FLOYD COUNTY, GA - CHURCHES - Silver Creek Primitive Baptist Church Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Emily O'Neal woneal8@comcast.net Table of Contents page: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/floyd.htm Georgia Table of Contents: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm NOTE: The church is in south Floyd County and is the location of the Wax Community Cemetery. Rome News Tribune March 10, 2003 After deciding to close its doors last month, a 200-year-old church has instead decided to leave its doors open and its pews as full as they possibly get. The Wax community's Silver Creek Primitive Baptist Church, one of the oldest congregations in Floyd County, decided to disband last Feb. 9 after their numbers had dwindled to five members. "They've decided to still continue," Lewis Norton, the church's pastor, said Saturday. The church, which is to meet today, was organized in 1803 in a log cabin on the banks of Silver Creek, where the Silver Creek Presbyterian Church now stands. The church contains no stained glass or vaulted ceilings and has no crosses decorating the church, where the congregation has been gathering since 1867. The denomination does not use imagery in the church or hold Sunday school classes. The church has only five members with three members active. The congregation meets once a month, with it numbers sometimes swollen by visitors. Rome News-Tribune February 10, 2003 Church disbands after 200 years After gathering for worship for 200 years, a small church in the Wax community met for its last service on Sunday. Silver Creek Primitive Baptist, one of the oldest congregations in Floyd County, is disbanding after its congregation has dwindled to five members. Only three of those members are active and the church's monthly services now draw just a handful of people, said church clerk Bud Freeman. "It's sad. We don't even have a deacon. They all died off," he said. The church was organized in 1803 in a log cabin on the banks of Silver Creek, where the Silver Creek Presbyterian Church now stands. Freeman, 77, a member for nearly 50 years, said the church failed to attract new members because it didn't keep up with modern churches. "We didn't advance with Sunday school," he said. "We don't have anything to offer young folks and people stopped coming." Unlike churches that offer a variety of programs and ministries for all age groups, the Primitive Baptists practice simplicity, Freeman said. No stained glass, vaulted ceilings or crosses decorate the present church building, which the congregation has been gathering in since 1867. The congregation does not use imagery in the church building or hold Sunday school classes. All age groups, from babies to seniors, attend the same worship service, which consists of preaching, praying and singing - unaccompanied by musical instruments. The Primitive Baptists also practice ceremonial foot washing, as Jesus did in the New Testament of the Bible, during communion. But the church isn't the only Primitive Baptist congregation that's faded through the years. At one time there were 13 churches in the Euharlee Primitive Baptist Association, Freeman said. With the closing of Silver Creek Primitive Baptist, a Paulding County church is the only one left. There are only about 200 congregations left in Georgia and a little more than 1,000 in the country, according to the 2002 Primitive Baptist Church Directory. While the church has remained true to its traditional roots, it has not been completely immune from modernization. The rule that women cannot speak in church is no longer enforced, Freeman said. "We're more liberal now - we 've run out of men to second my motions," he laughed. His wife, Shirley, 72, who has attended since she was a child, said women and men once sat on separate sides in the church. "Now we sit wherever we want to. It's big enough," she said. About 20 people attended the church's final service Sunday morning. Myrtle Lumpkin, who has attended for more than 70 years, is one of its loyal followers. She said her parents brought her as a baby and she has missed only two services since she was 16 years old. "I just love it. I look forward to it every meeting day," she said. "I just can't stand the thought of it closing." When her parents attended the church, before she was born, it was packed, she said. The church also holds special memories for Andrea Carroll Morris, who was married in the building in 1997. "It just breaks my heart," Morris said as she flipped through her wedding photo album. Morris' grandmother, Bernice Carroll, who first went to the church with her husband in the 1930s, said she was saddened but not surprised the church was closing. "I knew it was coming. It's downright sad," she said. In the last years before her husband 's death, Carroll said, she promised him she'd continue to go to church every month. "I said I'd do my best to keep it going as long as I could. So I've tried," she said. "But it looks like this is the end."