This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, July 16, 2024
With the celebration of Wayne Street Church’s 200 birthday this week, I thought I would write an article looking at the history of birthday celebrations. I had no idea what kind of rabbit hole that was going to send me down. Apparently, there were a wide variety of sources of information from ancient Egyptian Pharaohs to Pagen celebrations and the occult that some people claim lead to the modern concept of celebrating birthdays. The early Christian Church was not in favor of celebrating birthdays because of the association of all of these rituals, but eventually, the Christians decided that if you can’t beat them, join them. That was when there was the beginning of the celebration of a very significant birthday that we know today as Christmas. Was Jesus born on December 25? Unlikely because the day known as December 25 is measured from a Roman Calendar that likely did not exist at the time of Jesus’ birth. Jesus being a Jew would not have understood dates in the same way.
See? Major rabbit hole that has no bottom.
The important thing that I want to communicate in this article no matter how you measure the dates, is that back in 1824, a small band of 8 people led by an itinerant preacher named Rev. James F. Finley began a congregation that quickly evolved into a Methodist Class. Rev. Finley would ride around the circuit here in Ohio, which means he would be in this area with this Methodist class quarterly. Yes, he was here 4 times a year come hell or high water, which he often faced. He rode on horseback because in 1824, Ohio was a frontier country. According to legend, he started off a little further out west, but due to the fact that the Native Americans who were in the area were hostile, he moved his family back to Ohio and that is how he began working in this area.
The incorporation of the city of St Marys was less than a year prior to this Methodist Class organizing. I wish I had the names of those 8 people, but the old records I had access to did not record them. We started out in 1824 about a mile west of town on Celina Road at a place called Vinson farm. Our original name was the St. Marys Mission. Soon the Class was meeting at a log schoolhouse on the south end of Perry Street. My best guess is this location would have been near where the railroad crosses through town and cuts off Perry Street, since the railroad did not come through this area until 60-70 years later.
One of the early phrases associated with Methodism is “Men of Christian Faith and Fortitude passed this way before.” It is amazing that this phrase was circulating in Ohio in 1824 because it seems to me that phrase applies much more to us today than it would have at that time but that is not how our ancestors in the faith saw it. They recognized that they were the recipients of a long line of saints who went before them. That was 200 years ago, and today we celebrate that these folks lived their faith in such a way that now we are celebrating 200 years of their legacy. A legacy that we are a part of today.
As you are reading this, we had a special celebration last Sunday, but this Wednesday evening, we are inviting everyone to come and celebrate with us. This congregation has been through many pastors, have had many funerals and weddings, building projects, good times, bad times, many blessings, curses, people have come and gone, but the legacy of what was started here in 1824 continues through the current generation of people here at Wayne Street Church. We would love nothing more than to include you in the story of this church.
This congregation as we have it today began with 8 people 200 years ago. I know not one of their names except the circuit rider preacher who was a rising start in this area. Not everyone is going to be known as a pillar of this congregation. But I can tell you, even though history may not record every name of every person who has been a part of our congregation over the past 200 years, every contribution has mattered. It has taken the effort of thousands of people over the past 200 years to get us to this point. Come join us at our block party this Wednesday, July 17th at 6:00 p.m. to celebrate those contributions and thank God for our first 200 years of ministry to the St Marys community.