Advancing the Kingdom

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Advancing T he Kingdom: Kingdom House
in character.”19 At this same meeting,
William M. Sloan was nominated and
unanimously elected president of the
St. Louis Church Extension and City
Mission Society. Sloan’s involvement
with the Society had been constant
since Kingdom House came under the
jurisdiction of the Methodist Church,
South, serving in various leadership
positions and on several committees.
Also present at this meeting was the
new Presiding Elder, the Reverend Dr.
William E. Brown.
Previous presiding elders’
participation in the Church Extension
Society was mostly that of an interested
observer. Brown took a more active
stance within the Society. In June of
1930, William Sloan presided over
a meeting in which Brown indicated
he had made an investigation “of the
Kingdom House situation…and that the
recently elected Board of Control for
Kingdom House is to have a meeting in
about two weeks to decide something
definite about the future of that
institution including a program to be
carried out under the leadership of the
Presiding Elder.”20
On August 9, 1931, a full-page article
titled “65 Years as a Sunday School
Goer” on Sloan appeared in the St.
Louis Globe-Democrat by staff writer
Walter J. Monaghan. The caption beside
the photo of a young Sloan, read
“William M. Sloan has found the
approximately 3,300 Sunday School
lessons he has attended during the
last sixty-five years not mere rites
to be observed on the Sabbath, but
practical things applicable to daily life.”
Monaghan writes:
“…Sloan is the treasurer and sales
manager of McElroy-Sloan Shoe Company
and not in name only. So, when it is
disclosed that Sloan is rapidly rounding into
the stretch toward his 68th birthday, there
must be something through the medium of
which he is able to maintain and preserve
the youth, vigor and the acumen which a
position such as his necessitates. Certainly
his appearance and his general demeanor
would belie such an assertion, but we have
his word for it, and that is confirmation in
itself.
WENT TO WORK AT AN EARLYAGE
Sloan is the son of a Mississippi farmer
who held forth at the birth of this son in
Marshall County, some two dozen miles
from Memphis. The elder Sloan was also
a Presbyterian minister, holding services
for a community church for a settlement of
South Carolinians who migrated to the then
Western state during the years around 1840.
So, it might be assumed that young William
Sloan spend his boyhood and youth in a
home in which the religious spirit exerted
its influence in a perennial [and] a practical
way. …After three years of [working in a
general store in a small Mississippi town],
he moved to Fort Smith, Ark., where he
continued as a clerk, three years later
coming to St. Louis, where he took a position
with the Hamilton-Brown Shoe Company.
After an apprenticeship, he became a
salesman for the firm, representing the firm
in the State of Louisiana.
In 1914 the firm of McElroy-Sloan was
organized, and in it he has continued his
activities to the present.
Today one finds Sloan a man who
has succeeded in making his life one of
happiness, satisfaction and success. His
early religious training never left him,
although, he admits, if he ever had any
aspirations to the ministry, they were
forgotten immediately, for there was never a
cent in the family funds for anything of the
sort. The Sunday School had become and
has continued to be a very potent influence
in his life….
…’I am,’ Sloan will tell you, ‘firm in my
belief that a person can and does benefit
definitely if he will carry the principles of
his religious teachings into his daily life.
Religion, you know, could not possibly have
any practical value if it were merely a matter
of listening to a sermon on Sunday, perhaps
a lesson from the Bible and the singing of
a few hymns. That is all right as a matter
of worship, but of what use is it if it is only
used for an hour or so on Sunday? What
about the six other days?
‘It has always seemed to me that religion
has a very practical side to it. It is teaching
you something. It, of course, primarily
tells you what to do and what not to do to
assure you your share of happiness in the
life beyond. It does not say that one must
go about with a lugubrious countenance,
warning all that they had better look out for
there will be a day of reckoning and that sort
of thing. Not at all. It does mean, however,
that the teachings of the Savior are the safest
guide for a life. They are the surest influence
in one’s dealings with others, for they teach
consideration for others and give more
understanding viewpoints on human beings
and the things that go to make up a life…
INTERESTED IN WORLD AS WELL
AS RELIGION
Sloan himself is an example of what he holds
regarding his religious creed….
…Some thirty years ago, he founded the
Sloan Mission which endures to this day and
is now known as the Kingdom House.
Furthermore, he believes that the Sunday
School is more of a necessity today than in
other days, for the trend of modernity has
all but exterminated the one-time popular
34
The committee
recommended that
K ingdom House remain
in the neighborhood
in which it had been for
nearly thirty years, and
that either a suitable
building in the area be
purchased and remodeled
for settlement work, or
that a new , fireproof
structure be erected.