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!
Like a River
I grew up in a land of 10,000 lakes and quite a few rivers. In fact, I spent my first 25 years in proximity to the Mississippi River as it flowed between Minnesota and Wisconsin. I was even able to travel to the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi at Itasca State Park not far from Bemidji, Minnesota. There I could easily walk across the stream and think of how different it looked (larger and deeper) just a couple hundred miles downstream in Winona which was nearer to my home. There the river was more than a mile wide, and I had to go across in a car on a bridge. Large barges plied up and down the river, taking goods from Minneapolis to places south, and bringing needed goods back into Minnesota.
The Mississippi River is old, approximately 70 million years old from current data. It has carved new channels, made oxbows and lakes, been dammed and diverted, had canals carved into it to make boat travel easier, and brings life to millions through its never ceasing flow of water and soil. Though the Corps of Engineers has tamed the river’s natural flood cycles, it still has the power to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting or in response to the ever changing climate.
I’ve come to understand that our human lives are like a river. Sometimes we burst out of our banks with joy, sometimes we meander a bit trying to find our way, sometimes we go without enough water to sustain our hopes and our dreams. To be like a river is a good thing. We’re gifted and called to bring life to others, to be a source of refreshment and peace, to help people get from one place to another, to be a place where others can reflect on their own lives and purposes.
Aidan Chambers, in his book “This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn” writes, “…Do I change like a river, widening and deepening, eddying back on myself sometimes, bursting my banks sometimes when there’s too much water, too much life in me, and sometimes dried up from lack of rain? Will the I that is me grow and widen and deepen? Or will I stagnate and become an arid riverbed? Will I allow people to dam me up and confine me to wall so that I flow only where they want? Will I allow them to turn me into a canal to use for they own purposes? Or will I make sure I flow freely, coursing my way through the land and ploughing a valley of my own?...”
The blessed assurance that we have as children of a loving God is that we are all created to be free flowing like the mightiest of rivers. To bring the fullness of who we are into the world to change it for the better. Yet, we all need to flow within our banks – because when we get too full of ourselves, we often damage and harm others. We see this right now as people give free rein to their emotions and flood the environment with a torrent of negative, divisive, harmful and often quite petty and self-interested debris. The flotsam and jetsam of trying to carry too much of the world’s pain and need. God has another way for all of us than how we are choosing to live right now – being dammed and channeled for someone else’s purposes and priorities.
We are created free and empowered to live that way – like a river which has never known human manipulation. God gives us the gifts and ability to be a blessing, not a curse. Let us find our way back to that kind of river – like the small stream that becomes a mighty river bisecting our great nation. How can you discover how to flow like the Mississippi or Shenandoah or James or New rivers? You can find that in a faith community. There you will find a number of small streams who come together to form themselves into a mighty force for good. You will find them being constantly filled by the power of God the Holy Spirit to bring life to all they encounter. This week, why don’t you bring life to our community, just like a river? May God bless your journey!