Church Spotlight: Little Creek Missionary Baptist Church, Sheridan, AR

Written by Joy Mathis Chadwick

As I sit at my desk trying to collect my thoughts about the church of my childhood, heart-tugging memories are slowly making their way down my cheek. The excitement of youth. A shiny brand new relationship with Jesus Christ. My first best friends (who are still my dear friends after all these years). My precious momma. Those old fashioned hellfire and brimstone sermons. All day singings and dinner on the ground (a southern thing). Simpler times. Innocence.

I have heard it said many times that “you can’t go home again”. Maybe not, for some. But what I found when visiting the church of my childhood a couple of years ago proved that wrong. I found that my church home was certainly not the building, for it had been renovated and rebuilt several times over the years. My church home wasn’t even necessarily the people who greeted me with warmth and love, for most of the people I grew up loving and worshipping with have long gone on to Heaven. My church “home” as I used to know it still lives on in my heart. It will always and forever be the little country church where I gave my heart to the Lord. As I walked through the doors of the beautiful new building, I instantly stepped back in time, back to my church home of the 50’s and 60’s and 70’s. That is the church I will tell you about. That church is Little Creek Missionary Baptist Church in Sheridan, Arkansas.

The little country church I attended as a child had no finery whatsoever. I vividly remember the only source of heat on cold winter Sundays was an old pot bellied wood stove. It didn’t matter where you sat in the building, you were either freezing cold or blistering hot; there was no inbetween. There were no screens on the raised windows in the summertime, so the hand fans with the logo of the local funeral home did double duty not only to circulate the hot air, but also to swat the wasps that made their way through the open windows. The old pews were probably made by the men of the church and were not designed for comfort by any stretch of the imagination. There was one pew in particular that will always be “carved” in my memories – the next-to-the-back pew on the right hand side of the choir. Not a proud moment now that I look back, but that one particular pew held all the carved names and initials of the small group of teenagers down through the years who sat on the back seat. I’m still not sure why the adults didn’t reprimand the guilty parties; maybe they were just happy that this group of crazy kids chose to spend their Sundays in church. Maybe their hearts told them that the “carved pew of honor” was a small price to pay for the assurance that their child was hearing the Word of God that would sustain us the rest of our lives. The beautiful new state-of-the-art sanctuary of Little Creek Church now in no way resembles the church of my childhood, but even through all the remodeling and rebuilding, the vivid memories still linger.

Our little country church was known for its love of singing. All who attended, young and old, enthusiastically took part in the Sunday night singings that preceded the sermon. Even the youngest kids were given a chance to stand in front of the choir and “lead” their favorite song. The hymnals were the old Stamps-Baxter convention songbooks, promoting the four-part harmony that is the backbone of southern gospel music today. I remember attending several singing schools that were held in the hot summertime in that little country church, where we learned to sing the names of the shaped notes instead of singing the words. If memory serves me correctly, the Sunday that led into the week of vacation Bible school was the typical southern “all day singing and dinner on the ground”. (Dinner wasn’t literally on the ground; it was held outside on the massive picnic tables under the big shade trees. The women of the church outdid themselves on this one special day, bringing in dish after dish of their specialty foods. The staples of any southern church potluck always included fried chicken, banana pudding, and the ever-mysterious jello salad.) After lunch the singing reconvened back inside the church until late afternoon. Although there were bigger and fancier churches in my little hometown, there were few that were as dedicated to worship through song than Little Creek Church, for the songs offered by those sweet souls long gone on were so much more than just a joyful noise.

A highlight for every child who ever attended Little Creek Church was vacation Bible school in the sweltering summertime. Not only was it a learning experience for the kids, it was also a week of fun and making new friends. But more importantly, young souls were introduced to Jesus. Older kids were challenged to build on their relationship with Jesus as Lord of their lives. Values and morals were woven into every teaching opportunity, whether in the classroom or outside at the picnic tables where we ate our cookies and sported our Kool Aid grins. The culmination of the week of Bible school was the annual swimming party at Hurricane Creek on the last day. Eating cold hot dogs on the creekbank and splashing in the muddy swimming hole will always be a happy memory for me.

The annual revival service back then was also held in conjunction with vacation Bible school, making for a week of the highest mountain top experiences with the Lord, along with the tiredest tired ever known; the brunt of the week of non-stop work usually always fell on the women of the church. Not only did they teach Bible school in the mornings, they also took turns feeding the pastor and the visiting evangelist lunch and supper each day in their respective homes. Churches supported each other during vacation Bible school and revivals, so it was not unusual for there to be standing room only during the nightly revival service. I vividly remember the night that I gave my teenage heart to the Lord during the summer revival; I had to make my way through the crowded sanctuary just to get to the altar. I am so very thankful that I can go back to the time, the place, the pew on the back row, the altar where I knelt and truly met Jesus; other memories may become cloudy with age, but this precious memory is a constant.

I was unable to find actual documentation about when Little Creek Church was founded, but someone documented in my family’s genealogy stories that my grandpa attended there as a young man; if he were living today he would be almost 130 years old. Although the original building no longer exists, the current church is now located right across the road from where my childhood memories were made. Through many dangers, toils and snares, the church is still as very much alive as it was decades ago. I especially like that their Facebook page specifies that they are “always open”; after all, God has never limited His purpose to the limitations of man.

The church is located at 1296 Highway 46 North in Sheridan, Arkansas and is pastored by Brent Williams. Although Covid may have imposed some limitations over the last several months, the church is once again operating at their regular schedule with only slight modifications, “serving the spiritual, physical and emotional needs of both the believer and nonbeliever” and stands on the Biblical principle “saved by grace through faith”. Little Creek Missionary Baptist Church is active on Facebook and can also be found on their webpage at https://littlecreekmbc.weebly.com. I can personally vouch for their webpage statement, “We are a church alive, with open hearts and arms.”

I owe so very much to all those sweet souls of Little Creek Church who took the time to teach and nurture all those rowdy kids who carved their initials on the next-to-the-back pew in the choir. I’m quite sure that had it not been for the fervent and ongoing prayers of my precious mother, all the Sunday school teachers, all the pastors, all the adults who took the time to care – I’m quite sure that my life might have taken a very different direction. I thank God for my Christian heritage that began at this little country church on the backroads of Sheridan, Arkansas.