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!
Walk This Way
Early in our lives most of us learn to walk. This developmental milestone is usually celebrated with video and FaceTime and other forms of sharing. We all know intrinsically that learning to walk is the way for us to continue to grow and develop into the people we are meant to be. Delays in walking cause great angst and typically a great deal of searching for clues as to why a child isn’t walking as early as they should. No one teaches us to walk – we begin by crawling, by pulling up on furniture, by holding hands with parents, siblings and relatives. Sooner or later, something clicks in our brains and bodies, and we take our first stumbling steps.
Walking is a major part of our everyday life. Just recently I developed a pneumonia and was limited in my ability to walk – primarily because I couldn’t take more than a few steps without being significantly short of breath. I realized that I had taken for granted an activity that I normally engaged without thinking. I’m typically walking many miles each day, and now I am limited from even walking up a flight of 12-steps. I have had to slow down, to think quite strategically about how to get things accomplished with my current limitations. I know that this is just a passing restriction for me, but I have found that I don’t like to walk this way.
Humans are meant to walk together through life – literally and figuratively. We you that metaphor all the time to speak about the people with whom we share our lives and the kinds of things that we choose to do. We talk a lot about walking through our lives with the right people, with the right outlook or attitude, with those who will remain with us and who will help lift us up when we fall down. We who have parented spent a lot of time wondering about who our children would find to walk with and how they would continue to grow into reasonable and productive adults.
It makes a huge difference with whom we choose to walk. William Peterson observes, “Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it...” Walking in the way of positivity, purpose, imagination, support, courage…this is the way to make the miles we travel yield their best for us and for our world.
The Bible talks about the people who are walking in through the world in darkness without a light to guide them. There are a lot of these people around now days, because the majority of Americans no longer see a role for religion in their lives. At its best, religion offers us a glimpse of how we can live as the cheerful doers who seek to make the world a better place. It brings together people who believe and follow a power greater and wiser than themselves to do more together than any thought possible. When we walk this way together, then the world becomes a place where anything is possible, and all are living their best lives.
You may be walking with people who are not lifting you up – people without dreams and hopes. You don’t have to continue to walk this way. This week I invite you to come to a faith community. I invite you to come and walk with people of the light who are trying their best to live lives of meaning and purpose. I invite you to travel with a group of people who are supportive, uplifting, positive, helpful and loving. You will find when you walk with people who have this outlook on life that your outlook will change for the better as well. Come and walk this way and let your Spirit be ignited with an eternal fire. Blessings to you all for your journey!