THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 7, 1995 TAG: 9509020144
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOAN C. STANUS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 123 lines
At 52, Evelyn Puckett finally has found her spiritual home.
It's behind the pulpit - preaching, singing, playing the piano and making puppets come to life, all in an effort to get across the word of God.
``I'm kind of all over the place,'' Puckett, the minister at Colonial Avenue United Methodist Church, admits with a throaty laugh. ``I just try to keep it moving. I'm different than what they're used to here ... but they tell me they're really excited ... and glad that I'm a woman, not a man.''
Puckett came to the Norfolk congregation in July 1994, fresh from her ordination, after having spent a year in the Methodist church's candidacy program. The program allows those over 35 a non-traditional route into the ministry.
For years a minister of music for churches of various faiths, this wife and mother of two teenagers is now one of only five women among 52 United Methodist ministers in the church's Eastern district.
``I've always felt drawn to pastor,'' explained Puckett, a former Bible college instructor and missionary. ``I thought maybe there was a door for me in the Methodist Church.''
Raised by parents who were devout Assembly of God evangelists, Puckett accepted the Lord into her life at the age of 3 1/2. During her childhood, her parents opened their home to Nazi concentration camp escapees and orphans, and spent time working with groups of hippies, drug addicts and New York dock workers. They urged their two children - Evelyn and Edward - to find their own way of spreading their religious message.
``She's always had a sermon. It's just automatic for her,'' said Puckett's father, 86-year-old Edward Maurer of Patterson, N.J. ``She's got a real calling. The Lord has certainly given her a gift.''
By age 14, Puckett and her brother were singing gospels on the street corners of New York City's Bowery section and playing the guitar and accordion for the disenchanted in the city's missions.
``The first time I ever sang in public was in a mission,'' said Puckett, who taught herself to play the piano as a young child. ``My brother and I would play and sing. It would attract the people, and then I'd preach.''
She also spent time, passing along the teachings of her faith, among gang members and drug addicts living in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York.
``They had zip guns, and they were tough,'' she recalled. ``But there soft underneath.''
After attending school at Elim Bible College in upstate New York, Puckett stayed on to teach. But after nine years there, she felt the urge to move on. She was called, she said, to do more than teach. She wanted to witness. She wanted to preach.
So for six months during the early '70s, she served as a missionary - singing, playing the guitar and preaching - in dozens of small villages throughout Africa, Europe and the Far East.
``I remember in the Philippines, riding on this bus full of people to get to a palm boat so we could go to a Bible school meeting,'' she said. ``Once we got off the boat, we had to walk an hour into the jungle to preach. It was a rough trip, but it was inspirational to see all those people come to hear us preach.''
While visiting Kenya, Puckett received an invitation from Anne and John Gimenez, one of her former students, to come help them work with addicts at their Rock Church in Virginia Beach. She accepted and for the next year served as the church's choir director and Bible instructor.
But Puckett was restless. She yearned for something more fulfilling. At one point, she even considered pursuing a singing career.
``I played piano and sang in the hotels at Virginia Beach,'' she recalled. ``All I sang were gospel songs. But it just wasn't me. God gave me my voice and talent, and he put me back where I belong.''
She turned back to church work. She help found Virginia Beach's Open Door Chapel, then served for a year as a counselor at CBN. For 10 years, she held the post of the minister of music at Trinity Tabernacle Church in the College Park section of Virginia Beach.
Then she decided to go back to school to get an undergraduate degree in psychology. She received her degree from Liberty University in Lynchburg.
Still, though, Puckett felt restless. She felt compelled to seek more of a role than directing religious music programs. She wanted to be in the pulpit, preaching and ministering to all of her congregation's needs.
``I could teach and travel, but as a woman it was hard,'' Puckett admits. ``In an interdenominational church, there was nowhere for me to go. When I asked for an ordination, they laughed at me. So I had to find my own way, which I did.''
While eating at McDonald's one day, she met two female Methodist ministers and realized perhaps there was a way after all for her to have the role she yearned for. Not long afterward, while speaking for a women's interfaith program in Reedville, she learned of the Methodist Church's candidacy program.
Feeling drawn to the program, Puckett applied.
``At first, it wasn't encouraging, because I was a woman and my age,'' she said. ``But the Methodist Church offered a place for me, a possibility. And the Lord found a way.''
Even so, it was not an easy path, Puckett now admits. At one point, her 17-year-old daughter announced she would not move to her mother's new assignment. They prayed together, and in the end, it all worked out. Last year, Puckett was assigned to the Ghent church, an easy commute from her Chesapeake home.
Now Puckett's challenge is to inject new life into the church's aging congregation. Once a thriving church, today most of the members are elderly.
``I've started a kids' crusade,'' she said. ``I'm looking for a way to bring more young families to this church and a way to reach kids. I've worked with teens before, but this is a new phase of my life. My role is different now.''
In August, the church sponsored a children's day with a petting zoo, pony rides, games and Puckett's puppet shows. She also has visited nearby Maury High School to invite teens to the church's showing of ``The Cross and the Switchblade,'' a movie about gangs, drugs, guns and faith. She has made calls to new families in the neighborhood.
So far, she admits her offerings have not been as successful as she had hoped. But Puckett remains enthusiastic and optimistic.
``Caring for people - no matter what their problems are, that's the key for pastoring,'' she said. ``And I'm reaching out to the community, trying to meet those needs in whatever way I can.
``I know we'll make a difference. I believe it with all my heart.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
Evelyn Puckett is the minister at Colonial Avenue United Methodist
Church.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB