Center Point Christian Church
Center Point, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Center Point Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has been a part of the community and surrounding area for more than 135 years. The church was founded by traveling Kentucky Minister Green L. Surber in 1879. His parents, Adam and Jemima Surber, had moved to Center Point and both died here, giving a probable reason for Green to come. He also felt the need to preach and strengthen the faith of the growing community as part of a campaign to revive Texas spirituality. He preached, conducted weddings, and represented the area in the 1883 southwestern Christian Association in San Antonio. The first church building burned down in 1888 but was rebuilt at its present site in 1892. Funds came from the community and materials came from San Antonio and Kerrville. Many succeeding pastors served in both Center Point and Kerrville. In the 1920s, the congregation under Pastor Perry Hawkins joined several citizens to establish the Southwest Texas Christian Church encampment, also known as “Camp Christian.” Situated on the Guadalupe River, the camp also leased out its facilities to camp young Judaea, a Jewish summer camp program, in the 1950s and 1960s, and to the Muscular Dystrophy Association in the 1970s. The property was sold in 1988. since its establishment the church has had more than twenty pastors. The church has served as a place for the local congregation to meet and provide community outreach and revival meetings. As the town of Center Point has grown and changed, the church and its members have continued to serve their neighbors and their community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1879 by traveling Kentucky minister Green L. Surber, this Disciples of Christ congregation grew alongside the frontier settlement of Center Point during a broader campaign to strengthen faith across a growing Texas. After the first building burned in 1888, the community rebuilt in 1892 with materials hauled from San Antonio and Kerrville. In the 1920s its members helped establish the Guadalupe River retreat known as Camp Christian, later shared with a Jewish youth camp and other groups.
Why it matters
It reflects how churches served as anchors of community life on the Texas frontier, binding scattered settlers together as towns took root.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1879, when this congregation was founded, Center Point was a young settlement on the Texas frontier, part of a Kerr County that was still very much in the making. The decades after the Civil War — the era of Reconstruction and westward expansion — saw settlers pushing into the Hill Country, establishing farms and small towns along the rivers, and reaching for the institutions that turned a scattering of homesteads into a community.
Chief among those institutions was the church. On the frontier, a congregation was often one of the first organized bodies a town possessed, providing not just worship but a gathering place, a source of order, and a thread of continuity in a raw and mobile society. This was also an age of religious energy in Texas, with ministers traveling long distances to preach, to strengthen faith, and to knit believers together.
The Disciples of Christ, the tradition to which this congregation belongs, grew out of an American movement to return to a simple, unified Christianity. Its traveling preachers were well suited to a frontier where formal churches were few and the need was great.
People & events
The Center Point Christian Church was founded in 1879 by Green L. Surber, a traveling minister from Kentucky. His coming had a personal thread woven into it: his parents, Adam and Jemima Surber, had moved to Center Point and both died there, which likely drew him to the community. But Surber also felt a genuine calling to preach and to strengthen the faith of a growing settlement, part of a broader campaign to revive Texas spirituality. He preached, conducted weddings, and in 1883 represented the area at the southwestern Christian Association in San Antonio.
The congregation's early years were not without hardship. The first church building burned down in 1888, but the community rebuilt at the present site in 1892, gathering funds from local supporters and hauling materials from San Antonio and Kerrville. Many of the pastors who followed served both Center Point and Kerrville, binding the two communities together through shared ministry.
In the 1920s, under Pastor Perry Hawkins, the congregation joined with other citizens to establish the Southwest Texas Christian Church encampment on the Guadalupe River — known as Camp Christian. In a striking example of neighborliness, the camp later leased its facilities in the 1950s and 1960s to Camp Young Judaea, a Jewish summer camp, and in the 1970s to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The property was sold in 1988, but the church itself, having seen more than twenty pastors, has continued to serve its community.
Its place in the American story
This congregation's story captures a truth about how the American frontier was settled: towns were built not only with sawmills and stores but with steeples. Across the expanding West, churches were among the first and most durable community institutions, and traveling ministers like Green L. Surber were the connective tissue that carried faith and fellowship into places still finding their footing.
The Disciples of Christ movement to which this church belongs is a distinctly American denomination, born on the frontier out of a desire for a simpler, more unified Christianity. Its spread across Texas and the West is part of the larger story of how religion followed — and often led — the movement of settlers into new country.
And there is a quietly remarkable strand here that speaks to something generous in American community life: a Christian church camp that opened its grounds to a Jewish youth camp and to a disease-fighting charity. In sharing its riverside retreat across lines of faith and cause, this small Hill Country congregation reflected the best instincts of a nation still learning to live together across difference.
If you visit
Center Point is a small Hill Country community, and this church has been part of it for well over a century — a span of time you can feel when you consider how much has changed around a congregation that has held its ground since 1879. The present building dates to the 1892 rebuilding, raised after fire took the first, with materials brought in from San Antonio and Kerrville.
As you take in the setting, let your imagination follow the Guadalupe River to the site of the old Camp Christian, and picture the generations of young people — Christian and Jewish alike — who spent summers along its banks. That river runs through this story as surely as it runs through the county.
This is a rewarding stop for travelers drawn to the human history of a place: the way a single congregation can outlast fires, gather more than twenty pastors across its life, and keep serving its neighbors as the town grows and changes around it. Approach it as a chance to appreciate the deep roots that anchor a small Texas community.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Green L. Surber
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Center Point United Methodist Church
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Methodism reached this Hill Country spot before the town did: in 1852 Mrs. Henrietta Rees arrived from Tennessee and arranged for circuit riders to preach in the area. A congregation bought land in 1872, built an early church house around 1876, and after a storm toppled one building under construction, the men of the congregation completed the present structure in 1911. The church's story runs parallel to the founding of Center Point itself.
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Built of limestone in 1873–75 by stonemason Sam H. Wellborn, the Woolls Building housed George W. Woolls's mercantile business and is one of Center Point's oldest surviving commercial structures. Its full-width balcony and exterior staircase led to an upper floor where fraternal groups gathered, including a Masonic lodge that counted several Texas Rangers among its members. For most of its life the ground floor kept up the town's retail trade.
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Chartered in 1875, this Hill Country Masonic lodge lost its first home, along with all its records, to a fire in 1900. For decades afterward its members met in the local bank building before moving to the present site in 1964. Its founding charter carried the names of fifteen early settlers of the Center Point area, including Joshua D. Brown, an early figure in the settlement of Kerr County.
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