GARNET RIDGE, Ind. — The congregation of First Methodist Church voted 212-9 on Sunday to exempt its longest-serving usher from the two-year term limit he wrote, campaigned for in 1991, 2003, and “every year since 2010,” a reform its backers called “the single most important in the history of the north door.”
Harold Teague, 84, has stood at the north door since March 1974. His title, according to church records, is “temporary usher,” a position created that month to cover a single Sunday while the regular usher recovered from a cold. The regular usher has since died. Teague has covered 2,646 consecutive Sundays.
“I wrote the term limit because ushers need fresh ideas,” Teague said, standing at the door with a stack of 140 bulletins. “I am not a fresh idea. I am an institution. The limit is for the next guy. If I leave, there is no next guy, and then who enforces the limit?”
The exemption, titled the Continuity Clause, passed after 11 minutes of debate. It states that the term limit “shall apply to all ushers, present and future, except any usher who is currently ushering, until such time as a successor is ready, which shall be determined by the usher currently ushering.” Teague, who is the usher currently ushering, said he would “take the question under advisement,” a process he expects to conclude “after the next one.”
Asked which “next one” he meant, Teague said, “The big one,” and then, after a pause, “the building committee.”
Supporters of the exemption, organized as Ushers for Limits, said the vote reflected a deep commitment to term limits themselves. “Term limits are a sacred principle,” said Lorraine Beckwith, 71, the group’s chair, who has held that post since 1998. “We just have to get to the point where the principle can be applied. That point is later. We are protecting the limits by not using them yet.”
Beckwith said the group’s own bylaws impose a two-term limit on its chair. She said she is in her ninth term, which she described as “a technical second term, with an extended first.”
The only member to speak against the exemption was Walt Ferris, 38, who was term-limited out of the usher corps in 2019 after 22 months. “I handed my bulletins to the next guy, and the next guy was Harold,” Ferris said. “Harold has been the next guy for four ushers. I am now ushering unofficially from the third pew. I stand up when people come in. Nobody has stopped me.”
Ferris said he wrote the church council a letter proposing that the limit be applied to Teague “at least in principle.” The council replied that the matter was “being reviewed by a committee of ushers.” Teague chairs it.
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, which studies institutional tenure, said the case was consistent with her findings. “In a survey of 46 church bodies with term limits, 100 percent of incumbents supported them until the moment they applied,” Teller said. “In 44 cases, the incumbent then proposed a temporary exemption. In 31, it was still in force when the incumbent was eulogized.” She added that in the remaining two, the exemption was extended “in the eulogy.”
The exemption includes a sunset clause requiring a review “in two years.” The review will be conducted by the committee Teague chairs. Church secretary Patricia Hollis said she had read the bylaws aloud at the meeting, “slowly, for the record,” and that they define a term as “24 months or until the usher says it is.”
The original term-limit rule remains posted, laminated, on a wall beside the north door. Teague stands directly in front of it. Asked whether the placement was intentional, he said, “It’s a very good sign, and people should read it,” and moved six inches to the left. By Sunday afternoon he had moved back.
Teague said he plans to serve “as long as it takes to make sure the limits stay in place.” When asked how long that would be, he said he would have to check with the usher in charge. At press time, he was holding the door open for the vote to end.