Jim Bryan - 1963
Jim Bryan, Class of 1963 is "Kewpie of the Month, August 2001"
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HOME AGAIN
(from the "Digital Missourian 2001-08-12)

After being away for 25 years, the Rev. Jim Bryan returns to Columbia to follow in his father's footsteps as pastor of Missouri United Methodist Church.
 

His white robe and golden wedding band gleam in the light flooding the stained glass windows. His deep voice echoes slightly off the sanctuary's lofty beams. His gray hair shines above the carved wooden pulpit, as he reads Scripture from Luke.
 

He is no longer Jim, the preteen pastor's kid who once brought a snake to church. He is the Rev. Jim Bryan, senior pastor of Missouri United Methodist Church.
 

Forty-four years ago, the bishop chose his father, Monk Bryan, to serve as the senior pastor of Missouri United Methodist Church on Ninth Street. Now Jim Bryan has returned to lead the members of his father's old flock and its new generations.
 

Jim Bryan was 12 years old when he first came to MUMC. The seasoned pastor remembers himself as a skeptical adolescent who was difficult to teach. Although he said he was not intentionally defiant, Bryan remembers constantly challenging the claims of his elders.
 

"I just didn't accept anything without deep and thorough challenge and question," Bryan said. If a Sunday school teacher told him the story of Noah and the ark, Bryan said he would immediately counter, "Wait a minute. You're telling me he brought two moths?" But Bryan added that his rebellion never led him into deep trouble. He avoided drugs, alcohol and other teen pitfalls, and he never left the church.
 

During the years his father was minister at MUMC, Bryan accumulated many fond memories of the church. He married his wife, Caryl, there in 1966, with his father officiating the ceremony. Two years later, Bryan left Columbia for the first time, when he was drafted to serve in Germany during the Vietnam War. He was gone for two years. A year after he returned, Bryan again stood with his wife and father at the altar of MUMC, this time to baptize Bryan and Caryl's son Andy.
 

In 1972, 16 years after he came to MUMC, Bryan said goodbye to his home church and moved to Salem to work as a health information specialist in the University of Missouri Extension Service. Four years later, Monk Bryan also left MUMC to serve as a bishop in Nebraska. It would be 25 years before Jim Bryan would return.
 

Last August, MUMC lost its senior pastor when the Rev. Rhymes Moncure was elected to serve as a bishop in Nebraska. In September, Bryan returned to lead his childhood church.
 

"This church has meant a great deal to me ever since I started here in junior high school," Bryan said, sitting at his father's old post behind the senior pastor desk. "It's a great place filled with wonderful memories."
 

Still, Bryan admits he was a little nervous returning to pastor in the church where he grew up. He questioned whether the people who had known him as an inquisitive adolescent would be able to accept him as an authoritative adult.
 

"Some of them were actually my Sunday School teachers and others were adults," Bryan said.
 

Sitting among the other worshipers during Bryan's first sermon as senior pastor of MUMC, Catharine Twitty, who has been attending the church since 1957 - the same year Monk Bryan came, had no trouble accepting her new pastor. After the service, she called Monk Bryan to praise his son's work.
 

"I said, 'I just wanted to tell you he did a great job, and everybody's glad to have him,'" Twitty remembered.
 

Monk Bryan was thrilled to see his son return to MUMC.
 

"I love that church very greatly, and I love that man very greatly, and I think it's a great team-up," he said.
 

Although Jim Bryan has followed his father's footsteps to MUMC, he said he has not felt pressure from his family or his church to lead like his father.
 

"The main thing is not the history. The main thing is to pastor this church to the 21st century," he said.
 

To succeed, Bryan thinks the church must be open to change and willing to talk about current controversial issues.
 

"There are too many churches where the teaching and programs are not keeping up with questions people are having today," Bryan said. Stem-cell research and homosexuality are two topics he said he wants to address, but he added he does not necessarily want to give set answers for the questions he raises. Instead, he hopes to present both sides of issues and let individuals decide for themselves what is right and wrong.
 

"I want this church to be the kind of place where issues can be talked about, explored and people are cared for - no matter their position," he said.
 

Leading the people who were once his mentors supplies Bryan with extra motivation for overcoming the challenges of his work.
 

"I feel like they're still my surrogate parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and that's just filled with grace and joy," he said. "What a privilege now - to come back and give back - because of what they did for me."