch.

Since these moves often involved a complicated pattern that reminded one of playing "Musical Chairs", nothing was considered final until the whole deal was set.

In the Spring of 1976, Carol and I went up to Redding to meet with the D. S., Charles Cox, and the committee. The atmos phere was quite formal, I felt, and much of the questioning had to do with the fact that the committee, and presumably the congregation, was hoping to get a younger pastor. The assumption was that a younger pastor would attract younger families, a common notion in those days.

The committee did not seem to relate this assumption to the fact that the current pastor was much younger, but under his dogmatic "liberal" leadership, the church membership had declined by 50% during his eight years there.

Carol and I tried to point out that our program with youth, students and younger families in Stockton, as elsewhere, had been very successful under the circumstances available to us, and that we didn't feel over the hill yet. I also pointed out, tactfully I hope, that we didn't have to move, and if the committee had misgivings we didn't want the job. After about an hour and a half, we left the committee to discuss matters with the D. S. while Carol and I literally cooled our heels in the Spring night air for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally Charles Cox came out and told us that the committee had approved the Cabinet's choice. By that time Carol and I were ready to head for home and forget the whole business. But we were committed to staying overnight at the District parsonage, so we reluctantly went home with Charles and went to bed there.

In the early morning, Carol and I woke up and began discussing the pros and cons of the move. We concluded that we would simply tell Charley Cox that we had decided to stay in Stockton. However, as Charley prepared breakfast for us (his wife Ann had been ill), he countered all of our negative arguments, and we finally decided to move to Redding after all.

After we moved, our first impressions of the Redding situation tended to make us feel our first choice had been wiser. In order to get the mortgage paid off, maintenance on the large building had been neglected seriously. The sanctuary was painted a dark green except for the indirect light fixtures on the walls which were painted a glaringly contrasting shade of maroon. The social hall had an impressively large stage with curtains which had once been rather elegant. But the stage was full of junk and the curtains were literally rotting from age and dirt.

The furnace and swamp cooler arrangement were old and very cumbersome to convert from one to the other, and I discovered that my predecessor had taken on the responsibility for handling these monstrosities. He did this because the former janitor was an alcoholic with physical handicaps, and this man had been replaced by a conscientious but physically limited woman.

The youth program was in a similar mess. My predecessor's philosophy toward the youth program was that the kids knew more than the adults about running their program, and that the less connection there was between the youth and the church program the better, because the adult church program was so impossibly boring. He had the latter part right, so far as his leadership went, but the net effect was that the youth leadership we inherited was totally alienated from the church and only used the church facilities and financial support for their own purposes.

To complicate this situation further, my predecessor's youngest daughter had stayed on, and had taken on herself the role of being the youth advisor with the same permissive viewpoint, of course.

At first, there didn't seem to be a crew of men to do the kind of routine maintenance that I had been used to seeing volunteers handle in previous churches. My earliest efforts to organize such a group foundered for various reasons. So I started repairing items like missing door handles and leaky plumbing which were within my range of ability. As time went on, more and more men came forward to take over these chores. This led to major projects like repainting the sanctuary and other rooms, replacing leaky roofs, and remodeling some of the rooms to make them more convenient.

The church kitchen became more and more cramped when large dinners were served, and the United Methodist Women began raising money for a mechanical dishwasher.

For years the room adjoining the kitchen had been the exclusive province of the Alcoholics Anonymous group which met there. Many of the AA members had replaced liquor with tobacco, and because the room was closed during the week, it became almost impossibly saturated with tobacco fumes.

Finally as part of the kitchen remodeling, a door was cut between the kitchen and this room, and the AA group was offered a different room. The group had done much good through the years (including their help in getting our group started in Dunsmuir years before), but it was a relief to most of us when they chose to relocate elsewhere.

Thanks to some talented and devoted church members, the kitchen and the adjoining room were transformed. The AA room became "The Sunshine Room", a fine dishwasher was installed and facilities improved in many ways.

During our eight years there, the church school and youth programs also became transformed. By the time we left, the youth were participating in the regular and special worship services, and a full set of adult leaders were in charge of the senior high and junior high groups.

The Redding Church came to be the largest local congregation in the Shasta District without an associate pastor. We found that we could get more for our budget dollar by hiring local people who did not require housing as a part of their compensa tion, a problem which had created a serious budget crunch in earlier attempts to have an associate pastor.

When we went to Redding, we knew that the Annual Conference was scheduled to meet in Redding the following year, as part of a new policy of moving the site around instead of meeting in Stock ton as had been done for many years.

While we were in Stockton, I had become involved in the logistics for Annual Conference. But it was obvious that more than our church and the small neighboring churches needed to be involved in hosting the Redding session. So our Dist. Supt., Art Thurman, organized a District wide committee of pastors and lay people who worked throughout the year to prepare for the 1977 session.

Bishop Stuart, who had spent more than twenty years as pastor of the big Palo Alto church before becoming a bishop, was obviously doubtful that the folks out in the boondocks of the Shasta District could provide the necessary talent for such things as playing the organ or leading the massed choir. We did manage to have the Conference worship committee accept our Redding people in these posts, but the choir was cut down to doing much less than had been originally planned, while the hot shot musicians from the Bay area were given top billing.

Otherwise the Conference was a great success. The Redding civic auditorium is outstanding for a community of that size, and the little touches of hospitality provided by the various churches of the District made a big hit with the visitors. Many veterans of the Annual Conference treadmill told me later that the session in Redding was the most enjoyable they had ever attended.

When we were asked to go to Redding, we knew that our D. S. would be Arthur Thurman, who had been our D. S. when we were at Hayward. We also knew that he would be looking for a secretary, because Charles Cox's wife Ann had been his secretary. So Carol offered her services, and Art accepted.

Some time later, Art's wife Jeannette became the parish visitor for the Redding Church. So we had a particularly good relationship with the Thurmans.

But one evening in May, 1981, we got a telephone call telling us that Art had suffered a heart attack while talking to Jeannette on the telephone from the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco while he was there for Cabinet meetings. He had been taken to the S. F. General Hospital. We got this news because the Cabinet didn't want to tell Jeannette directly while she was at home alone, and we were asked to tell her in person.

We rushed down to the District parsonage, then took off for San Francisco with Jeannette. On the road between Redding and Red Bluff, Jeannette tried to face the various possible alternatives. But when we stopped in Red Bluff and Jeannette called the hospital, she was told that Art had died.

The rest of the drive was an unforgettable experience. At the hospital, we were met by the Thurman children, who took over responsibility for Jeannette.

On the drive back to Redding, Carol and I faced up to the implications of this tragedy. The most important was that we had lost a beloved friend. It also meant that Carol would soon be out of a job, because the decision had already been made that when a new D. S. was appointed (presumably after Art had finished his term), the District office and parsonage would be moved to Chico. This decision was based on the fact that the D. S. had to make many trips to the Bay area for meetings, and Chico was closer from that standpoint, even though Redding was more central to travel around the District.

When the transfer was made, Carol became the local parish visitor. She did her usual outstanding job in this position, which she had done as Jeannette's volunteer "associate", until we left Redding in 1984.