Issue 2
Sister Priscilla Turner, Sister Estelle Gardner, Sister Ethel Smith
A PERIODIC NEWSLETTER FOR THE MT. PLEASANT COMMUNITY AND BEYOND
BUILT ON THE WORD, CONNECTED TO CHRIST, COMMITTED TO SERVANT-LEADERSHIP IN THE COMMUNITY
MEET PASTOR LYDIA EVELYN SPRAGIN PATTON MEMORIAL CHRISTIAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH By Shirley Cunningham A third generation CME, Pastor Lydia Evelyn Spragin, is a native of Clarksdale, Mississippi and the daughter of the late Presiding Elder Rev. Ore Lee Spragin, Sr., and Mrs. Henrietta Murphy Spragin. Both of her parents were teachers. Her father a social studies teacher and after retirement, a remedial first grade teacher. At various times in his life her father was employed as an auto mechanics instructor, a World Book encyclopedia salesman, a carpenter, a concrete mixer, a brick layer, and a furniture and an appliance salesman/delivery man. In addition to growing vegetables in his own garden, he would use his tractor (and occasionally Mr. Redd’s mule) to plow fields for neighbors to plant gardens and also to mow “the field” a place where Negro League Baseball was played. Her mother was a home economics teacher who excelled in sewing, cooking, and business. Together her parents bought several houses, fixed them up, rented, and then sold them. One investment 1750 Chestnut Street was known as the Teacherage and was used to house African American women who needed a place to stay while student teaching. The teacherage was necessary because at the time there was not any place for persons of color to reside other than a person’s home. Both parents were engaged in the civil rights boycotts of the sixties and were initial funders of the Friendship Credit Union, the first African American owned financial institution of its kind in Clarksdale. Her brother, Rev. Ore Lee Spragin, Jr., is the current editor of The Christian Index, the Official Organ of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, and the author of several books. Pastor Spragin was baptized at the Mt. Moriah Christian Methodist Episcopal (“CME”) Church on June 5, 1970. As a youth and young adult, she served as Sunday School Secretary, a Youth Usher, Christian Youth Fellowship President, and as a member of the Youth Choir. Although she was active in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, she is ecumenical in her church background including but not limited to active participation in the Catholic church, the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, the Baptist Church, the Metropolitan AME Church (Washington, DC, the church home of Frederick Douglass), a non-denominal church – Victory Christian Center, and the Disciples of Christ. She believes that each of these churches have contributed to her spiritual formation and her firm belief in the Ephesians 4 Ministry and the biblical truth that there is “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism”. In her role as a CME pastor she is a member of the Committee on Ministerial Examination of the Ohio-Central Indiana Annual Conference. Pastor Spragin began her academic pursuits at the early age of three years old at the House Kindergarten and entered Immaculate Conception Elementary School at the tender age of five. In 1979, she graduated valedictorian from Immaculate Conception High School. In 1983 she earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Liberal Arts with a Major in Biological Sciences and minors in Chemistry and English from the University of Mississippi where she served as the Associated Student Body Campus