Silver Creek United Methodist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the marker at Silver Creek United Methodist Church tells it, and I'll do my best to give it the honor it's due. Now, Parker County has seen its share of stories, and this one starts on a very specific day: November 15, 1900. That's when the Silver Creek Methodist Church was organized.

Not sometime in the fall, not around the turn of the century; November 15, 1900. Someone wrote that date down, and I'm glad they did. The ink wasn't even dry on the organizing papers before the folks around Silver Creek got to work.

By the following year, area residents had completed work on a frame sanctuary. Think about that. A congregation pulls itself together, and within a year (less than a year, really) there's a building standing on the land.

That is not a group of people who were inclined to sit around. Now, that building site didn't materialize out of thin air. Two farmers stepped forward and deeded the land to the congregation.

Their names were Joseph Gillis Steele and Thomas Nelson Clayton. Full names, both of them (and I think full names deserve to be said out loud). Those two men gave the ground beneath the church, and that's the kind of gift that outlasts just about anything.

The sanctuary didn't just serve Sunday mornings, either. It was a community center for the surrounding rural area; a place where the business of living together got done alongside the business of worship. That's a lot of weight for a frame building to carry, and it carried it well.

Regular worship services were held there until 1967. Sixty-seven years of Sundays. Sixty-seven years of that community gathering in that frame building on ground that two farmers once gave away because they believed something worth building was about to begin.

Some gifts just keep standing.

What the marker says

The Silver Creek Methodist Church was organized on November 15, 1900, and by the following year area residents had completed work on this frame sanctuary. The building site had been deeded to the congregation by farmers Joseph Gillis Steele and Thomas Nelson Clayton. The sanctuary also served as a community center for the surrounding rural area. Regular worship services were held here until 1967. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1983.