They Didn’t Want Their Church to Close

For more than a hundred years the Dayton Bellevue Christian Church (originally called First Christian Church) has held services at the corner of 8^th and Walnut streets in Dayton. In the fall of 2005 that seemed to be over. The church leadership decided to close the church and donate the building to another ministry. The attendance had steadily fallen since the church had merged with the Bellevue Christian Church in the late 1990s. It made sense to close the church because of the pressing need for repairs and the dwindling congregation.

That is, it made sense to everyone except for a group who had been at the church since the 1940’s.To Barb Gibbons, Hobe Milner, Annice Wilson, Alma Campoamor, Shirley Bishop and her daughter Debbie Willman it was a devastating blow. This had been their church for too many years to see it come to an end.

The church began back in 1899 when Rev. R.D. Harding moved from Bellevue to start the church at 8^th and Walnut. Rev. Harding sent out 60,000 letters requesting a small contribution to every state. In the letter Rev. Harding asked members from Odd Fellows and Masons to “… [have] at least as many as ten of your members give 10 cents or more each and send it to us at once.” In this novel way the church was paid for and the first service was held in the sanctuary on September 28 1902.

The small group that wanted to keep the church going contacted Mike Sweeney the minister at the Latonia Christian Church for advice on keeping the church open. Rev. Sweeney arranged for Dave Wells one of the elders of his church to hold services until the group could decide what to do. Dave Wells is an enthusiastic ex police officer who directs the Criminal Justice program at ITT Tech in Norwood OH. At the time the Dean at ITT Tech was Tony Hayes. Tony had served as a minister at various churches for more than twenty-five years. In 1998 he left the fulltime ministry to work as a college administrator working at a number of colleges including Southern Ohio College in Ft Mitchell and Thomas More College before working with ITT. In the fall of 2005 Tony and his wife Linda had decided that it was time to go back to the ministry. So when Dave Wells told Tony about the church in Dayton the wheels began to turn. Tony met with the group that wanted to save the church and was invited to become their new minister. Since then the church has grown from the original six to nearly sixty. The church services are: Sunday Morning 10:30 and Wednesday Evening at 6:30. Every first Friday night of each month the church holds a free concert at 7:30. To contact the church, call 859.431.7711.