By Kim Porter

Dear Neighbor,

It is safe for me to say I was not really brought up in a religious home. We were not anti-religious, but we were probably considered on the line. It was a good thing to do if it was Sunday to join others. This meant I went to Sunday school.

I became a Methodist due to economics. You heard me. I was a bit rambunctious and the Presbyterians were getting tired of my antics in Sunday school. Therefore, when the bus fare went up, Mom said that she was not spending 10 cents for the bus to take me to church. She told me I could walk three blocks and thus we became Methodists.

By rambunctious, I mean that I was a pain for any teacher. I constantly asked questions, didn’t accept many answers, and my favorite word was ‘why?’ Teachers would pull my Mom aside and remind her that I couldn’t stay still, didn’t listen and had this incredible ability to cause chaos. Sunday was always an interesting day for me. But I was taught by good people who used the literature properly and tried their best to teach us all.

For instance, we learned about heaven and hell. As young as I was, I figured I had a long time to address those issues, but the church hammered it home. I certainly knew hell was not for me! But one day my Mom came home from a local community meeting really upset. I tentatively asked her what was wrong. She said, “Kimball (my early days name), I am volunteering to go to hell.” As an eight-year-old, I thought to myself, ‘that is not a wise choice.’ Why Mom? She said, “Those damn Baptists drive me crazy, and I will volunteer for hell if that separates me from them.” My theology was beginning to form.

Around the age of 10 or 11, the Sunday school began to grow, because I had convinced my “gang” (5 of us who got into community trouble) that it could be fun to go to church as a group. We weren’t the quietists, positively involved or good children. We would sit on the front row at church and giggle, talk, laugh and be generally, quite obnoxious.

Finally, the church formed another Sunday school class just for us. A retired Army sergeant was asked to teach the class, partly because he lived next door and we met in his back garden. That was fun for awhile, until I leaned back in my chair, fell on one of his prized bushes, scraped the bark and broke a limb. The five of us learned more cuss words that day than we had ever thought existed. Wow! What a Sunday school lesson.

I began to see what it meant to be Christian.

I learned three words in Sunday school that came up often in my Christian education: omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscience. God is everywhere, with unlimited power and having infinite awareness and power. I remember asking the preacher (years later) if God is all powerful, then, why is there so much destruction (WWII), social injustice (segregation) and the inequality of women (Mom was an early feminist). Sunday school failed to address those inquiries.

When I became a little older, I got in a bit more trouble and the legal system got involved with my life. Because I was a low-level juvenile delinquent, more of a nuisance than a serious problem, the courts allowed me to work with my preacher, assisting him with things like changing the church board. As we worked together, patience, attention and support allowed this early teen to look into the future with a different lens. Fifteen years later, I was being ordained in front of 1,500 Methodists. They called my name out and I stood, turned around and faced the delegates. Five rows back, an older man stood, leaned over with squinted eyes and said loudly, “Oh my God, is that Kimball Porter?” The convention hall roared with laughter. I had survived Sunday school under his caring guidance.

“Dear Neighbor” authors are united in a belief that civility and passion can coexist. We believe curiosity and conversation make us a better community.

Kim Porter