Rev. Bruce Lynn Taylor is a Decatur native. Having been away from here for over 35 years, he spoke several times of how wonderful it was to be back home. Now retired, Bro. Taylor told me he was placed here in his last pastorate, Decatur United Methodist Church, in 2009. He declared, “It has been such an honor and a privilege to come back and serve the church in which I grew up and had been first recommended for ordination. My parents and grandparents’ fingerprints are everywhere. Reconnecting with almost everybody here has been such a pleasure.”
He spoke of how he and his wife Susan have also enjoyed renewing relationships in the neighborhood and community.
Bro. Taylor was born March 11, 1952, to Wilson and Marguerite Taylor. They lived away from Decatur for about four and a half years, as his father served as principal of Sebastopol Attendance Center, then of Shady Grove Attendance Center just north of Laurel, before being elected superintendent of the schools here in Newton County in 1963. They moved back when Bruce was in the sixth grade.
He graduated from Decatur High School in 1970, from East Central Junior College in 1972, and from Mississippi State in 1974, with a B.S. in Secondary Science Education.
After he felt his call, while at E.C., he served on Sunday mornings at Good Hope Methodist Church near Beulah Hubbard. Later, while teaching at Jackson Academy, he earned a Master’s degree in Combined Science at Mississippi College. He also served on staff at Broadmeadow Methodist Church in Jackson, doing youth and activities work. While at seminary later, he served as a youth minister at a Methodist church just six miles from the school, while Susan worked at a nearby hospital.
Coming from a Methodist family, Bruce was baptized as an infant. But he told me of a time when he made a decision in about the fifth grade. He recalled, “I was always a believer. It was a part of my family, my childhood.
While we were living in a community north of Laurel, one Sunday morning, the minister gave the invitation. I was sitting toward the back. I stepped out and walked down to respond to the invitation and made a public commitment to Christ.”
In 1967 Bruce attended a Boy Scout World Jamboree, which lasted for three weeks. (By the way, he attained the rank of Eagle Scout in 1966.) Upon his return, his first Sunday back, Bruce entered his Sunday School room to find a new girl attending the class. Susan Gayle Johnson’s parents had moved here to serve as teachers at Newton County schools.
Bruce and Susan were married December 30, 1973. In 1980, Amanda Hope was born. Mandy and Jody Nichols have four boys, Connor, Sawyer, Reed, and Ben. In 1985, Benjamin Andrew completed the Taylor family. Ben and his wife Jana Taylor live in Nashville.
The years from his calling to the ministry in 1971, until 1989, when he actually entered Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, were years of varied experiences. Susan finished school, becoming a medical technologist. (She is about to retire from her present position as an Infection Preventionist). He taught school for eight years while he and Susan built their relationship and their family.
After graduating from Candler in 1992, with a Master of Divinity, Bro. Taylor was ordained a Deacon in 1991, and as an Elder in 1992. Rev. Hank Winstead, who had pastored in Decatur and at St. Matthew’s, where Bruce attended in Jackson, was very helpful and influential in the formation of Bruce Taylor’s life and ministry.
From 1992-1994, Rev. Taylor served as pastor of Adams United Methodist Church in southwest Mississippi, just west of McComb. Then in 1994, they began a church “from scratch” in Madison, Mississippi. Starting in their home, after canvassing neighborhoods for interested people, their first worship service was Jan. 15, 1995, at the fieldhouse of Madison Central High School, with an attendance of 119. In 2004, they left this church, with an attendance of almost 400 on Sunday mornings, moving to pastor First United Methodist Church of Pascagoula, Mississippi, during Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, before moving to First UMC in New Albany, Mississippi, in 2006.
Their time in Pascagoula held “some of the best times of my ministry,” Bro. Taylor declared. Practically everyone in the church, including the Taylors, had lost everything. He said there was “a sense of freedom I had never had. I found out how confining and restrictive having stuff is.”
The church had water up into the second floor of the buildings. The first Sunday after the storm, he preached out of the back of a pickup truck, with the passage being from Genesis 1:2, “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The people were all going through the same thing, which became a way they saw God at work. Bro. Taylor explained, “I used examples that we all could identify with.” He said they were flooded twice—first with water, then with volunteers and resources. “We’d have a hundred or more volunteers staying at the church. It was incredible to see. If we hadn’t gone to Pascagoula, we would have missed this experience.”
In 2009, a few months before they returned to Decatur, Susan was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer. But they had been “in the right place at the right time.” While at New Albany, she had begun treatment in Memphis, where she received aggressive and effective treatment. When they moved to Decatur, a doctor in Jackson agreed to cooperate with the oncologist in Memphis, and this was also a blessing, as she has now been clear of cancer for nine years. Praise the Lord!
Now enjoying retirement, he is kept busy with another kind of pastoral existence, maintaining Susan’s grandparents’ old home place of 156 acres, building a rustic home, using stones and timbers from the original home there. He also enjoys creating with pottery, as well as writing, using memories, insights, and experiences gained from his twenty-five years of ministry. He has plans to complete one or more books, which I look forward to reading.
God’s presence and God’s blessings were so obvious during the beginning and growth of Parkway Hills in Madison. Thinking of the hard times— Hurricane Katrina, Susan’s breast and liver cancer, as examples— he stated, “It hasn’t been all a rosy path. We can look back in retrospect and see how God was at work in the midst of difficult times. You can see the good things in the midst of tragedies.”
You may contact me at lagnesrussell@ gmail.com or 601-635-3282.
