Shining the Light

Shining the Light

By Colleen Nelson

Shining the LightWhen I visited Brock for the first time, I put Valley Chapel Church into Google maps – Google doesn’t recognize Brock as a destination - and headed down State Rt. 218, across the Warrior Trail, then a left turn onto School Road that segues into Strawn Hill Road, then down Rudolph Run - miles of beautiful country road I’d never traveled. I knew Brock was at the bottom of the hill and Dwight Headley lived nearby and was waiting to tell me all about it, but when Google informed me the church was just 1000 feet up Church Road, I decided to stop there first and get a quick photograph. Much to my surprise and delight, I found a beautifully trim white wooden church tucked against the hillside and a couple of pickup trucks parked out front. Jim Moore and William “Junior” Knisley were doing maintenance work and greeted me like they knew I was coming. Within minutes I was invited in to see just how finely built this church is, its woodwork expertly fashioned by those who have lived and worshiped here since 1906, every square inch lovingly maintained over the years by the likes of Jim and Junior.

“Look at the windows,” Jim tells me. “We got them all fixed up this summer. Releaded, everything,”

There’s a fine painting of Jesus on the alter and when I climb narrow steps to a balcony I see small chairs along a long wood plank where children must have once sat for Sunday School. The view of the sanctuary below is drenched in light streaming through stained glass and when I make it back downstairs I’m full of questions. Jim grins and hands me a book entitled Valley Chapel – a United Methodist Church. “Read this,” he tells me. “Take it with you. You say you came to talk to Dwight? We’re related. He’s waiting to see you.” In Brock, word travels fast! Later that night, after a great visit with Dwight and his daughter Judy Glaubke who lives next door, I stay up late reading Alvah Headlee’s wonderful history of the church, the people who built it and the community it serves.

“At first, meetings were held in a log school house,” Alvah tells us. A log church was built in 1838 but “no records exist of what it looked like.” A decade later a frame church was built down the road, in old school Methodist style, with two front entrances, the right for men and the left for women. The segregated pews were separated by a waist high patrician and the seats and backs were made of plank an inch and a half thick.

The nearest other church in 1838 was Mt. Morris and Blacksville wouldn’t have a church until 1849, so “people living on the waters of Rudolph, Hackebander and Shannon runs” came to Valley Chapel. Until 1920, Alvah notes, “almost all inhabitants were members of the church and those who were not members attended or supported the church.” He also notes that in those early days, more men than women attended services.

The photograph Darrell Headley sent me shows the church in 1889 holding a winter

quarterly meeting with members from all four churches of the charge – “Valley, Fairall, Kirby and Spraggs.” Box socials were one of the ways the church raised funds and single girls got husbands. “Single young ladies prepared a supper and wrapped it in a fancy box.” Boxes were auctioned off to the highest bidder and the winner got to eat with the girl and her family. Members also held class meetings to testify about their faith and weeklong revivals were held to attract new members. Later, the Womens Christian Temperance Union met here until the “amendment banning the use of alcoholic beverages was passed.”

When the congregation decided to build the present church in 1906, nothing went to waste. The old building was moved across the road “by Mel Headley and Blair” and converted into a two family apartment. In 1950 it was torn down and repurposed as a smaller house and the extra lumber turned into a shed and a chicken house. When the chicken house was “torn down about 1980” the lumber was found to be “remarkably sound although it is 150 years old, probably sawed by water power.”

Contractor W.R. Blair and carpenters M. Lindsey Jones and Eli Headlee built the new Valley Chapel on the old site and it would have beautiful stained glass and a “large fine toned bell in the belfry that is seldom rung.”

“They put the basement under it in 1950,” Jim Moore told me with a grin that first day I visited. “I was only 10, so I wasn’t much help.”

I came back the next day to meet the rest of the congregation, including Pastor Monica Calvert, who preaches here at 8:30 a.m. then is off to Spraggs and Kents Chapel for the triad of Sunday services that are her charge.

I stayed for the service, sitting with Shari Curry of Spraggs who is in charge of the play the kids put on at Christmas and was introduced to the congregation by Jim Moore who couldn’t wait to see the photo I took of the stained glass windows that are being restored by sisters Beth Day and Karen Calvert. The children sat up front and Pastor Calvert took each part of her sermon and put it in words that resonated with them and the congregation sang, prayed and offered up their joys and concerns to be shared. Later everyone gathered in the parking lot for a group shot and more fellowship and an invitation to come back any time.

I’ll be back for the Christmas play, Sherri! Oh, and thanks for letting me know that for years Dave O’Donnell had a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer head hanging on the porch of his house at the top of the hill on Rudolph Run. What a great way to end this story about Brock!