The Oklahoma Panhandle is, by many accounts, a tough and lonely place to scrape out a living. Farmers and ranchers pray for rain knowing it may not come. Prosperity from the oil and gas industries booms and busts. Communities-some can barely be called towns-are small and isolated.
The Balko community, for example, includes a post office, a handful of scattered farmhouses, three small churches and a public school. Some 500 people call Balko home. They are accustomed to driving into Texas or Kansas for groceries or a day of shopping. A current drought leaves future harvests in question.
This is the community that the Balko MB Church has called home for 100 years, the community they still want to bring to Christ.
At the end of this month, April 30, the church will look back at God’s faithfulness through a century and look forward to continued fruitful ministry in this community. Pastor James Epps says, “We look at the centennial celebration as a relaunching of the church into the future.”
At the turn of the century, the Panhandle was known as “No Man’s Land,” a “treeless prairie” with little attraction of it’s own. Nevertheless settlers came via covered wagon, including German Mennonites, many of whom were from Fairview, OK. In a history written for the churches 75th anniversary, Peggy Goertzen writes, “Why did they come? To get more land!” For all its faults, the area offered space, and inexpensive land for farming and ranching, even being called “Poor Man’s Paradise,” Goertzen writes.
As soon as they arrived, a small band of Mennonites began to meet regularly for Bible study and in 1906 formally formed a church named Bethel Church. Nine people signed the original charter.
In 1961 the church changed its name to Balko MB Church, and in 1970 the congregation made a move to its present location at Bryan’s Corner, the intersection of two highways about eight miles from Balko.
The church plans to celebrate its milestone anniversary with two services intertwined in opportunities for fellowship. The day will begin with an informal fellowship time in lieu of Sunday school, followed by a worship service celebrating a history of God’s faithfulness. Gaylord Goertzen, who served as pastor from 1978-1988, is scheduled to speak.
Goertzen says Balko’s “great gift” is caring about people, a certain compassionate attitude that, he speculates, stems from the patience and perseverance necessary to thrive in a difficult land.
That love extends to their community as church members consider their future. During an afternoon service the 100th celebration, the church will “relaunch” into the next century and unveil a new name to mark a renewed effort to bring Christ into their community.
The new name, Crossroads Bible Fellowship, was chosen in part to reflect the church’s location at the highway junction and in part to reflect the congregation’s desire to love newcomers. Although the congregation remains firmly aligned with Mennonite Brethren theology and heritage, the hope is that the new name will remove any initial misconceptions and present a more inclusive first impression. Howard Frantz, whose grandfather was among the first Mennonite settlers in the area, says that the church’s future lies in “reaching the lost, period.” He explains that fewer and fewer in the community come from a Mennonite heritage so reaching their community will mean reaching those of a non-Mennonite background.Orlan Frantz, brother of Howard, frankly admits the change is difficult, as change often is. “I’d prefer it to be Balko MB,” he says. At the same time he talks about the congregation’s love for each other and for the community. “If you have love in a church, you will win people to Christ,” he says. “We want to be that.”
The church cooperates with two other area churches to reach the community. One example of this cooperation is the youth group, called Students With A Testimony (SWAT), which meets weekly and boasts attendance of 25 to 30 youth in an area where the public school has only a half-dozen students per class.
Epps says the cooperative outreach efforts of the three churches are part of the reason he envisions a future in which “it would be a very hard thing to live in Balko and go to hell.”
Although attendance once was as high as 130 in the 1950’s , the congregation is small now, with about 50 people in attendance on any given Sunday. Older members have retired to places with more hospitable environments. Larger farms have bought out many smaller, family farms. Young families follow jobs to larger cities.
But the Balko congregation is not done yet.
Although no one can predict what the next century will hold, Epps says, “I would hope that as long as there are people here there would be an active, vibrant community of Mennonite Brethren who passionately care for the lost, who are reaching out to them in spite of what might be persecution at that time, and growing in their fellowship closer together and closer to God.”.