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!
The Enemy of Good
During my first career as a clinical pharmacist, I had the opportunity to work with a large number of physicians, nurses and other health professionals. Some of these folks were tremendous professionals and people, from whom I learned a great deal. I have always had a special affinity for surgeons, though they can be some of the prickliest and most challenging people God ever placed on earth! Part of this demeanor is that it takes a lot of chutzpah to cut open a living human body, mess about inside it for a while, and then sew everything back up again – kinda like nothing ever happened.
One general surgeon that I became friends with when I was down in Opelika, Alabama, was a gentleman just a bit older than I was. He had a very practical viewpoint on a lot of matters and taught me that waiting was often better than rushing in to do something. He would say, “Don’t poke a sleeping skunk!” By this he meant that sometimes it is better for tincture of time to work before he went back in and stirred things up. He also taught me a sense of restraint in caring for other humans saying, “The enemy of good is perfect!”
There are times in the practice of Medicine and Pharmacy that good enough is as good as it’s going to get – continuing to try and attain perfection just leads to more misery. It is a good mantra to have in our lives too – and this is coming from a Type A individual who borders on perfectionism. My training as a pharmacist taught me to be correct in my dose calculations to the third decimal place. I was fairly anal-retentive when it came to getting things right and not letting anything out of the Pharmacy doors until I was comfortable that it was as correct as humanly possible. Thankfully, over time and with the help of some practical friends in other health disciplines, I was able to gain a new perspective on how to live my life and career.
Author Roy T. Bennett in his book, “The Light in the Heart” has this to say about how the pursuit of perfection often gets in our way. He wrote, “Perfectionism is the enemy of happiness. Embrace being perfectly imperfect. Learn from your mistakes and forgive yourself, you’ll be happier. We make mistakes because we are imperfect. Learn from your mistakes, forgive yourself, and keep moving forward.” Good teaching on how to be truly human and to do what we can to live lives that are as good as they can be and as happy as possible.
I was really hard on myself when I made a mistake. I would beat myself up for awhile and not give myself any grace. Mistakes are going to happen in our lives and in our work – because we are prone to making errors. Even the best at their jobs will have a time when something goes wrong and they are at fault. One night I received a call from a retail pharmacist who had filled a prescription incorrectly for someone in my family. She was apologetic and crying and it offered me an opportunity to comfort her and to let her know that as a pharmacist I too had made mistakes. I offered her grace and hopefully some peace so that she could move forward.
The blessed assurance that we have is that we follow a perfect God. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, liked to teach that we are all going on to perfection and that through God’s grace we can achieve that during our lives. I think a lot of John’s teaching, and God is almighty, but I still think that perfection in this life is not something for which we should strive. Rather, we should be ok, most of the time, with being good enough and being as joy-filled as we can.
Maybe you are wound a bit tight and believe that you must be perfect? If so, then I invite you to come to a faith community this week that is filled with imperfect humans on a journey toward happiness through grace. You will find that the “enemy of good is perfect” and that you will be loved for just who you are. Blessings for your journey!