Written and presented at Children’s Sunday School Rally Day on Sunday, 9, 1997 by Wini Dickson.

I'm going to talk to you a bit about our Liberty Grove Church that you are a part of this year, 1997. It will be sort of a history lesson because the first Liberty Grove Church was started more than 100 years ago! It wasn’t this church we are in this morning. In fact, the first Liberty Grove Church was held in a log school house. Way back then, there were Methodists, like we are, out in Spencerville and Methodists here in Burtonsville. They could not decide where to build a church so they had a contest to raise money. The town who raised the most money would have the honor of building the church, and Burtonsville won!

The first Liberty Grove Church was built right across the road and it's still there. It is filled with offices now, but it has a steeple, so it still looks a little like a church. In front of the church was a small pond and in the Spring it would be home to many frogs. There were so many frogs in the Spring, because of their singing, it was called the “Frog Pond” Church. Nobody knows how or where the name “Liberty Grove” came from. It remains a mystery to this day.

Beside the church was a long open shed and this was for church members to put their horses into in bad weather. Remember, this was before automobiles. Sometimes it was hard for people to get to church with their horse and buggy because roads were not paved hard and smooth like they are today and sometimes the roads got very muddy.

Methodist folks worshiped God together but they also had fun at Frog Pond Church: church picnics in the summer, ice cream socials, oyster suppers in the winter, hymn sings, church plays, prayer meetings and ball games. The church was really important to all its people in those days.

When Mr. Dickson and I joined Liberty Grove more than 40 years ago, we went to the old church which had been added onto a couple of times by then. We both taught Sunday School classes in the Junior Department (grades 4, 5, and 6), in the basement of the church. We always kept warm because the furnace was also in the basement. If it rained hard, water might leak through the windows and we would have to mop the floor to be ready for Sunday School. In one of the classrooms was a huge, black iron core stove which weighed a ton. Nobody could move it! It may still be there!

Before long, it was decided to build a new church building. We owned the land on this corner where we are now. In fact, we had already built the minister's brick house beside our church, so this was the spot for the new church. At first there was only money enough to build the Fellowship Hall and the sanctuary above us. If you were a toddler or in grades 1, 2 or 3, you went to Sunday School in the old church. After Sunday School class, somebody had to be policeman and guide all the little kids across the road to go to church with their parents. I remember the first Sunday we worshiped in the new church. We first met in the old church and all of us, the whole congregation, marched across the road singing, "The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.”

The Junior Department did not have to worry about wet floors any more in the new church because their classes were in this room. We had many accordian-type doors we could pull closed to separate our classes and that was fine. Then we realized we didn't have any bulletin board space. When Sunday School was over, we pushed back the doors and the walls were gone. So the Junior Department sold many, many boxes of candy to earn money and we bought bulletin boards on wheels so that every class had its own space. Those bulletin boards lasted for years and came in handy all over the church.

Very few of the people who worshiped God in the Frog Pond Church are alive today. Bet you would like to meet one of them who does still come to church. He first came to this church when he was a tiny baby, 6 weeks old, and he's been coming ever since. Now he walks with two canes, so he can't shake your hand but if you see him, you go right up to him and say, “Hello, Mr. Wright. I'm glad you came to church all those years.” Many of us who are senior citizens now, sang in the choir, taught Sunday School classes and worked very hard to make this a wonderful place for all God's children. And your Moms and Dads are now teaching classes, helping redecorate your big sunny classrooms and making it possible for you to walk on beautiful new carpeting in each room.

And that is they way it is with a church. God says to somebody, "You ought to build a church in Burtonsville.” The idea grows from a little log church, to a bigger church with a steeple, to a wonderful big brick Gothic type church with stained glass windows and a beautiful organ. So you see, we need you all to keep this place, where you and God are welcome, as you become Moms and Dads and old folks with white hair.

Amen

[This is a message from a senior citizen at Liberty Grove Church in Burtonsville, MD to the children of the Sunday School on Rally Day. Promoting the idea that Sunday School and church are intergenerational, this message is a brief history of Liberty Grove through the years from its beginning in 1863. At the same time, we try to show how people, from one generation to the next, with the help of God, keep a church going and growing.]