First Methodist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Scurry County, ten miles northeast of Snyder, there's a story that starts the way the best Texas stories do: out in the open air, under a brush arbor, on the banks of Ennis Creek. July of 1883.

No walls, no steeple, just sky and creek water and folks who meant business. That's where the First Methodist Church organized, right there in the elements, and if that founding didn't put a little iron in the congregation's spine, nothing would. Six years later, in 1889, the T.

N. Nunn family donated land, and the congregation put up their first real building. One room.

That's it. One room, but it was theirs. They used it, and they kept using it, all the way up to 1910, when the congregation had grown to the point that one room simply could not hold everybody anymore.

So they did what you do in a county seat town. They moved into the courthouse. Borrowed the people's house to do the Lord's work, and nobody seemed to mind too much.

Then came 1914, and the ministry of Reverend J. W. Hunt, and things got serious in the best possible way.

That one-room building got replaced by a red brick church. Not just any church, either. This one had a dome roof and a sloping floor, which is the kind of architectural detail that sticks in your memory, a congregation looking up at a dome and leaning ever so slightly forward in their pews.

Around 1950, they added an educational building. And then in 1961, a third sanctuary went up. From a brush arbor on a creek bank to a full sanctuary in a brick church, the First Methodist Church of Scurry County just kept on growing, one building at a time, the way things worth keeping usually do.

What the marker says

Organized July, 1883 at brush arbor revival on Ennis Creek, 10 miles N.E. of Snyder. First one-room church built on land donated by T. N. Nunn family in 1889. Used until 1910 when congregation could no longer be accommodated. Then services were held in courthouse. In 1914, during ministry of Rev. J. W. Hunt, red brick church replaced one-room building. Church had dome roof with sloping floor. Educational building around 1950. Third sanctuary built in 1961. (1967)