OUR HISTORY

Established 1910 — Lansing, Michigan

The history of a church, a congregation, is the story of a people, for the church is people. Strangely enough, very little has been written about them. We write about our pastors and our buildings but not about the people. Almost by accident we have kept some of the pictures and the class books of Sunday School classes. We file copies of minutes, ad infinitum, which sketch some of the words and some of the actions of a few of the people. We have hidden in a dry and dark place long panoramic pictures and small informal snapshots — faces without names. On anniversaries, we take them from their “secret place” and write our names on them to affirm that we, too, are people of the story.

Our inability to identify the pictures persons grows greater each year. Tiny cracks appear on the faces of the long, pictures unrolled. A visage is married and that life forgotten. We study the faces and wish we could give them names – so large a group! There must have been something special about them. If we search long enough and listen carefully a few names come to us. Some of the names we never have heard before.

Some have a familiar ring because their children and grandchildren are in the church today: Kraft, Reed, Cable, Scott, Gerganski, Hansbarger, Maffett, Foote, Marsh, Irons, Brooks, Bennett, DeBie, Droscha, Highlen, Schlack, Bryde, Kleinhenn, Dietrick, Crowe, Hershiser, Patrick, Kieppe, McQuiston, Wier, Smith, Gleason, Fuller, LaRowe, Johnson, Stead, Starr, Thompson, Hazelton, Green, King, Rowe, MacKenzie, Spamburg, Yager, Wood, Blair, Loudenslager, and more.

What we remember, if anything, of these is often fragmentary: “He was a tall man,” “She was a friendly person,” “He was always teasing me,” “He preached occasionally,” “The young people often met in their home,” or, “They were in church for years.” At times there is only the limited perception of one person who confesses “But I was just a small girl, then.” Then years have passed and the images of childhood blurred.

Yet, these forgotten people were the church. They love it, built it and gave the precious resources of their lives to it. By their devotion, they laid the foundation for what was to become — and now is.

The Pennway Church of God, today, is clearly the product of their building as surely as it is of ours. The shadows which they cast in the first part of the 20th century have stretched across the years to the present. The lives of today’s people are overlaid by their shadows and the harsh lines of reality are softened by their experience and wisdom and made more beautiful. None of this would pass as history but it is all that remains of a people who in 1900 or 1910, or in any other year, were the church. Even so, we cannot forget that in 2025, we are debtors to them.

Pennway Church dates its beginning from 1910 when the church building on East South Street was purchased from the First Baptist Church. The yellowing warrantee deed dated February 23, 1910, bears the signatures of C.S. Sisler, the pastor; Noah Reed, who was grandfather of Mrs. Grace Schlack; Mary D. Cable; A.U. Stockwell; and, L.M. Foote. A page of minutes reveals that a Board or Trustees was formed that same day. In the early history of the movement, organization was established only when legally needed. Obviously, they were elected to sign the purchase papers. The purchase price appears to have been $1,450. Two days later, a loan of $800 was negotiated with the Saline Savings Bank. The Trustees, just elected, mortgaged the new property. The money mat have been used for refurnishing or possibly as part of the purchase price. Additionally, Pennway’s 1960 Golden Anniversary History names Mr. and Mrs. John Scott among the purchasers of the church on South Street.

According to Mrs. Grace Schlack, most, if not all, of these members along with their families came from the Church of God in Holt, Michigan. She remembers clearly that they owned a building and were not an active congregation prior to 1900. Her mother and father, who first met at the church, were married in 1900. Mrs. Schlack indicates that C.S. Sisler suggested that the congregation move into Lansing. Not all were happy with the decision to do so. For the Kieppe family, that was five miles further by horse and buggy.

Apparently, the group from Holt included only nine or ten persons. Mrs. Schlack remembers that among them were her paternal grandparents Mr. and Mrs. Henry Kraft and her maternal grandparents Mr. and Mrs. Noah Reed, and daughters Harriet and Gertrude, also Mr. and Mrs. John Scott, Mrs. C.A. Cable and Mr. Annanias Hansbarger. Others who were listed as pioneer families in the 1960 history were Rev. and Mrs. LeRoy Sheldon, Mr. and Mrs. L.M. Foote, Charles Green family, Mrs. Edwards, Andrew Eaton, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Park, Charles Brinkley, Mr. and Mrs. William Booher, Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Alden, Mrs. Maffett, Peter Bennett, Leland Vickery, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lankton, Mr. and Mrs. J.P. Hershiser, and mrs. Anna Nelson.

The Church, when it is the Church, is a community of people who seek to be obedient to Jesus Christ. They are conscious that they are “the body of Christ” living and acting redemptively in the world. The people who have worshipped on South Street and then at Pennway, when we moved onto Cavanaugh Road, have found ways of doing that. Those ways range all the way from long-term and major programs to acts of Christian love too simple to record and too numerous to forget. There have been many additions within the church building and growth externally too with the addition of the Education Wing.

For the people of this story — the Pennway Church of God — the prologue has been lived. Only a small part of it has been recorded here. The tomorrow which we anticipated in our yesterdays has come. “This is the day that the Lord hath made, let us be glad and rejoice in it.”

For our congregation in 1985, they repeated what our forbears had done in 1910. We built a new place of worship. We have felt the same spirit and heard the same footsteps of those that have come before us: Henry Kraft, Noah Reed, John Scott, Mrs. Cable, and others. If they could be with us in person, they probably would ask us many questions, but this is what remains true: Their influence and leading of the Holy Spirit remains the same today. We desire to be lead by the Holy Spirit in everything that we do. We seek all truth through the God-breathed, Spirit-inspired Word of God. We still believe that the reality of the church rests not in its structures, but in our relationship to Jesus Christ. We are a church on mission and are constantly seeking to discover our mission in terms of today’s needs. We desire to invite everyone into the Way of Jesus and want to be a community that loves and cares for each other well, to be the Church!