This Week in Texas Methodist History Jan. 1 Advocate Faces Difficulties amid Transitiions, January 1940 As Texas Methodist publishing approached the celebration of its centennial, it faced serious challenges. The death of long time editor, A. J. Weeks in 1939 was only one of the problems. No one knew what role the Southwestern Christian Advocate would be in the transition from the Methodist Episcoopal Church South to the Methodist Church. The denominational organ which covered Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma (and sometimes Colorado) had grand ambitions to become the Jurisdictional newspaper. That would mean adding Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana to the three existing shates. There were singnificant obstancles to such an expansion. The first was that the Jurisdictional Conference that would authorize such a move would not meet until May, and the newspaper was in financial difficulty. Another was the opposition of Methodist journalists in the states not already in the coverage area. Methodist readers wanted local news about their conferences and the bishops who presided over them. A wider lens on Methodist activity was already provided by the Christian Advocate which was published in Nashville. After the death of Weeks, retired Bishop John M. Moore, who had retired to Dallas, assumed the office of general editor, and representative from each of the constituent conferences was named to assist. These associate editors were among the most prominent preachers in Texas and Oklahoma, but they were all full time pastors with all the duties of pastoring some of the largest churches in the regions. They included the following: Marshall Steel of Highland Park in Dallas, John N. R. Score of First Methodist Fort Worth, Dawson Bryan of St. Paul’s Houston, Edmon Heinsohn of University Methodist in Austin, J. O. Haymes of Big Spring, and W. N. Crutchfield of Oklahoma. Bishop Moore introduced each of these associate editors in the first issue of the SW Advocate in January, 1940. In short blurbs about each of them, he stressed how several of them had connections throughout Texas. For example, Score and served St. Paul’s in Houston, and Bryan had been born in El Paso. On a curious note, in introducing Crutchfield, he noted how the Oklahoma editor had played center on the Vanderbilt football team. Also in the January 4 issue, there was an open letter signed by Bishops, Holt, Selecman, Moore, Boaz, and Smith literally begging for subscribers not only to renew their subscriptsions but to solicit new subscriptions. They stated that paper was $3900 in debt with no cash on hand. To raise the money they offered a special deal. If one could not subscribe for a year, they would accept a 6 month subscription for $.75. If they could get 20,000 new subscribers, the paper would be solvent and be in a position to expand its coverage after Jurisdictional Confernce authorized it as the denominational newspaper for the South Central Jurisdiciton. Such authorization did not occur, but the Advocate perservered.