Christoval United Methodist Church
Christoval, Tom Green County, Texas
Marker Inscription
According to local history, Christoval Methodists, Baptists, and Cumberland Presbyterians assembled for worship services in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church building before 1910. Circuit riders from the three denominations preached on alternate Sundays. Although Baptists built their own structure in 1910, area Methodists continued to worship with Cumberland Presbyterians for many years. The records of the Christoval Methodist congregation date from 1923. In 1926, with the Rev. J. E. Young as pastor, the Methodists erected and occupied a red brick structure at the corner of Second and McKee streets. Fundraising projects at several Fourth of July celebrations helped to defray the cost of the building loan. In early years church women organized the Women's Missionary Society. Their first major project was to raise money for the Methodist Orphans' Home. A Men's Nondenominational Sunday School class was established in 1951. A parsonage was built in 1947 at a cost of $1,200; an educational building was erected in 1956. Further additions and renovations were made as needed, including the construction of three classrooms given in memory of Clarice Atkins McMillan in 1983. Former pastors and longtime members were honored at a church homecoming in 1978 and a 75th anniversary celebration in 1998. With continuing activities of worship and community service including an annual barbecue hosted by the Men's Nondenominational Sunday School class, the Christoval United Methodist Church carries on in the traditions of its founders. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In Christoval's early years, Methodists, Baptists and Cumberland Presbyterians shared a single building, with circuit riders from each denomination preaching on alternate Sundays. The Methodist congregation's own records date from 1923, and in 1926 they built a red brick church at Second and McKee streets, helping pay off the loan through Fourth of July fundraisers. Women anchored the church's outreach through the Women's Missionary Society, and the congregation grew with parsonage, classrooms and decades of community service.
Why it matters
The church shows how small west Texas towns pooled scarce resources across denominations, and how women's missionary work sustained frontier congregations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Christoval is a small community on the South Concho River in the ranch country of West Texas, and in its earliest years it was far too little to support a church for every faith under its own roof. The answer, common on the frontier, was to share. Local history holds that before 1910, the town's Methodists, Baptists, and Cumberland Presbyterians all worshiped together in the Cumberland Presbyterian building.
That arrangement leaned on a fixture of frontier religion: the circuit rider. Preachers from the three denominations took turns, coming through on alternate Sundays to serve congregations too small and too scattered to keep a full-time minister of their own. It was a practical, cooperative faith, shaped by distance and thin resources.
The Cumberland Presbyterians themselves were a distinctly frontier denomination, born on the American backcountry early in the nineteenth century out of the revivals of that era. Their presence in a small Texas town, hosting neighbors of other faiths, fits the pattern of a church tradition built for exactly these hard-to-reach places.
People & events
Even after the Baptists put up their own building in 1910, the Methodists kept worshiping alongside the Cumberland Presbyterians for years — a sign of how deep the shared habit ran. The Methodist congregation's own records begin in 1923, and its independent chapter opened for good in 1926, when, with the Rev. J. E. Young as pastor, the members built and moved into a red brick church at the corner of Second and McKee streets.
Paying for that building took ingenuity. The congregation leaned on Fourth of July celebrations, turning the town's biggest summer gathering into a series of fundraisers that helped chip away at the building loan. It is a homely detail that says a great deal about how a small congregation financed its dreams — a little at a time, at the community picnic.
Much of the church's outward-facing work was carried by its women. In the early years they organized the Women's Missionary Society, whose first major project was raising money for the Methodist Orphans' Home. The congregation kept building for decades — a parsonage in 1947, an educational building in 1956, and three classrooms given in 1983 in memory of Clarice Atkins McMillan — and it marked its milestones with a homecoming in 1978 and a 75th anniversary in 1998.
Its place in the American story
The story of this church captures something essential about how faith survived in the thinly settled West: through cooperation before competition. The image of three denominations sharing one building, served by circuit riders in rotation, is a vivid correction to any notion that American religious life was always a matter of rivalry. Where people and money were scarce, neighbors made do together.
It is also a study in the quiet backbone women provided to frontier congregations. The Women's Missionary Society did more than support the local church — it reached outward, to an orphans' home and to causes beyond the town's edge, embodying a pattern repeated in small churches across the country. Much of the sustaining labor of American church life was, and often still is, women's work.
The name the congregation carries today, United Methodist, links this modest West Texas church to a much larger national story — the 1968 merger that formed the denomination. A church that began by borrowing a Presbyterian roof became one strand in one of the largest Protestant bodies in the United States.
If you visit
Look first at the corner of Second and McKee streets, the site the congregation chose in 1926, and take in the red brick — the one material detail the marker actually gives you, and a sturdy statement of permanence from a congregation that had spent years without a building of its own.
As you stand there, think about how the place was paid for. Every Fourth of July, the town's holiday doubled as a building fund. That blend of celebration and stewardship is the real texture of small-town church life, and it is more memorable than any architectural flourish.
Christoval sits in pretty country along the South Concho River, and this marker fits naturally into a leisurely West Texas drive. It rewards the traveler who enjoys reading a community through its oldest institutions — and who can appreciate that a church built one picnic at a time is still carrying on, barbecue and all.
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
- · J. E. Young
Themes & tags
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