Some History on First Christian Church

Every church has a story of how it began and the early years and how it matured and some of the struggles it went through. When your church is over a century and a half old, that story is just a little longer than some. The following could hardly be called THE history of First Christian Church, but here is a bit of our history.

The church was first organized in 1843 under the name of Flatrock Christian Church. A year later the telegraph was invented. For eleven years the congregation met in a log building a little south of the town of Mooreland and consisted of just about everyone in town. One pastor around this time named Vernoldsdoll is said to have lived just a few miles south of Muncie (now about a twenty minute drive), and he would walk down to Mooreland every Sunday morning, preach in the morning and evening, and walk home that night, being paid by the congregation whatever "they were a mind to give."

In 1854 the church built a frame structure for their new building, then of course there was the Civil War beginning in 1861, and in 1870 the name of the church was changed to Locust Grove Christian Church. It didn't stick for long (I'm not sorry to say), and on June 2, 1887, the name First Christian Church was adopted, and we like that one pretty well. A new building was built in our current site in the center of Mooreland in September of the same year. This building was twice expanded to accomodate the growth of the congregation and Sunday School, the latter of which at one time claimed 300 members. This growth of Sunday School occasioned the entire building to be raised off its foundations for the construction of a lower floor for classes. The building reached its current form in 1916 (two years into World War I).

In more recent history, the Community Center was constructed in 2005 to accomodate the activities of the church and community and create a place where the two can intersect.

After nearly 170 years, we are still learning to reach out and minister to the community in new ways, growing and changing even as Mooreland and the surrounding areas change. At the dedication service of the current building in 1916, after 73 years of ministry, it was written in a Reminiscence:

However glorious have been our achievements, and what ever good we have accomplished since the organization of this local Christian church, August 9, 1843, we realize no human organization can long maintain a useful existence upon its past. It is by effective service only that this church can meet the great responsibilities that may be thrust upon it.