Northcott Church, on a grassy patch at the edge of a southwest Anderson County soybean field, will celebrate its 100th birthday Sunday. Activities will begin with morning services and run well into the afternoon.
The church began when a young woman named Jennie Morton began preaching and holding Sunday school classes in 1911.
Northcott was then a small farming community served by a railroad and general store, with several houses and Sunnyside School.
THE REV. SHARON Voorhees, in year 19 as the church’s pastor, is nearly as much a fixture at the church as it is in the rural neighborhood.
“It’s been my church all my life,” said Voorhees, 68. “I grew up on a farm a half mile north and half a mile east,” one of six children and two foster children raised by Claude and Mary McGhee.
After graduating from Colony High School in 1960, she earned a degree in religion at Ozark Bible College in Joplin, and returned to marry husband George. She was a Sunday school teacher and worked with the youth immediately, with her only time away from the area when the family moved to Hutchinson for 15 years.
“George worked in drafting and then contracting,” she said, which fit well with a return to the Northcott neighborhood. Then, in 1992 when the Northcott congregation found itself without a pastor, Voorhees stepped in. “They needed a minister and I had the schooling.”
Northcott began as an independent Christian church and now is non-denominational, though it follows Christian precepts.
A typical Sunday finds about 25 people in pews in front of a red glass cross in the church’s east wall that gives the appearance of being ablaze when morning sunlight pours through. Most of those who come live nearby, with a handful driving the seven miles from Le Roy to hear Voorhees deliver sermons.
The congregation, she allowed, has been affected by the loss of population that’s common in farming communities, and an older one that also reflects the average age of those clinging to farm life.
“Used to be there were quite a few farmhouses every mile along the highway and also along the roads running from it,” Voorhees said. “Now, there are mostly big farms and not many people.”
In addition to its Sunday morning services, members also gather at 6 o’clock Sunday night and a prayer meeting is at 10 a.m. on Wednesdays.
“We have a family fun night on a Saturday every other month,” Voorhees said. “We get together for a Christian movie, games and just to visit.” A fellowship dinner is on a Sunday in alternate months.
For as tiny a congregation as Northcott has, its members persevere in their commitment to support mission programs, foreign and domestic.
“Last year we helped (financially) build a church in Kenya and this year we’re providing food for a Navajo reservation in Arizona,” Voorhees recounted. “Actually, we’re very active in Arizona and go there every year, sometimes twice a year.”
All together the church has a role in missions in 14 countries — flags of each are above a world map hanging within the church. She mentioned helping an evangelistic minister in Russia and that the church had been “active in the Philippines for the past 30 to 35 years.”
