Rev. Dan Albrant serves as the pastor for both Mineral and Mt. Pleasant UMC’s.
Welcome to the website for the Mineral-Mount Pleasant Charge of The United Methodist Church! We are very glad you stopped by for a visit and to learn more about us. Our churches have been yoked together in a charge (that is they share one pastor) since 1947. The churches themselves are only about 6 miles apart, one in the town of Mineral, and the other closer to the town of Louisa.
I have been the pastor of this Charge since July 2022. I was pastor of the Madison Charge in Madison, Virginia, from July 2017 to June 2022. Prior to that I was a hospital clinical pharmacist, practicing in intensive care, emergency departments, and operating rooms. I served as a consultant on new pharmacist practices and quality improvement as well as designing and implementing new training programs for pharmacists to improve patient outcomes.
You may be wondering how I got from Pharmacy to Ministry? Good question…it was an evolution. I was called by God to be a pharmacist, of that I am certain. During my time working in the high stress, low touch environment of intensive care, I began to feel disquieted in my soul. Something was missing – I needed to care for people in a different and more wholistic way. So, God moved me along a path of rejoining church, getting involved in Stephen Ministry as a minister and leader, and in an intentional period of spiritual growth. All this took about 12 years before I found myself at age 50 with the strong desire to attend Seminary. I attended Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, from 2013 to 2017 and graduated with a Masters of Divinity degree with honors.
The United Methodist Church has gone through a season of change with disaffiliation of about 20% of its churches. That time has now ended, and both of these churches remain firmly United Methodist under the care and direction of our Resident Bishop. Our worship style is Traditional, and sermons come directly from the weekly scripture readings of the Revised Common Lectionary (used by many Christian denominations). There is a Choir at the Mineral UMC and many wonderful ministries for you to engage in at both churches. We hope that you will come and give us a try one Sunday. You will be warmly welcomed, and we believe that you will feel like you are at home.
I love serving the rural church and her people. My wife and I have found a home here at Lake Anna and we look forward to many years of ministry outreach, worship, fellowship and fun. We enjoy sharing our lives with those whom God has called to be the church of Jesus Christ. We have two young adult sons, one of whom flies for NetJets and the other who is training to be an electrician. Our black Labrador, Hope, rounds out our immediate family. Let me know how I might be of service to you, or how we might pray for people or situations that are important to you. You can find copies of my sermons under the "Blogs" tab and links to other resources for your spiritual journey. May God bless you on your way!
Expectations
“Well, what do you expect?!” How many times have you, in exasperation, said or thought that phrase? As a parent, I have said and thought that countless times, and the same is true in my professional lives. In my case, the reason that I have thought or said that phrase was because someone had said or done something whose outcome I saw as perfectly predictable, and they were surprised at the outcome of what they had done! Truth-be-told, I have been the recipient of that phrase from older and wiser people in response to something I had said or done.
We have a lot of expectations of one another, don’t we? We have expectations about how our government and elected officials will behave and act on our behalf. We have expectations of how our significant others or spouses will act toward us. We have expectations of how our work colleagues will do their jobs and support our efforts. Some of us even have expectations on how our lives are going to go and how our efforts are going to work out. As a pastor, I have congregants who have expectations of me and have asked me what expectations I have of them. Some of my congregants’ expectations are valid (I show up on time to conduct worship and meetings, I show up when they’re sick, etc) and some are based on an idealized pastor that has nothing to do with who I am and the gifts I bring to my ministry with them.
That’s the thing with expectations, especially of other people, isn’t it? Sometimes our expectations are faulty, because they are based on our limited understanding of the person, the actual job description or the situation. Helpfully, a wise person once noted that “An expectation is a premeditated resentment.” I want you to read that last sentence a couple of times and let it sink in. I’ll wait for you here…
The truth of that statement is that when we set up an expectation without having a complete understanding of the person or situation, then we are bound to be disappointed. When we are disappointed, we often find that we resent the other person or people who didn’t read our mind, take our advice, listen to our counsel, see the world as we do, or who didn’t do something the way that we would have done it. Case-in-point, there are a number of folks out in the world right now who are frustrated and resentful that half of the electorate didn’t vote the way they did in the last Presidential election. Why would we rationally expect them to do that? The answer is that expectations are often not rational but rather are based on opinion and emotion.
The blessed assurance we have as children of an unconditionally loving God is that God doesn’t have expectations of us. God loves us and hopes that we will love God back. God loves us and hopes that we will love and appreciate the world God created for us. God loves us and hopes that we will find a way to love each other the way that we are loved by God. God loves us just as we are and knows that love can be so powerful that it can transform us into who God created us to be.
Thus, my answer to my congregants’ question about my expectations of them is that I have no expectations. I lovingly accept them (even the really challenging ones) as they are and I hope that they will similarly accept me. Living in community with other humans is challenging. Setting ourselves up for resentments through unfulfilled expectations is a recipe for disaster and schism, not for fruitful ministry.
The good news is that there are a lot of fine people in faith communities all over our area who are operating with hopes and acceptance rather than expectations. Jesus operated with love and acceptance and asks us to do the same. I hope that you are part of such a faith community. If not, walk into one this week with a hopeful heart and without expectations. If you do, you might be pleasantly surprised at what you will find. Blessings for your journey!