On its 90th anniversary Sunday, the First Presbyterian Church in Texas celebrated a birthday and a farewell. The services were held for 50 years in the light russet brick building with the dark wood pews and red cushions at 208 E. Central Ave. This church is the successor to wooden buildings the congregation occupied for the previous 40 years.
This past Sunday it said goodbye.
“We’re down to five to six people including the preacher and the organist,” Pastor Lois-Elaine Lindberg said. “I don’t like it. It’s a nice little church. It’s a shame young people are not interested anymore in going to church unless they have wild hip-hop music.”
Church Elder Elsie Baus, a member of the congregation since 1997, said one of the old wood buildings was demolished in 1998 because it had been vandalized.
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When Lindberg first became pastor here about three years ago, there were 30 to 40 people in the congregation, most of them Winter Texans from about four or five RV parks.
Lindberg, 78, said she’s not sure why the congregation dwindled so drastically, but it could be a reflection of fewer Winter Texans coming to the Valley.
The church has seen happier times, when there were enough children for Sunday school. Many of the locals who were there when Roda Sheetz moved to La Feria in 1970 had already raised their children and the younger churchgoers moved away and didn’t replenish the church’s congregation. But the congregation did remain at about 100 people.
Seems to be the sign of the times. Megas win.
Source: Valley News
