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Cedar Grove Church
Anderson County, South
Carolina Genealogy Trails
Temporary Pastorate Lasts Forty Years
by Charles Martin, Anderson Daily Mail Staff
Writer
contributed by Derrell Oakley
Teat
McCUEN M.M. (Rev) b.01-04-1880 d.07-04-1951, burial
Cedar Grove Baptist Cemetery
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BELTON, July 23—When young Rev. M. M.
McCuen was offered a preaching job at Cedar Grove Church
some years ago he was warned by some members of the
congretion not to accept the position because it
wouldn't be permanent. It was not a good place for a
young preacher to start, they said. But after preaching
from that same pulpit for almost 40 years Mr. McCuen is
inclined to think that those people spoke a bit
hastily.
What makes the amiable, 69 year old
minister's record even more remarkable is the fact that
most churches 40 years ago held yearly elections to call
a new minister. "Lots of water has gone over the dam
since then," Mr. McCuen said, "but I have always used as
my life's theme, 'Anybody can move—it takes a man to
stay'."
Almost as enviable as his record at Cedar
Grove, is his own record in the three other churches he
serves. He has been serving Cedar Shoals Church in
Greenville County for 33 years, Friendship Church for 29
years and Triangle Church for 23 years.
Mr.
McCuen commented that preaching methods as well as
conditions affecting preachers' work have vastly changed
during his career. For many years the young preacher
made his rounds by horse and buggy, over impossible
roads. He would leave home Friday morning and not return
until the following Monday. "It was never hard to find a
place to stay," he commented. "Back then people wanted
and expected their minister to visit them and spend the
night." "And if bad weather caught me," he added, "I
sometimes found it necessary to stay more than one
night. But I always seemed to be welcome."
Forty
years ago a preacher's task was made doubly hard because
of the wide popularity of Saturday service. "A minister
serving three or four churches and conducting services
both Saturday and Sunday had a lot of running around to
do," Mr. McCuen commented.
"Ministers' salaries
were mighty low back then too," he added, "but the good
people in my churches knew that, and oftentimes I would
come back home from the week-end with my buggy loaded
down with vegetables and staple that they had given
me."
The minister observed that in these days of
automobiles and wide telephone service ministers do not
keep in as close personal contact with church members as
they once did. "You scarcely ever hear of a preacher
spending the night with one of his patrons anymore." he
said. "They just hop in their car and go home." To
lighten his burden somewhat, members of Mr. McCuen's
congregation helped him buy his first automobile—a 1916
brass radiator Ford. This move made it easier for him to
get from church to church on Sunday, thus improving his
service.
The four churches the white haired
minister now serves boast of between 800 and 900
members. "But." he said, "two-thirds of them came to the
churches after I did." Mr. McCuen has been preaching for
45 years—40 of them in one church, and he says "I get
tired in the work but not of the work." "But," he
concluded, "I wouldn't swap the work for anythine in the
world. " |
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