Batesville’s First Church of the Nazarene to celebrate 100 years

By Andrea Bruner, White River Now

While the site at 1710 Harrison Street in Batesville is today a beacon of the latest in healthcare technology – and before that, where visitors came to ride the Ferris wheel and enjoy a funnel cake or corndog – its history goes back much further.

The land was actually the site of Batesville’s First Church of the Nazarene tabernacle, long before the church was officially organized.

On Saturday, Aug. 23, and Sunday, Aug. 24, the Church of the Nazarene will celebrate its 100th anniversary with two days of activities.

At 5 p.m. Saturday, there will be a service of Heritage and History, honoring former pastors as well as those who have gone into ministry, followed by food and fellowship.

Then, at 10 a.m. Sunday morning worship service will feature speaker Dr. David Graves, General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene, with special music by the Rev. Tim Williams, followed by an anniversary meal.

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Batesville’s Nazarene church is one of the oldest in the state, according to Nona Floyd and Linda Baxter.

In 2000, Floyd, a retired teacher, wrote a booklet entitled “Holiness Unto the Lord: A History of the Batesville Church of the Nazarene.”

She dedicated the book to her parents, Albert and Audra Moore, who joined in 1930 and served faithfully until their deaths in 1971 and 1972.

Nona Floyd with a stained glass cross dedicated in memory of R.B. Floyd and her parents, Albert and Audra Moore

Floyd explained that just as the Nazarene denomination was born from “holiness revivals,” so was the Batesville Church of the Nazarene.

Revivals were held as early as 1902 at the Gray’s Spring Tabernacle, which was located between Batesville and Cave City, off Highway 167.

Floyd conducted a series of interviews with Jewel Brewer Beel, charter member of the Batesville Church of the Nazarene, in 1998 and 1999 for her book. Beel died just a few years later in 2002. Beel had taught school at Hickory Valley (a community located about four miles south of Cave City) and was a bookkeeper for Gulf Refining Co., Nu-Way Cleaners and Laundry, the Dodge and Plymouth Agency, and the Beel-Brewer Motor Co. She owned Jewell’s Dress Shop and was co-founder of Essie’s Gift Shop.

“Across the creek from our home was the camp meeting ground,” Beel recalled, “including a large tabernacle and several camp houses.”

She explained that people traveled distances that made it necessary to camp, and houses were built for that purpose. Meetings were held in the summer, after the crops were “laid by,” or left to ripen for harvest.

“The tabernacle seats were simply planks without backrests. The aisles were covered with sawdust,” Beel said. Sermons went on for two or three hours and were “too long for most everybody. Yet they were grand revivals, with the congregation singing the old hymns such as ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ and ‘The Old Time Religion.’ People put their own voices into the sermon with shouts of Amen!, Hallelujah! and Praise the Lord!”

E.A. Mashburn, another charter member of the local church, said many sinners were saved and believers sanctified at Gray’s Spring.

“Hundreds of people have gone out from this camp to tell the sweet story of Jesus and His love. The camp at Gray’s Spring, we feel, has served its purpose, and Batesville being more centrally located, we will move it to Batesville. We want to make it a great camp,” he said.

A tabernacle was built in Batesville, where White River Health is now located. It was under this tabernacle that the Church of the Nazarene was organized on Aug. 16, 1925, with 29 charter members.

Agnes Dickey also preached at the tabernacle; some of her descendants still attend the church, Floyd said.

After the church was organized and a building obtained, the tabernacle was used only for revivals until the early 1940s.

The church rented a vacant house from Judge Thornesberry Gray near the east end of Lawrence Street.

The first pastor was Maria Stewart, and she later wrote an account for the church’s 25th anniversary book that attendance increased so much that the house “was soon full to overflowing – often many stood outside about the windows and door listening to the Sunday evening services. Sometimes standing in the snow, sometimes the altar space was filled with children sitting on the floor and so close around the pulpit that I feared I would step on them as I preached. Great peace and joy was upon us.”

Sunday school attendance also increased, and services were held at the county jail. She said the younger people of the church (some under age 12) organized a service unit to visit shut-ins. “They had one convert, an elderly crippled man,” Stewart recalled.

Stewart had to resign the following year due to her ailing health, but the church had flourished under leadership, Floyd noted.

With membership growing, it was time to move locations again. This time, the church bought a larger building located at the corner of Bates and 15th streets. Neither of these buildings remain, Floyd said.

In 1928, the church borrowed money to purchase property at the corner of Sidney and Harrison streets to build a new church. The first service in the building had to be postponed due to construction delays.

First Church in 1928 at the corner of Sidney and Harrison. / Image from “Holiness unto the Lord: A History of the Batesville Church of the Nazarene.”

“The windows and doors, which were a special order because of the unusual size, were delayed,” Floyd noted.

“Sometime after the church was built, large fans were installed in two of the windows at the rear of the church. The windows along the sides could be raised about six inches, and when the fans were turned on, a nice breeze came across the sanctuary. It made the room pleasant even in hot weather. The only problem was that you could not hear the speaker or anything else.”

In the 1930s, the church began holding revivals in a brush arbor on Brushy Road in the McHue community as well as under the tabernacle on Harrison Street. At least one was so well received – with more than 500 people at a Sunday evening service – that the church decided to continue the services through the remainder of the week.

By March 1939, East Elementary School was occupying temporary quarters in the church basement after a fire at the school the previous winter, Floyd said.

“We’ve been involved in a lot of community things,” she said.

The Rev. Frank Wiggs and his family moved to Batesville in 1948 to pastor the church. Wiggs and Bertha Rutledge started a special radio program for children known as the “Kiddies’ Birthday Club.”

“The program consisted of a 30-minute program presented by boys and girls through age 14 who lived in the Batesville area,” Floyd said. Children who’d had a birthday during the week could come and perform by singing, playing an instrument, or reading a poem. Each child who came to the program on Saturday was presented with a birthday cake, furnished by Elmer Cochran Sr.

Cochran had bought the Ideal Baking Company in 1947 and moved his family to Batesville. “The contribution in leadership provided by this family cannot be measured,” Floyd said.

In the late 1950s, a bus program was begun, and Loyd Pierce was instrumental in driving and maintaining the buses, Floyd went on to say. Bus routes ran across the river to Desha and up Ruddell Hill toward Bethesda, until the 1960s, when a child was killed in a bus accident.

The Rev. Tim Williams came to pastor the church in July 1997. It was under his leadership that a new sanctuary and Christian Life Center were built in 2000. The property on Byers Street had been purchased in 1994, and in 1997, the current parsonage, on the corner of Sidney and Byers streets, was purchased.

“I took stained glass out of the old church, the windows… they were going to bulldoze them down, so I went and salvaged them,” Floyd said. She had the glass fashioned into a cross by Katrina Fudge and erected behind the pulpit.

The stained glass cross was dedicated in memory of her husband, R.B. Floyd, and her parents, Albert and Audra Moore.

“In 1930, my parents moved here and bought the building that had been the church, and Dad renovated it into our home. It was just a rectangle building, on the corner of 15th and Bates Street,” she said.

The altar and pews were also from the old church, just recovered. The altar is dedicated in memory of Cyril Van Massenhove, a blacksmith who Floyd said migrated to the United States from Holland or Belgium.

“I vaguely remember him. … If he was ever asked to pray, he prayed in Dutch or whatever his native language was,” Floyd said. “It was so strange; we didn’t know anybody who spoke a foreign language.”

Besides the main building with the sanctuary, the Nazarene campus also includes the fellowship hall/gym, the parsonage, and an empty lot behind the fellowship hall used for overflow parking.

The current pastor is Warren Foxworthy. He and his wife, Cheryl, are in their third year at Batesville.

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Today, the attendance on Sunday runs around 60, Floyd said. She said when “Covid shut everything down” and services were posted online, attendance never fully recovered. “It’s easier to watch online than it is to get dressed and come to church.”

However, she said there are people in different states who watch the services; Floyd has a niece in Virginia who never lived in Arkansas but occasionally watches.

The local Nazarene church continues to host events, including community Thanksgiving services and Easter sunrise services. For many years, the church constructed floats for the city’s annual Christmas parade. Linda Jobe often designed and directed the building of the floats.

Last year, the church hosted a special program called “Bethlehem Inn”. While limited to just 30 guests, Floyd and Baxter said it was very successful. The gym was dressed like a tent, with lanterns and candles, and church members were dressed in costume as the pastor told the story. Dinner included foods that would have been served in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. “It was pretty elaborate,” Floyd said.

There are other special programs, such as one to celebrate the Fourth of July, with teens and even some children participating. The church has hosted Pinewood Derby races, which included people outside the church, and Floyd said the church started a basketball program for elementary and middle school-age students.

“On Saturdays, sometimes we’d have 3 and 400 people, because they’d come and watch their children play. That program went on for quite a while,” she said. “We had kids coming from everywhere.”

A local homeschool group has used the Nazarene church’s gym for activities, and another group used the gym for a volleyball tournament.

There is an active pickleball program going now, Baxter said, adding, “There have been times where the community center was occupied and some of those would use our pickleball courts in the past year.”

“We have actually gotten some people because of pickleball,” Baxter went on to say. “Once you get to know people, you want to be around them more. It helps to draw people in.”

There was also a church basketball league, but that fizzled out once the community center was open, she said.

In October, the church holds an indoor event where trick-or-treaters will visit stations with church members dressed as Bible figures (like Mary and Martha) who tell a short story and pass out candy. The trunk or treat has been a longstanding tradition at the church. Baxter said some years, they saw as many as 800 people.

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The church just put up a “blessing box” in the parking lot earlier this month, like a little free pantry open to anyone in need.

On Tuesday nights, the church hosts family night, and anyone is welcome to come play pickleball or other games. The church had a team compete in the Children’s Bible Quizzing, a competition designed to get kids to learn scripture, and did really well, according to Baxter. The team advanced in district and regional competitions and went on to the World Quiz in Indianapolis over the summer.

“It’s a work in progress, but we are getting more kids,” Baxter said.

From left: Cheryl Foxworthy, wife of the current pastor Warren Foxworthy, with Addy Smith, Mila Smith, Lily Baxter, Anna Baxter, and Dr Roberta Bustin. The team competed in a recent Children’s Bible Quizzing event. / Image provided by Linda Baxter

When Dr. Roberta Bustin retired from teaching and NASA, she went to Romania and served as a missionary there for over 20 years. “We’re pleased to have her back, excellent teacher,” Floyd said.

There is a ladies’ Bible study, and on the first Sunday of every month, the men host a breakfast, and anyone is welcome to attend.

Six people from the church have become pastors as well. “I think that speaks highly of the church, that you’re having influence on younger people,” Floyd said.

The 100th anniversary is a perfect time to reflect on where one comes from

“The history of any church is never written by one person, but by all those that lived the history,” Floyd said, adding the future of the Nazarene church looks good. “We’ve got some exciting things going on now.”

The church is selling copies of this cookbook with recipes from previous pastors wives as well as members who have passed away, but the recipes have been handed down. Proceeds will go to children and teen program programs. / Except where noted, all images by Andrea Bruner, White River Now