First Presbyterian Church in downtown Columbus is shown earlier this year. The congregation is celebrating its bicentennial throughout 2024, including with special events this weekend.
The Republic file photo
A Columbus church on a downtown street corner long ago decided to change its corner of the world with God’s love.
The history of that commitment has now been documented in a just-released 132-page volume, “200 Years of First Presbyterian Church: Honoring Our Past, Building Our Legacy.” The book will be part of the assembly’s culmination of its yearlong bicentennial celebration with snacks and more from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday at Donner Park.
A brief program will be at 2:15 p.m.
“It seems a nearly an impossible task,” said Sherry Stark, co-chair of the bicentennial committee with Rachel McCarver, referencing the summary of two centuries.
But local writer/editor Paul Hoffman, owner and president of PathBinder Publishing and a church member, completed the task in less than a year’s time with the help of author Carol Berkey’s 175th anniversary book.
“There are so many projects that have benefited the community (at large) in so many ways through the years,” Hoffman said.
Most efforts reach far beyond the walls of the church at 512 Seventh St. in downtown Columbus — and well beyond the bounds of traditional ministry. In fact, they delve into some of Bartholomew County’s more daunting practical challenges.
Church members have launched or helped form agencies such as Housing Partnerships, Su Casa Columbus, Turning Point Domestic Violence, Horizon House homeless shelter, and Young Mothers Educational Development, allowing pregnant teens to finish schooling.
Moreover, the church was responsible for the first local Boy Scout troop and the first local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous.
All this in the wake of the church that was chartered on July 3, 1824, by circuit rider John M. Dickey, with 17 members in attendance.
Plus, especially in recent years, church leadership and others have advocated in the public square for the LGBTQ+ population, for immigration reform, for racial harmony in a cosmopolitan Columbus and more. They also have been vocal about the need for diverse faith communities locally to build peaceful relationships in sometimes tense times.
With every stance, members have taken practical, long-term steps to oversee such initiatives.
Former Pastor William R. Laws became one of the better known First Presbyterian leaders in the 1960s and 1970s with his strong stance on equal rights for all — and Hoffman subsequently devoted an entire chapter to his work.
The book, slated at press time to be available at the celebration and elsewhere such as the local Viewpoint Books, sells for $29.95 hardback, $19.95 paperback and $6.99 as an ebook. The author mentioned that, while the First Presbyterian congregation has been an influential collection of believers, most of its most powerful outreaches have been proposed by one person.
“I want people to be able to clearly see that one person can make a difference,” Hoffman said. “So many of these community projects were originally started by just one person. And then a lot of these programs just sort of snowballed.
“And I don’t think that when anyone starts something, they imagine it can grow into anything quite as big or important as Turning Point.”
And true to the church’s theme all year and the book’s title, its far-reaching community work is looking forward. Its new Legacy Fund with Lincoln-Central Neighborhood Family Center to help the economically disadvantaged become more independent already has far surpassed its original goal of six figures and now stands at $300,000 with the help of a matching Lilly Endowment grant.
Church leaders have been passionate all year about highlighting the congregation’s past not to self-congratulate but to inspire more selfless work for the future.
“If people in the community have been touched by agencies such as Housing Partnerships or Turning Point, or even Love Chapel or some form of child care,” Stark said, “at least one little bit of that probably leads back to First Presbyterian.”
