By Don Steen ~ Staff Writer • [email protected]
Birds fly above a church on a hill. The road at its foot was once busy, but is now all but empty outside of planting and harvest season, except for Sundays that is. Creatures of the land occasionally dart from cover to cover on the hillside, oblivious to the meaning of the strange stones they hide behind. In the northwest corner of the clearing, at the edge of crops and woodland, burrowers find softer soil. A log-hewn building once stood there. The oldest pine boxes buried at the site, and their contents, have long since given up the ghost. It is late summer, in the 189th year of Mt. Zion Christian Church.
The congregation is certainly among the oldest in Spencer County. The log structure that served as the first church was completed in 1835. The three acres of land set aside for the church and its cemetery was donated by John R. Conner, and for quite some time the congregation informally bore his name. There were 31 charter members, and those family surnames are still prominent today, including Harris, Lamar, Kennedy, McDaniel, and Masterson.
The first pastor of the 1835 church was Masterson Harris. Church records suggest he was a Justice of the Peace who continued to marry in the county until at least 1849. He is believed to have died in 1860, the same year the log church was replaced with a 30’ x 40’ frame building at the site of the current Mt. Zion Christian Church.
Around 53 ministers have served the congregation since Harris. The church currently has a part-time minister, but when no minister is available it relies on its current elder, 71-year-old Charles Beren. He also serves as president and treasurer.
Beren has been a member of the church for about as long as anyone can claim.
“I tell people I’ve been in the church for 71 years and nine months,” he joked. “My folks came here before I was born.”
There is also a bit of temporal ambiguity as to when the church itself truly began. While it lacked a physical location until the logs went up in 1835, members began meeting at each others’ homes as early as 1820.
“There’s a question as to whether we’re the oldest church in Spencer County or not,” he said.
Beren’s connection to the church and its history is more than just lifelong. Like most men of the church, one of his duties as a young man was to tend to the cemetery. There are few ways to get better acquainted with past members. Sometimes the connection gets a little too close for comfort.
The oldest part of the cemetery, the area where the old log church once stood, is pretty easy to make out. Headstones are scarcer there, either because the old building site was never filled in, or because the oldest headstones have weathered away or sunken into the ground. Depressions in the Earth show where older caskets have given out, even if there is no stone to name the interred.
“As a teenager part of your rite of passage here was that you helped with the cemetery,” said Beren. “I can remember sinkholes back in there, where the graves were. What really freaked me out was when I’d see a snake go down one of them.”
To be sure, there’s plenty to ponder aboveground as well. Headstones attest to the enduring strength of the founding families in the church, and tell plenty of stories besides.
One prominent stone is that of James Pollard, who served for three years as a private in Captain Booker’s Company in Colonel Kirkendall’s Virginia Regiment during the Revolutionary War. He was discharged about the time of the surrender of Cornwallis and is now buried in the older part of Mt. Zion Cemetery.
A revolutionary comrade of his, Jackson Masterson, is purportedly buried there as well. Most cemetery records were destroyed in a fire that also consumed the second building, and his headstone seems to have weathered away or sunk into the ground. However, census records and surviving church information suggest he lived a long and fruitful life here, possibly as old as 109 when he died.
Other Mastersons from the time of the church’s founding include Hugh and Hugh Masterson. They were differentiated by their nicknames, Broken Arm Hugh and Hickory Peeler Hugh.
“There must be some stories there,” said Beren.
The third, and current, church building was built in 1921 to replace the one lost to fire. Beren noted that a unique artifact from the church’s construction was found while excavating a basement in the 1980’s. Evidently, three trustees and the minister in 1921 carved their names in pieces of wood that had lain unseen for decades. Those pieces are now on display in the basement.
Other notable renovations include the addition of restrooms, which replaced the pair of four-seater outhouses that once served the congregation.
“No privacy back then,” said Beren. “Just the ladies’ and mens’.”
Mt. Zion Christian Church has been through its share of tribulations in its long history, even apart from the fire that destroyed its last building. During the basement excavation, the church was hit by a severe storm that threatened to wash away the whole structure.
“We were just sitting on stilts, more or less,” said Beren.
The church had to temporarily close until the building’s stability was ensured. A similar incident happened during a regular maintenance check that found one of the original floor beams had rotted through, and was essentially hollow. That issue was also resolved.
Not every surprise has been unwelcome. While tending to the church grounds one day, a fancy car pulled up and out stepped famous NBA Coach Del Harris. As it happens, he is a descendant of Mt. Zion’s first minister, Masterson Harris. Del was a towering figure, and not just in the metaphorical sense.
“There’s not a lot of people I have to look up to,” Beren joked.
Del even paid a formal visit to the church, where he issued a sermon behind the pulpit as his ancestor once did.
Today Mt. Zion Christian Church continues, albeit with fewer regular members from its height. Beren estimates regular membership currently ranges from nine to 15.
Still, the church holds to its statement of faith, as a nondenominational fellowship of believers who, “have no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, and wear no name but Christian.” That is to say, the Mt. Zion Christian Church does not rely on the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, or the Book of Discipline utilized by Methodist congregations.
Beren noted that the church holds to the principles of the Restoration Movement, which aims to restore the church of the New Testament. The movement states that they are, “not the only Christians, but Christians only.”
Hallmarks of Mt. Zion’s congregation are baptism by immersion, practiced on adults old enough to recognize and repent of sin rather than infants, as well as communion. Beren noted that Mt. Zion’s Christian Church’s services are comparatively simple. There are no screens or sound systems to guide or amplify hymns. Only the voices of the faithful fill the halls.
To be sure, Mt. Zion Christian Church is a little more isolated than it once was. After Highway 245 was moved, the church now sits on a dead-end road branching off from the entrance to Christmas Lake Golf Course.
Still, the church carries on. The cemetery is still tended, the doors still open, and services still regular. Bible study begins at 9 a.m. each Sunday, followed by worship at 10 a.m.
Annual homecoming events have been suspended since the pandemic, but Beren hopes to bring that tradition back next year for the church’s 190th anniversary. Regardless of how many make it out, the Mt. Zion Christian Church is still very much alive in its corner of Santa Claus.
As stated in Mathew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”
Featured Image: Mt. Zion Christian Church, established in 1835, has been a proud gathering location for congregations for the past 189 years
