There are few places today untouched by “progress.”
Historic buildings may be preserved, but the structures around them are often modernized if not replaced with new edifices. Battlefields are often encroached upon by development, and nature has a way of altering the landscape, as well. Even the rural countryside changes, albeit at a slower pace, as older abodes deteriorate without constant care, and sometimes, over many years, eventually disappear.
Country churches, though, can endure myriad decades and much longer if congregations continue to dedicate their time, talent and treasure toward their houses of prayer.
St. Matthews Lutheran Church, located in the rural Calhoun County community of Creston in central South Carolina, is among those that has seen many, many generations of parishioners come and go; yet it soldiers on.
The church was formed around 1776 and is among the oldest continuous Lutheran congregations in South Carolina. The church was formed following a large influx of German and Swiss immigrants to South Carolina earlier in the decade under the promise of available land.
The original structure, built in the 1760s, was replaced in 1826. The current church was built in 1900, and sits along a country road, with only its cemetery and parish house nearby.
Today, despite its distant location, St. Matthews Lutheran Church remains a small but vibrant house of God.
Country churches, and country ministers, possess the ability to connect with parishioners in a way that their counterparts in cities often cannot.
Ministers working in the country or small village have an advantage over those in the city because of the close contact with nature provided by the open country, Ernest R. Groves wrote nearly a century ago in Using the Resources of the County Church.
“In his nearness to his people the minister of the church of the small community … may enjoy an intimate knowledge of personality, just as he is given the conditions for a close contact with nature,” Groves wrote.
“It is difficult indeed to live in the country without discovering much about human motive, the weaknesses and the strength of character; in the city, on the other hand, it is not easy to uncover the deeper life of men and women, because they are hidden in the crowd. Life moves on rapidly and for the most part the relations between persons must be superficial,” he added.
(Top: St. Matthews Lutheran Church, located in Creston, South Carolina.)