Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 4, 1993 TAG: 9309040039
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Judy Mills Reimer, a Roanoke church leader and business woman for more than 30 years, recently was elected the national moderator of the Church of the Brethren.
Moderator-elect until the summer of 1994, she follows two men from her congregation in the top post: Edward K. Ziegler, who served 35 years ago; and Ira Peters, who served in the early 1970s.
In addition, the church's pastor for 32 years, the Rev. Dr. Harold S. Moyer, and Doris C. Egge, a long-time member, were runners-up in previous years in the annual ballotting.
The unpaid job of moderator covers two years. Elected from three candidates in early July, the Smith Mountain Lake resident already has been at a meeting of the General Board where she assisted the current moderator, the Rev. Earl Ziegler, a Pennsylvania pastor.
Throughout the next two years, Reimer expects to be in the air and on the road a lot as she attends meetings around the 23 districts of her denomination.
The moderator serves "as the spiritual and official head of the Church of the Brethren."
While the day-to-day administration is carried on from offices in the Chicago area by Donald E. Miller, the general secretary, Ziegler, Reimer and members of the elected General Board spend many hours interpreting the issues of the church and representing their denomination at national and international gatherings.
Traveling a lot is nothing new to the woman who grew up in the Williamson Road area and says she likes nothing better than to talk about church government and issues.
Her commitment to Jesus Christ - first articulated at the denominational Camp Bethel when she was 10 - has been expressed mostly as a Brethren, but she strongly values the learnings she picks up from church people of other faiths. More than any denominational loyalty, she said, she values the belief that everyone is a priest of God and both responsible and privileged to share in his salvation.
Today, reflecting on her election over a previously nominated candidate and one chosen from the convention floor, Reimer says she thinks God has called her to many exciting jobs.
Beginning in 1985 when she was named - in the same kind of three-way, run-off election - to the national General Board, she has become familiar with most facets of the denomination. Because she and her husband, George, have owned Roanoke's Harris Office Furniture for the past 15 years, she has a knowledge of business and finance uncommon in many church leaders and essential in tight financial times.
Instead of spending her years on the national board on one or two committees, Reimer was assigned to a variety of study groups. Most recently, she chaired a national youth agency, a task she found among the most exciting.
Other Brethren, who have worked with Reimer for years on the Roanoke Valley and Virlina District levels, recall her energy and enthusiasm. Some, she said, were surprised when she decided at 50 to move to the Chicago area, leaving two college-age sons and her husband to run the business in order to enroll in theological seminary.
"Ever since I first saw Bethany [seminary] 35 years ago on a trip to our Annual Conference, I felt God was shaking me . . . wanting me to go there to study."
But there were no role models for women clergy in 1958, that year Judy Mills graduated from William Fleming High and decided, after encouragement from teachers, to go to Emory & Henry College.
On graduation and prepared to teach elementary school children, she enrolled instead in Brethren Volunteer Service, a church group similar to the secular Peace Corps. For several months she was a volunteer in cancer research for the National Institutes of Health while in training for more than a year's service near Kassel, Germany.
Thalidomide babies, the victims of a dangerous drug for pregnant women, became part of her life there in a rehabilitation hospital. Even more important, there she met and courted George Reimer, a Canadian Mennonite on an agriculture project for his church.
They married and moved to Manitoba for two years, but agreed to return to Roanoke for two more. As the Vietnam War intensified, George registered as a conscientious objector and joined Judy's father's cabinet-making business. Two sons, Todd and Troy were born, and Judy Reimer taught in Roanoke schools. The Reimers gave temporary homes to five foreign students who enriched their lives and helped with child care.
The chance to acquire the office furniture firm came in 1976. For the next 15 years Judy Reimer juggled child rearing, church work on increasingly higher levels and "doing three jobs" at the Campbell Avenue store. It took three years of thinking and talking with George, she recalls, before she could clear her mind and desks to enter the seminary.
"He was behind me all the way. I never would have considered it otherwise."
What's next as Reimer completes her seminary work this December? The moderator's job will fill many days and weeks until 1996, but she'll be on the alert for a pastor's call. She'd prefer that be in the Virlina District crossing southern Virginia, but a hospice chaplaincy also interests her.
"My call is in process," she says, "as I grow up."
by CNB