History of Atlas

Click these links to jump to sections of the history ...
ministers	elders	deacons
attendance	contributions	song leaders/staff

The Atlas Church of Christ was about 71 years old in the spring of 2003. It began during the fall of 1931 and the spring of 1932. A group of area residents began meeting in the Comer School house in the Atlas community in Lauderdale County Alabama.

Weekly services were held in the school building, but gospel meetings were held in a brush arbor across the road from the school. Mrs. Ethel Gooch was baptized in the meeting held in the brush arbor in 1932. She made a list at the time of thirteen others baptized in the same meeting.

A second brush arbor was built about a mile from the first one. It was used until sometime in 1940. In 1993, John Paul Heupel and Jenna Willingham prepared sketches of the brush arbors as part of a compilation of facts about the early days of the Atlas Church of Christ.

In 1938, the Comer School was moved to Killen and the Atlas congregation continued to meet under the brush arbor as long as the weather permitted. During the winter some went to the North Carolina Church of Christ and others went to the Lone Cedar Church of Christ until spring.

Will McGee donated land and pillars for a church building in 1940. Four men in the congregation donated timber for lumber to build the building. John Hill furnished a sawmill and sawed the lumber. A 20 ft. by 40 ft. building was erected. It was weather boarded and a tin heater was used to heat it. It was bricked in the early sixties and offices added to the front of the building. The original building is still part of the church complex today and serves as a fellowship hall. A preacher’s home was constructed at the same time.

A new 700-seat auditorium was constructed in 1980. The original building was renovated and incorporated into the expansion as a fellowship hall. Classrooms were added to the south side of the original building. The new auditorium was built on the north side of the original building with a wide hallway connecting the two. A major renovation of the auditorium was done in 1998-1999.

Other details in the history of the Atlas Church of Christ can be summarized under six headings: ministers, elders, deacons, attendance, contributions and song leaders and church staff.

MINISTERS

Records for the Atlas Church list 28 men who preached on some kind of a “regular” schedule from the church’s beginning in 1931 through 1957. “Regular” in this case means something like preaching at Atlas the first Sunday of each month during a year. A different person would speak on the second the Sunday, etc. No one was a fulltime minister for the congregation during this period of a little more than 26 years. Wilburn Quillen was the first person to preach for Atlas. He was also the first preacher to speak in the new building completed in 1940.

James A. Hendrix was the first fulltime minister. He began in 1958 and served through 1961 for a salary of $200.00 per month. Hendrix had preached for the church on several occasions from 1952 through 1955.

Eight other men have worked with the congregation as the pulpit minister. They are listed in Table A. The average length of tenure for these nine men is 4.8 years. However, this value is misleading since Steve Shelton has served for 14.6 years. When he is removed from the average, the length of stay was 3.7 years.

In addition, during this time period from 1958 through 2001, six men worked as assistant or associate ministers. All were part-time and four were International Bible College students. The average tenure at Atlas for them was 1.8 years. Most served in the time from 1968 through 1976. Three special ministers were on staff at times: one was a fulltime elder, one was director of the bus program and one served as house parents caring of children.

ELDERS

Primary leadership and management of the Atlas Church are handled by The Elders. The first elders were appointed in 1953, about 22 years after the church began. Additional appointments have taken place on seven other occasions. One person was added to the eldership on five of the eight times appointments were made. Records indicate that Atlas has had elders continuously since 1953 except for the years 1960 and 1961.

A total of 14 men have served as elders. The average tenure, at the time of writing in 2001, is 10.1 years. However, this number is not a very good measure since one of the current men, Herschel Hamner, has served for 40 years (1962 – 2001 inclusively) and another, C. M. Glover, for 28 years (1974 – 2001 inclusively). When these two are not included in the average, the tenure is 6.2 years for the remaining twelve. Two of the 14 served for one year each. L. N. Smith worked for the church as a fulltime elder for a major part of 1972.

The current eldership (2001 – 2002) consists of six men and is the largest number ever to serve at one time. Their length of service averages 17 years. As noted above, one has served for 40 years and another for 28 years. The average for the other four is 8.5 years. The last person appointed has been in the office for 5.5 years. These averages indicate the stability of the eldership at Atlas.

DEACONS

The deacons at Atlas are a set of men selected to manage and carry out specifically assign tasks. They work under the direction and supervision of the elders.

It appears from the records available that the first deacons were appointed at Atlas in 1965. Four men were in the first set of appointees. The number jumped to nine the next year and varied between six and eleven until 1988. At that time it jumped to 18 and has averaged 16 since. Eighteen, in 1988, is largest number to serve at one time. The group for 2001-2002 has fifteen.

ATTENDANCE

The number of people attending the Atlas church indicates the importance of the church to the community. Early attendance data are very sketchy. All the early data are for Sunday mornings. None are available for Sunday night or Wednesday night meetings. The earliest figures come from the first two years of the 1940’s decade. One indicates 11 people present on the Sunday morning of November 24, 1940. The number is 50 for November 21, 1941. Another reference to about this same time mentions 30 being present. Thus, it appears that there were somewhere around 30 attendees about 10 years after the church started meeting in 1931.

Two attendance numbers are available for the last two years of the 1950’s. There were 238 people present on January 1, 1958. A little over a year later, 223 attended on February 1, 1959. These early records indicate that the church grew form around 30 people in 1940 to about 230 by 1960. That is, the attendance in 1959 was 6.7 times what it was in 1940.

Fairly complete attendance figures for Sunday mornings as well as Sunday and Wednesday nights are available beginning in 1963. An average was computed for each decade beginning with 1960 and going through 2001. The average for 1963 through 1969 was used for the decade spanning 1960 through 1969. Similarly, 2000 and 2001 were used to estimate what would happen in 2000 through 2009. The results are displayed in the graph in Figure I. The top line in the graph is for Sunday morning. The middle line is for Sunday night attendance and bottom one for Wednesday nights. The decade averages are given in the data table under the graph.

The graphs cover the last 42 years of the Atlas Church of Christ. All three service times show increases. If the averages for the 1960’s are taken as a baseline against which to measure changes in attendance, the graphs depict what has happen in the last 32 years. Sunday morning and Sunday night attendances increased by about 100. Wednesday night increased by 73.

Sunday morning attendance has averaged 305 over the last 42 years. The Sunday morning graph in Figure I suggests four things. 1. The last two years have been the period of greatest change. Attendance increased by 44. This is a 14.1% change. 2. The decade of the 70’s and that of the 80’s changed in similar ways. 3. Attendance in the 1990’s remained the same as it was in the previous decade. 4. The increase from 1969 through 2001 was 100 people for the 32-year period. This is an average increase of 3.1 people per year.

Sunday night attendance has averaged 235 over the past 42 years. Patterns in the data, as graphed in Figure I, mostly followed the Sunday morning patterns. There were two major differences. 1. Attendance declined from 249 in the 80’s to 234 in the 90’s. This change of 15 was a 6.0% decline. 2. From 1960 through 2001, the Sunday night audience was 77% as large as the morning one. The percentage ranged from a low of 72% in the 1960’s to a high of 80% in the 1980’s. The other three decades had 79% for the 1970’s, 75% for the 1990’s and 79% for the 2000’s.

Wednesday night attendance has averaged 199 over the last 42 years. This is 65% of the Sunday morning figure and 84% of the Sunday night number. The number grew from 155 in the 1960’s to 228 in the 2000’s for a gain of 73. The graph for Wednesday nights in Figure I suggest two things. 1. The Wednesday night number is usually about 2/3 of the Sunday morning number. 2. There was a decline in Wednesday night attendance in the 1980’s. It went down by 24 from the average of 215 in the previous decade. This was a 11.2% decline. It has rebounded to 228 in 2001.

CONTRIBUTIONS

The Atlas congregation began in the middle of The Great Depression in 1931. There was little money for church contributions and Atlas was no exception. The first recorded balance showed $10.51 in the treasury; but the date of it is not known. Two Sundays, November 24, 1940 and November 21, 1941 had contributions of $0.55 and $0.31 respectively. The next treasury data are for October 19, 1947. They show a balance of $83.97 with a collection of $9.06 that Sunday.

There is enough financial data beginning in 1947 to create a contributions profile for the congregation. There is one value for each of 1947, 1948, and 1949. As with the attendance analysis, an average was computed for each decade beginning in 1940. A graph of them is given in Figure II. The averages are given in the table underneath the graph.

One of the first things that one notices in the graph is the steep increase in the 1990’s and into the next decade. The average of $5998 for the current decade is 461 times larger than that for the 1940’s. It is 120 times larger than the average for the 1950’s. These numbers document the tremendous increase in per capita income in the membership since the number of attendees did not increase dramatically. It parallels the corresponding growth in the American economy.

The growth in giving in the period form 1949 to 1979 was truly dramatic in terms of percentage of increase each decade. This time covers three decades. In the first one, 1950 – 1959, the average increased by 295%. The next, 1960 – 1969, increased by 449% and the one for 1970 – 1979 by 312%. During this period the contributions went from $13 per Sunday to $1,126. The average gift was $1.07 in the 60’s and $3.90 in the 70’s.

The next two decades saw the per Sunday contribution almost double each ten years. From 1980 through 1989 it went from $1,126 to $2,183 per week. This was a 94% increase. For 1990 through 1999 the increase was 95% taking the average to $4,257 per Sunday. In the 1980’s the average gift per person in attendance was $6.79. In the 90’s it was $13.66.

Giving in 2001 and 2002 shows only a 41% increase. However, this value should probably not be taken as a serious measure of the decade since it does not reflect economic growth for ten years. Furthermore, over half of this time has been during an economic slowdown and recession. On the positive side, the average gift per person has gone up by a little more than $3.00 to $16.87.

SONG LEADERS AND CHURCH STAFF

In the early years Charlie Perry, Lyndon McGee and Clyde McGee led the singing. Clyde McGee taught Elmer Harris and Hunter Hamner to lead singing as they grew up as members at Atlas. Elmer Harris served as the Song Director from the 1960’s until 19__. Joey Krieger led the singing until 1999. At that time, Jeff Grossheim, son-in-law of Elmer Harris, became the song director.

Two ladies have worked as secretary/office manager. Joyce Gray held the position from November 1969 until June 1993. Betty Keeton began in 1995 and currently fills the position.

The first paid custodial care of the church facilities appears to have begun in 1973. From that time through June 1993, five ladies who were members at Atlas did the work.

ATLAS MINISTERS
Name	Dates of Service
James A Hendrix	1958 – 1961
Oneal Smelser	Jan ‘62 – Oct ‘62
Curtis Lanrum	Oct 1962 – 1964
Horace Stutts	’64 – ’65, ’68 – ‘72
Melvin Campbell	1965 – 1967
Buddy Baker	1972 – 1974
Haskal Sparks	1974 – 1980
Don McGee	1980 – Jun 1987
Steve Shelton	Jul 1987 – Present
Table A: Fulltime Atlas Ministers