Photos by Angela Wright. St. Paul United Church of Christ in Eudora and the Rev. Shan McAleer will celebrate 150 years of history later this year. Far right, Robyn Kelso and her mother, Cherry McCabria, look at photo albums of years gone by housed in the church archives.
BY ANGELA WRIGHT
Robyn Kelso can tell a lot of stories about St. Paul United Church of Christ in Eudora.
Kelso, 52, remembers attending Sunday school as the only girl in her class and playing games with the other children.
From important events to everything in between, Kelso said she has seen it all in this church, as six generations of her family have attended there.
“Being able to be connected to a community, whether it’s Eudora or this church, for that length of time is important to me,” Kelso said.
Her memories span about a third of the church’s existence. This year, the St. Paul United Church of Christ congregation will celebrate just over 150 years of history.
Although the Rev. Shan McAleer said no activities are set yet, she plans to recognize the anniversary this fall.
The milestone is important because the church has been an active part of the community for many years, she said.
“As churches come and go and people come and go, we’re like an anchor,” McAleer said. “We’re in the same place.”
Even though surveys find that church attendance is declining nationwide, McAleer said her Eudora church has families with young children and she sees the church surviving more years.
“I think sometimes churches survive based on people’s commitment to the past and wanting to be sure that their church, their history, their denomination being represented in Eudora continues into the future,” McAleer said.
Like Kelso’s experiences in Sunday school, McAleer said the church’s Sunday school classes and other children’s programs still exist. However, there isn’t a youth group right now due to a lack of teenagers. When the children grow, McAleer said the church will then address where to focus efforts for groups.
McAleer said the national changes in church attendance are not necessarily bad, but more like progression. McAleer said she sees the role of churches changing from attending a sermon to more service-oriented activities where people live out the faith mostly outside of the building through actions.
“We’re always moving culturally,” McAleer said. “Sitting in a building every Sunday may not be for everyone.”
“Just like Jesus died so that we can have new life, maybe the old institutional ways need to die so we can have a new vision of church,” she said.
McAleer said she prefers to look ahead at what the church could be rather than behind at how it once was, but after 150 years, history is written in this church’s walls.
A church is not just a building
According to a pamphlet in the Eudora Community Museum called “The Uniting: A History of St. Paul Church of Eudora, Kansas” by Patty Johnston, the first congregation started in 1868, meeting in members’ homes until the first building came in 1870.
In a recent interview, Johnston said the church is personally meaningful to her since she is a descendant of one of the founding members, the first minister, the Rev. Christian Haas.
“I like history and find it interesting to record history of any place, but this one had a special place in my heart because my ancestors founded it,” said Johnston, who now lives in St. George, Kansas.
Eudora Community Museum Director Ben Terwilliger said many of those first members and Eudora’s original settlers were of German descent.
The University of Kansas’ Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s St. Paul Church of Christ collection even has a German Bible that once belonged to the church sometime in the early days.
The current, second building was dedicated in 1914, according to a local article from the time.
Cherry McCabria, 82, the mother of Robyn Kelso and a member of St. Paul United Church of Christ since age 5, said she remembers some services used to be in German.
In the 1980s, the church added an extra part of the building, according to a letter in the church archives dated from 1981. McCabria’s family has personal ties to it.
McCabria said this new addition for Sunday school rooms was built by church volunteers, including her late husband, and Kelso’s father, Bob McCabria.
Furthermore, her son, Russ, left something in the addition’s cornerstone with a friend. McCabria said she does not know what it was because children keep secrets, but she thought it may have been a note.
History lives on
Remnants of days past still show, as McAleer said this church’s building is the only historical church building on Church Street that is still a main sanctuary. As such, McAleer said the building stands as a monument to days past in Eudora, both for members and the outer community.
“I’ve had people say that they like to walk around this neighborhood because it gives them a feel for how Eudora was,” McAleer said. “All cities and towns change, even small towns like this.”
Additionally, the German heritage of the church still shows. McAleer said every year the congregation tries to sing the German version of “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve.
Over the years, Kelso said the congregation has been there for her and her family in sad times, like at her father’s funeral, and good, like at her wedding. She said in all those instances, the unity she felt when the congregation was together reminded her of standing in the ocean.
She said hearing the waves and feeling the spray is reassuring to her, much like how she feels hearing the congregation’s voices in unison in a hymn or prayer.
“In church on Sunday, a lot of times I don’t say the Lord’s Prayer,” Kelso said. “It’s not because I don’t believe, but I just like that feeling of those voices washing over me, reminding me I too am a child of God and that I too have a place here.”
This picture of the church's first minister, the Rev. Christian Haas, comes from a scrapbook housed in the "St. Paul's United Church of Christ Collection" in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. A German Bible that used to belong to the church in its early days is housed in the same collection. A scrapbook page in the church's records shows the transformation of the church's buildings throughout history.
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