First Christian Church of Luling

The Christians at Luling belonged to a movement that set up a statewide missionary society only in the 1880s. The Texas Christian Missionary Society was organized at Austin in 1886, and its first corresponding secretary, A. J. Bush, a Confederate veteran from Missouri, had earlier preached at Luling and Lockhart and led the society for about nine years. A quarrel over the new society and over instrumental music in worship divided Texas Disciples, and by 1906 conservatives broke off as the Church of Christ. Luling's congregation was organized in 1892, in the middle of those years.

What the plaque says

First Christian Church of Luling Eula Nichols moved from a farm near Austin to Luling in 1891 to attend school. She persuaded the rev. A. J. Bush to hold a revival service here in 1892. As a result, First Christian Church was organized with the Rev. G. S. Kimberly serving as resident minister. The congregation purchased the lower level of a local Masonic Lodge where they held services until 1946. A sanctuary, built at this site in 1947, burned and was replaced with a new building in 1979. The church sponsors a variety of youth programs and remains active in local and foreign outreach activities. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palmetto State Park — 6.8 mi
  Dwarf palmettos, bogs and a spring-fed oxbow on the San Marcos River, with CCC stonework from the 1930s, a swamp an hour from Austin and San Antonio.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 14 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Gonzales Memorial Museum — 17 mi
  A 1937 Centennial museum for the Immortal Thirty-two who died at the Alamo, holding the small iron cannon Gonzales calls its Come and Take It gun and the Handbook calls a second one.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 22 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.

More markers nearby

• City of Luling — 0.2 mi
• First Baptist Church of Luling — 0.2 mi
• Edgar B. Davis, Oil Pioneer-Philanthropist — 0.3 mi
• Episcopal Church of the Annunciation — 0.3 mi