History

The following is adapted from a sermon originally preached by Charles Watkins on September 15, 1991.

Our story begins the first day of November in 1860. It was the year before the serfs were freed in Russia by Czar Alexander, and the nation that was slowly disintegrating, falling apart in to separate states at that time was not the Soviet Union—it was the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln was running for president under a new party label against three others in the most critical election in the history of our nation. And several states had already served notice that if Lincoln were elected, they would secede from the union and cease to be part of the United States. And what would Kentucky do? The election was five days away when fifteen human beings and one minister came together to establish a new church in Owensboro.

Now there were already plenty of churches in town this town of 2300 people, and the situation in the country was bleak and dangerous. It was not the time to be venturing off and starting new institutions when nobody knew what on earth was going to happen next, whether there’d even be a country here next week. But Albert N. Gilbert and the Wilhoytes, the Coffeys, the Prewitts, the Thompsons, Rebecca Brotherton, Lucy Noland, Albert Botts, and Lucy Cavin audaciously, daringly, bravely came together and founded the First Christian Church, Owensboro. And on that first Sunday Reverend Gilbert baptized Lizzie Owen.

These people were as full of hope as they were of courage. They were clear in their own minds that whatever happened, they needed to be able to worship God in the liberty of personal conscience offered by the Disciples of Christ. It was just twenty-eight years since the Disciples led by Alexander Campbell and the Christians led by Cane Ridge’s Barton W. Stone had joined hands in Lexington, Kentucky to form this religious movement of reformers, declaring that there were no important differences between clergy and laity, that there was no need for uniformity of belief and opinion but that every individual had the right and the responsibility to interpret scripture for herself or himself, and that all that was needed to be a Christian was to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and follow Jesus as God gave each one the light to see and understand.

The heritage that comes to us from our founding mothers and fathers in 1860 is a heritage of courage linked with hope and faith.

Within ten years, by 1870, the issue of the union of the states had been settled. The congregation, which met for a time in the Methodist Church and then in the Presbyterian Church, was meeting in Mr. Thompson’s theatre down at 312 St. Ann Street. After ten years of ministry together, the church decided to build its own house of worship up here on J. R. Miller Boulevard (called then Lewis Street), between Fourth and Fifth Streets.

It was no less expensive for them to build a church in Owensboro then that it would be for us today. But they gathered their resources, they made the sacrifices necessary, and they built a house of worship, a photograph of which hangs out in the narthex today. Well, then of course they had it made. They could just relax and enjoy their new church and live happily ever after, right? Wrong.

No, you see that’s not the heritage of our church. These were courageous people, full of hope and faith. Between 1870 and 1900, Owensboro quadrupled in size, and the church kept outgrowing its space. The had to remodel the church and then enlarge it and remodel again, and in just thirty years, they decided to abandon their property on Lewis Street and build a whole new church. Brave, audacious, nervy, full of hope and faith, they decided to begin the new century with a magnificent new church building at Seventh and Daviess on land donated by Nannye Wilhoyte.

They employed an architect from Los Angeles, California. And they planned an amazing structure. I have stood here in this room with various architects and engineers over the years, and without exception, they just stare up at that ceiling. They are amazed. They are enchanted.

And so was the reporter for the Daily Messenger who came to cover the dedication of this room on February 26, 1905. The front page story in the paper of that day is full of wonders to report –313 electric light bulbs filling the room with a gentle glow, the first electric blower for a pipe organ ever installed in Owensboro, and right up there in that rosette of wood, there was a huge electric fan which changed all the air in the room every five minutes. There were carpets in the aisles—snap down carpets that could be taken up each week and shaken out because, after all, the vacuum cleaner would not be invented for another two years. Well now, they were fixed for sure. They had a cathedral church, English country Gothic, imposing, charming, costly. Now they could relax and enjoy their beautiful new church. Hardly. The old organ they had brought from Lewis Street was inadequate. Dr. Crossfield solicited a new one from Andrew Carnegie, and so the old organ was out and the new one replaced it. And just twenty-five years after all this was dedicated, our church was at it again. New education space, a new gymnasium and kitchen, a whole building devoted to education, recreation and fellowship. It was a revolutionary idea. Audacious, courageous! And a new pipe organ to replace the one that Andrew Carnegie had donated just two decades before. And a radical remodeling of this room—take out the two main aisles, put in a new center aisle, Take out the big doors that went across the east end of the church and opened up to make all the classrooms behind the choir area, build a gothic arch (now removed), move the baptistery from the center of the chancel to an elevated spot in the front wall behind the current communion table, move the pulpit to the left side, put the communion table in the center, place the new organ across a divided chancel (now currently moveable around the chancel), and a new choir area. The Gothic arch was removed in the early 1990's remodeling and the ceiling war restored to its original grandeur.