Springtime Church Special

Diverse, Yet One: Church Welcomes Many

Backgrounds, Lifestyles to Celebrate Easter

By Richard Bailey

The Plains Presbyterian Church


People from the Plains area founded Plains Presbyterian Church long ago. It has been in Zachary for more than 176 years.

Over the years, the congregation blended its agrarian roots with the industrial growth of the area. In 1867 the church sent its first full time missionary to China.

Since then, seven men and women have gone to the mission field for long term work; seven men were called to ordained ministry in the past ten years; five girls married ministers; and over 200 youth and adults have served in foreign countries as short term missionaries. Plains Presbyterian also has founded a sister church here in Louisiana and a daughter church in Juarez, Mexico.

Plains Presbyterian is outwardly focused but also inwardly diverse. On any Sunday the congregation includes cattle farmers, seed farmers, nuclear plant engineers and paper, chemical and petroleum plant workers. There are also teachers and nurses, businessmen and businesswomen. Bankers, welders, salesmen, waiters, school administrators and firemen all sit together. Home school moms and soccer moms as well as public, private and home school students fill the pews. There are infants in the “cry room” and senior citizens in the choir.

Singing and worshiping together are reformed alcoholics and struggling alcoholics, blended families and traditional ones, single parents and career singles, harmonious couples and couples in crisis, widows and widowers, remarried people and divorcees. There are mature believers and young ones, confident apologists and seekers looking for the truth. All together, all different, but all the same, one, in Christ, saved only by His grace and mercy.

And there is the wonder and greatness of the Church, the bride of Christ, made up of all peoples from all nations, diverse yet one in Christ. She is not a perfect bride and sometimes not a pretty one. But she is His, now, and for eternity.

This Easter, and every Sunday, the Churches in Zachary become one as their Worship goes before the throne of the Father, mediated by the Son and the Spirit. They worship in different styles and methods, but all proclaim that the tomb is empty. Halleluiah , He is Risen, He is risen indeed !