It all started when Gladys Mason, secretary and clerk for Pine Barren Association, and a few others ventured out to the church’s old cemetery to pay their respects to family members buried there.
"We went back and realized that the church was gradually deteriorating," Mason said, noting her companions began looking for guidance on what to do. "So they started pointing at me and said, ‘You do something.’"
Mason walked up the dirty front steps, stood in front of the rickety door and tried the key she had for the cemetery gate. The lock turned, the door opened and Bear Creek woke up from its nap.
Since that time, several services per year have been held in the timeworn, but beautiful, country sanctuary, which is steadily being restored thanks to donations.
Mason estimated that nearly $20,000 has been given by members and area residents eager to preserve the church, including members of neighboring Pine Barren Association churches.
Though a member of Bethsaida Baptist Church in the Caledonia community in Pine Barren Association, Don Donald has been instrumental in coordinating the restoration and reorganization of Bear Creek.
"There are really only two main things left, painting the interior walls and replacing some windows. Other than that, the church has basically been stabilized," said Donald, a commissioner for the Alabama Baptist Historical Commission. "The main thing people have gotten out of it is [the satisfaction of] preserving a historic landmark."
Describing the current status of Bear Creek, which still lacks electricity, raises a question of semantics. Is the rejuvenated old building really a church again in the practical sense or in title only?
Donald maintains it is no mere museum.
"It’s still an active congregation. It’s still an active church. It still has members," he said.
"Indian Springs Baptist, which is very close to Bear Creek, is officially inactive. They do have a historical association. They meet there once a year and maintain it. But [Bear Creek] is a step above that in that there are regular services there."
The most recent service was held in December. Donald estimated the attendance at around 50. The next service will be June 29 at 2 p.m.
And though no new members have joined since the "first" service in July 2005, Mason is hopeful that could change.
"We hope to get some organization going and get people interested in joining," she said. "People are continuing to give for the restoration and we’re just plugging along. If you look at where we were and where we are now, we’ve come a long way."
There were a lot of factors, and no one knows quite how it happened. The thing is the folks at Bear Creek Baptist Church, Caledonia — yes, it is still a church — don’t really care.
The old church’s last record with Pine Barren Baptist Association in 1962 shows it with 38 members.
"The people in that area who could have kept it going just died out or moved out and it closed up," said Max Jones, who joined Bear Creek Baptist "sometime in the ’40s."
And suddenly the association stopped receiving reports from the very place it was constituted in 1850. The historic church, which organized in 1835, sat silent along an abandoned road and stayed hidden for more than 40 years in a clearing among a thicket of towering weeds and dense Wilcox County trees.
It was, as the saying goes, just one of those things.
But friends and "former" members of Bear Creek Baptist, whose letters of membership are still technically intact because the church never officially closed, aren’t looking back and asking, "Why?" Since 2005, they’ve been looking forward and asking, "Why not?"
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