Trinity united methodist church, Castell TX

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Every pastor remembers the first church.

For me, it was this small white sanctuary standing quietly along a country road in Castell, Texas, not far from the Mason and Llano county line. Trinity United Methodist Church was never large, never busy, and never meant to be permanent for me. I served there only one year as a quarter-time pastor before being appointed to my first full-time church.

But it was here that ministry became real.

This was where I preached my first Easter as a pastor. My first Christmas. My first Sunday standing before a congregation that was no longer practice or preparation, but responsibility. These were the people who trusted a young pastor to bring the gospel to life in their small corner of the Hill Country.

The church itself stood just a short walk from a low water crossing on the Llano River. The land felt old in the way Texas Hill Country places often do — quiet limestone soil, mesquite and oak, and a river that has shaped the life of the community for generations.

During the week my family and I often came out to the church together. We swept the sanctuary, cleaned up the grassburs and dust that had gathered, and slowly cared for the space that cared for the people.

One memory from those early days still makes me smile. During a district retreat held at the church, our district superintendent discovered a small bottle of oil kept behind the altar. Believing it to be anointing oil used for healing services — which I assumed as well — he used it to anoint everyone who came forward during worship.

A few days later he called me with an important pastoral instruction: throw that bottle away.

It turns out it was not anointing oil at all, but highly concentrated furniture polish. Several pastors at the retreat had developed unfortunate skin reactions to their unexpected blessing.

Even sacred places collect their share of human moments.

Trinity closed its doors in 2019, joining the quiet list of rural churches whose congregations slowly faded with time. I’m not certain what the building serves as today. It may host weddings now, or simply stand as a memory of the community that once gathered there.

But places like this do not stop being sacred when the congregation leaves.

The prayers offered there, the hymns sung within those walls, the first sermons preached by a young pastor still echo in ways that are hard to measure.

Some sacred ground shapes us long before we understand how deeply it will matter.

For me, this little white church in Castell will always be the place where ministry truly began.