State's third oldest Baptist church celebrates 200th year in Wayne County

PIEDMONT — The congregation of Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church in Wayne County is celebrating its 200th anniversary this month.

The church was established in 1820 in the Otter Creek community on Highway V, south of Piedmont.

It is considered the third oldest Baptist church in Missouri and “has been spreading the gospel with no interruption for 200 years,” said Pastor Tom Keene, now in his fourth year.

The only older churches, he said, are Fe Fe Baptist Church in Bridgeton (1807) and Black River Baptist Church (1818) of the Cane Creek/Stoddard Association near Poplar Bluff.

Mt. Pleasant, Keene said, originally had planned a week-long revival and a special day, where senators and state representatives would speak about the history of Missouri and the church, but those plans were canceled due the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We want to let people know we are celebrating our 200th,” and “we will have an actual celebration once we break from this” pandemic, Keene said.

When the pandemic hit, Keene said, Mt. Pleasant was one of the last of the 13 Southern Baptist churches in Wayne County to close its doors.

“Our church, where it is at on Highway V, the majority do not have any internet service,” Keene explained. “What we used was just regular telephones.

“We used freeconferencecall.com, and we teleconferenced our service. We went from almost the dark ages to the future.”

The congregation, he said, found a way to continue having services just as their ancestors did.

The third location of Mt. Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church is pictured as it was in the 1940s.Photo provided

“If you look in the history books, what happened in the Civil War is the ministers changed names” as one went off to war and another came in, Keene said. “You never see the pulpit empty, where they had to shut the doors for a long period of time.”

__Congregational changes__

Although a small congregation now, Keene said, records from around 1880 show the church had a membership of 115 then.

“Over the years, because of different churches sprouting up, the congregation went down … people just spread out,” Keene explained. “We were one of the largest Baptist churches in Wayne County at one time.”

Keene said hundreds of people used to live and farm on Otter Creek.

“It was a very prosperous creek; they had mills on it,” Keene said. “It was a great place between the two big rivers, the St. Francis and the Black River.

“A lot of people congregated there even before Piedmont was even around,” but later moved away as farms got sold off.

Today, Mt. Pleasant currently has about 55 in its congregation, but on a “normal Sunday, it’s much less than that … from 15 to 25 on any given Sunday,” Keene said.

The church’s congregation “all live within eight miles of the church, nothing over 10” miles, said Keene, who lives the farthest at Wappapello.

“Pretty much, like from the beginning when it serviced Otter Creek, we still service Otter Creek,” Keene said. “When people talk about where they live … they never say Highway V. We live on Otter Creek Road or over on Otter Creek.”

The church has been “servicing the same families for 200 years,” Keene said.

The Risbys, Bratchs and Barneses are among the “long standing names” in the area, and most of the congregation is related somehow, he said.

Church history

During its 200-year history, Keene said, Mt. Pleasant has served under numerous associations.

“Although the church remained along the banks of Otter Creek in Wayne County since 1820, it more than likely served under the umbrella of the Old Bethel Association in 1820, as well as the Cape Girardeau Association in 1824,” Keene said.

Records “do affirm Mt. Pleasant was constituted” into the Black River Association in July 1837, Keene said.

Because of the increasingly large size of that association, Keene said, Mt. Pleasant and other churches left to become a part of the St. Francois Association in 1850.

In 1875, he said, the Wayne County Association was formed which added Mt. Pleasant and many other Wayne and Reynolds County churches to its roster.

“Many well-known ministers of the faith passed through the doors of Mt. Pleasant, namely Rev. Jesse B. Wallis, who was not only a circuit preacher with six churches to pastor … (but) also the deputy sheriff of Wayne County,” Keene said.

Wallis, he said, served during a time when Wayne County’s borders extended south to the Arkansas line and west to the Kansas border.

“In those days, many a preacher spent long hours in the saddle and behind many pulpits,” Keene said. “Rev. Wallis was ordained a minister at Mt. Pleasant church in 1848.”

Keene said the first church was said to be a log structure on the Duncan farm, which later was disassembled and reassembled on the Creasy farm.

The church’s third location was constructed between 1875 to 1880 and can still be found by the church steps that remain just west of the old Mt. Pleasant School, which still stands today. Keene said.

“The current location of Mt. Pleasant church was dedicated in 1959 and is considered the fourth location along the banks of Otter Creek,” Keene said. That wood-frame structure has since been bricked over.

Mt. Pleasant’s services include, Sunday school is at 10 a.m., followed by the worship service at 11 a.m. and discipleship training at 6 p.m. on Wednesdays.

Sunday evening services are not being held at this time.