Regional Gathering Recap

Thank you to all who made the Regional Gathering a wonderful experience!

Special thanks to First Christian Church in Sedalia for hosting us!

• William Brown and the Mission & Ministry Council planned this event.
• Clergy attended boundary training and MissionInsite training, led by Mike Weinman and James Brooks respectively. 
• Many participated in the Festival of Sharing at the fairgrounds, helping to prepare food and hygiene/cleaning supplies for shipment where needed.
• Larry Brown and Bob Priddy made presentations celebrating our bicentennial (video coming soon!).
• Our new Regional Minister Team member in the Southwest, Rev. Katrina Palan was introduced. Rev. Dr. Paul Koch, who is currently serving as Transitional Regional Minister Team member, was introduced as 'settled'.
• Our Christian Regional Youth cabinet attended activities on Saturday and then spent the night at the church to continue to plan the January retreat and the July Festival.
• A group ventured out to the Salt Creek site of the first Disciples church in Missouri.

Sedalia - The Right Place for a Bicentennial Regional Meeting

The two boys, about fourteen or fifteen, had engaged in fisticuffs during recess at their school in Georgetown, Kentucky, and were called to account by their teacher when class resumed. The teacher, a man in his early forties, lectured them with great affection and soon, tears were seen flowing from his eyes.  Tears began to flow, too, from the eyes of at least one of the recess combatants and shortly thereafter the two boys shook hands.  After school was dismissed the sobbing boy was asked why he had begun to cry, and he responded, “How could I help it? I be hanged if I wouldn’t rather take a whipping than to have that good old man preach to me and cry.”  

The crying boy was in his late twenties when he and his family moved to Missouri.  After learning that citizens of a town he had founded wanted nothing to do with the Pacific Railroad then moving beyond Jefferson City, he founded another town in 1861 and named it for his daughter, Sarah, whose nickname was “Sed.”   Shortly after, the name was changed from Sedville to Sedalia.  

And George R. Smith, known to friends in his younger days as "Mill Pond George," who wept when he was lectured by his teacher, Barton W. Stone, became one of the charter members of the Sedalia First Christian Church.  

Our regional meeting, in which we will celebrate the bicentennial of the first Christian Church in Missouri, will be held in a town founded by one of our own, a man heavily influenced by one of the founders of our denomination, in fact, the one who said we should be called “Christian.” 

We’ll hear more of our story there.

Bob Priddy is the retired News Director of The Missourinet statewide radio network.
He’s a member of the Jefferson City First Christian Church
and is President of the State historical Society of Missouri.   

The first CCMA Regional Assembly

The Sedalia gathering will mark the 180th year since the first annual meeting in Missouri.  The first one was at Bear Creek Christian Church in Boone County, September 23, 1837.  A report in the Millennial Harbinger published early in 1838 listed the Christian Churches in Missouri.  

Salt Creek was listed as "planted" in 1816--the year the group was organized; the building holding its first worship service November 22, 1817.

Other early congregations:

• Freedom, Howard County, 1818
• Bear Creek, Boone County, 1821
• Fayette, Howard County, 1825
• East Fork of Chariton, Randolph County, 1826

The list totaled 23 and the report said they had "at least 1500 members.'

Other early churches apparently not represented at the meeting included:

• Red Top, Boone County, 1822
• Libertyville, St. Francois County, 1822
• Antioch, Callaway County, 1828

The greatest growth of the denomination came throughout the 1830s, 40s, and 50s.  

Thanks to Bob Priddy for this bicentennial message.