History

Our church will be celebrating its 120th birthday next year, and we have a small committee that has begun to meet and plan for the celebration.

Our first step is tracking down and going through archives. Some are at the church, some are at a couple's home, and others are at more centralized locations.

Our pastor pulled a couple very old books out of a cabinet in his office when we met Monday. The first was this one...

It contains a record of baptisms, starting in 1892. 

One of our committee members began looking through the book. She seems to know just about everyone, and found her parents' baptisms and her own. If I remember right, her mother was baptized  in 1922. Her mother's seventeen year old signature was next to the pastor's. 

Another book contained a roster of members. There were a couple of official looking papers certifying membership during World War II. We wondered if they had been done to help protect Jewish families. There aren't any during any other time period in the book.

For now, I am just trying to get the history straight in my head, starting with the pastors. I know very, very little and have lots of reading to do. As we go through archives, I'll be trying to think of engaging ways to present the church's rich history to our church and community. I have some ideas, but have never tackled anything this huge. 

I have always been fascinated by history, and I know that I'll enjoy the process of researching, especially as a pamphlet or a picture sparks a memory and I am privy to decades-old recollections.