When the deacons—all four or five of them—hold a meeting this year at Cut Banks Church in Dinwiddie County, there will be someone missing. It is the first year since 1933 that Oliver McGill “Gillie” Wells has not served as an active deacon for the church. At age 94, he decided that enough was enough. Although he has difficulty walking, he does attend Sunday school and “stays for preaching.”
Gillie Wells has been a deacon longer than he has been a husband! He and Myrtle Carter “made the long trip” to Alberta—about eight miles or so from the bride's home at Dolphin in Brunswick County—and were married on November 12, 1937. And so come November, they will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. But remember he was ordained a deacon at Cut Banks four years earlier at age 21.
Fred Anderson
Myrtle Carter Wells has not forgotten a single detail of their wedding trip. They were married at the preacher's house in Alberta and traveled over to South Hill where they spent their wedding night. They went to the picture show, which was showing The Bride Wore Red. “We came home the next day,” remembers Myrtle, “and stopped in Lawrenceville to get my wedding ring. We went on to McKenney and have been here ever since.” Anyone who knows Southside Virginia below Petersburg realizes that all those places are within a country mile or so from each other.
Myrtle Wells grew up Methodist. She admits that her parents did not attend regularly but they saw to it that their nine children attended. “When it was time for us to leave for church, Daddy would say, ‘Come here and get your money.' I don't know where Daddy got a penny for us to give at church but he did.” Married to Deacon Wells, Myrtle soon was thoroughly Baptist.
Deacon Wells has seen 16 pastors come and 15 pastors go in all those years. His present pastor, Charles Young, has been at Cut Banks for the last two years.
Gillie Wells
Myrtle Wells is the unofficial historian of the church and kept the records as church clerk for 40 years. She shares that “we never had electricity until July 1948.” She likes to tell about the slow progress at the country church. “In 1959 we had three Sunday school rooms built across the back of the church. In 1971 the bathrooms and a vestibule were put in, also central heat and air was installed in 1984. Then in 1993 we installed a fellowship hall, which we have all enjoyed.” Once Deacon Wells got up on a ladder to put a cap on the church's chimney; and he soon realized the danger. He worked out an understanding with the Lord that if he got him down, he wouldn't go up again!
In all the progressions at church, Deacon Wells was among the involved laity. The couple has remained devoted to their church and community. The tight little neighborhood around McKenney is as much world as they need. Gillie Wells still lives within eight miles of his birthplace and Myrtle is within about 12 or 15 miles of her childhood home. They did make a trip to Arkansas once as a favor to take someone home and were gone four or five days. They have gone several times “up into the Blue Ridge Mountains, around Bedford.” As tobacco and peanut farmers, they had to stay close to home. It was on the farm that they reared their two sons.
Myrtle says that she has no regrets about travel. “I don't want to go anywhere. When I look out of my west window and see all kinds of birds eating together, it's enough for me. Well, I would like to go on a mission trip. I don't know why the good Lord didn't send me as a missionary. I reckon he just called me to give so missionaries could go. But I really would like to go on a mission trip sometime.”
Cut Banks is an ancient church dating to the late 1700s, yet there really is little known about the church. In 1894 when George Beale updated Semple's History of Virginia Baptists, he was short and sweet when it came to Cut Banks. He wrote: “Nothing has been received respecting this church.” He did list the constituent members in the 1780s as 19 in number and the membership as 36 in 1894.
In the most recent BGAV annual, the statistics record that there are not many more members than a century ago. It lists 40 resident members and an overall membership of 61 but two-thirds are enrolled in Sunday school. It also is amazing that the church reports a Woman's Missionary Union of 17 members, or 42 percent of the resident membership! In reality, the WMU is not composed of only women. “We call it ‘Adults-on-Mission,' ” explains Myrtle, “and we say that about as many men as women have been missionaries. But in the earlier years, it was a ‘woman's thing.' Our goal for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering is $500 and I reckon we'll reach it.”
What the church lacks in numbers it makes up with loyalty, love and labor. Myrtle Wells has been singing an old gospel song from the days of Homer Rodeheaver. She wasn't certain about the title but she knew that the chorus went: “Carry your cross with a smile …. ”She wants the younger folks at church to learn the song.
It's not difficult to imagine Myrtle at 91 singing the old favorite: “For the work that you faithfully, willingly do, you shall reap a reward after while; only grace in your service can glorify you, so carry your cross with a smile! Carry your cross with a smile, carry your cross with a smile, you may others from sadness to gladness beguile, if you carry your cross with a smile!” Deacon Wells probably is hearing the song more often now that he doesn't get out of the house to attend meetings of the deacons.
Baptist deacons are understood to be Christian servants, administering benevolences and finances and, quite literally, “waiting tables.” Paul told us that deacons “must be serious, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for gain” and then he added: “They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them also be tested first; then if they prove themselves blameless let them serve as deacons.”
Gillie Wells has been thoroughly tested across seven decades of deaconship. Paul must have imagined the old deacon from Cut Banks when he observed: “Those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.”