The Little Church in the Woods

Hebrews 10:25

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

We enjoy going to our little church.  We get to worship our LORD, pray, study His Word, encourage and love one another, get equipped to live out the Christian life and the Great Commission.  Sundays can be a real time of re-charging after the previous week has left your batteries weak or dead.

Back in August when we went camping in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park at the Smokemont Campsite, Tricia went to get some ice at the Camp office and met a procession of people walking through the woods.  They told her that they were on their way to a revival in a little church in the woods.  They invited us to attend.

We planned to make the hike to the little old church for the final night of the revival.  We didn't have access to a shower and we didn't bring "church clothes."  On our camping vacations, we generally have devotions each day and have our own church services.  This vacation we were going to attend a 'real church!'  On Saturday night we arrived at the trailhead to make the trek to the old church.  It was misting and overcast as we started on the hike.

We arrived at the church about 15 minutes before services were supposed to start and were the first people there.  We walked right on inside as there were no locks on the doors and we took a seat on the old wooden pews.  There were no cushions on the pews and there were no lights in the church.

Lufty Baptist Church or Smokemont Baptist Church 

The church was all wood construction and the interior was unfinished and had that nice, cozy smell of lumber.  As we talked our echoes filled the church with the absence of any fabric to absorb the sound. Twenty minutes passed and we realized that we had either gotten our wires crossed on the time of the services or church had been cancelled.

We figured that 'our' services weren't going to be cancelled.  We looked around for a hymnal, but couldn't find one.  It was so dark that we wouldn't have been able to read it anyway.  Now none of us (except maybe Laura Lee) are great singers, but we decided we'd make a joyful noise to the LORD and began to sing all the songs we could remember the words to like "Amazing Grace," "Holy, Holy, Holy," "In the Garden," "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," "I'll Fly Away," "When We All Get to Heaven," and "Because He Lives," to name a few.  We also sang some contemporary Christian choruses as well.  We may have been singing off key and there was no music to accompany us, but our praises filled the little church and I hope was pleasing in the ears of the Almighty.  We prayed and our services were dismissed.

The Family by the bell tower in the old church

The tall tower above the door that the family is coming out of in the photo above is a bell tower.  There is a long rope hanging down that you can pull and ring the bell to alert congregants that services are about to begin!  The sign below says that the Lufty Baptist Church was established in 1836 and reconstructed in 1912.  I figured there would be some history behind the old church and looked it up when I got home.

The Sonnier Family at the Lufty Baptist Church

On the following website National Register of Historic Places - Dept of the Interior I found the following interesting information:

Smokemont Baptist Church, historically known as Oconaluftee Baptist.
The present church building was erected in 1912. However, the church
was organized at a much earlier date. The church was constituted
June 6, 1836. The constituting presbytery was made up of Adam Corn
and David Elder. Robert Collins and Ephraim Minges were elected
deacons, and the charter membership totaled 21.
Rules of decorum were established, by-laws were, promulgated, and the
church as an organization was a reality.
Records of the church were kept until 1895.
In the isolated communities of the Great Smoky Mountains, the church
was a center of social, as well as spiritual life. The records of the
Oconaluftee Baptist contain records of deaths, marriages, baptisms,
and the joining and leaving of the fellowship by members. There are
also records of members being called before the church and being
charged with such offenses as swearing, lying, and slander. In many
cases the accused was found guilty and excluded from membership in
the church. In others, the charges were proven unfounded, and the
cases dropped.
The name of the community and church were changed in the early 1900's
from Oconaluftee to Smokemont. This came about when logging and
lumbering operations began in the mountains, and a lumber company
established its headquarters on the Oconaluftee River and called the
camp Smokemont.

The little church in the woods still stands as a testimony of the faith of brothers and sisters in Christ who, 177 years ago, committed to meeting together in obedience of Hebrews 10:25.  It was a special time for our family to sit on those wooden pews and sing some of the same songs of praise to our Creator, perhaps, that were sang many, many years ago by 21 fellow followers of Christ in the Lufty Baptist Church.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.  Psalm 150:6