Sunflower Baptist Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. Way back in 1882, seven families living out in this part of Polk County looked around at each other and decided they needed something more than just neighbors. They needed a congregation.

So they gathered themselves up and organized a community church, and they did it right there in the local one-room schoolhouse. No grand building, no steeple catching the light. Just seven families and a whole lot of intention.

Now, somebody looked out at the land around them, at all those wild flowers blooming across the countryside, and they called their new congregation Sunflower Baptist Church. The name fit the place, and the place fit the name. For more than two decades that congregation took root and grew, and then 1905 turned out to be quite a year.

The members built their first proper sanctuary, an actual house of worship after all those years meeting where the children took their lessons. And that same year, Sunflower Baptist merged with the nearby Lone Oak Baptist Church. Two congregations becoming one, all in the same season they finally had a building to call home.

The early pastors who guided this flock included A. A. Duff, Charlie Lilley, and S.

V. Colson, names the community still carries in its memory. As the years rolled on, the members kept building, kept expanding, larger facilities rising up to meet the growing needs of the people filling the pews.

Seven families in a schoolhouse. That's where it started. And Sunflower Baptist Church is still out here, still serving this community, still in full bloom.

What the marker says

This congregation traces its history to 1882, when seven families living in this vicinity organized a community church in the local one-room schoolhouse. Named for the wild flowers in the area, the congregation built its first sanctuary in 1905, the same year it merged with nearby Lone Oak Baptist Church. Early pastors of the congregation included A. A. Duff, Charlie Lilley, and S. V. Colson. The members built larger facilities over the years to accommodate growing space needs. Sunflower Baptist Church serves the community with a variety of programs.