St. John's United Methodist Church

The charter member who lent his theater was Preston Smith, who came to Lubbock from Lamesa and finished Texas Technological College in 1934. He married Ima Smith, no relation, whom he had sat beside in an alphabetized class. Theaters and real estate gave him the name recognition to win a Texas House seat in 1944. He moved to the state Senate in 1956, became lieutenant governor in 1962 and was inaugurated governor on January 16, 1969, the first West Texan elected to the office. He signed the law creating Tech's medical school and died in Lubbock in 2003.

What the plaque says

St. John's United Methodist Church Established in 1939, St. John's was at first announced by Methodist Bishop Ivan Lee Holt to be located one mile south of campus to serve faculty and students of Texas Technological College. Several methodist faculty members, encouraged by Sallie Maud Horn, widow of Texas Tech's first president Paul W. Horn, petitioned for a site, closer to campus. The bishop agreed and work began to find a temporary site for church gatherings. Preston Smith, a charter member of the new church and later Governor of Texas, was approached about lending the Tech Theater, a motion picture theater, for worship services. The Rev. R. Luther Kirk was appointed to lead "the church that was not," and the first service was held at the theater on December 10, 1939. St. John's continued to meet in the Tech Theater or occasionally in Seaman Hall, the Episcopal Student Center, until September 15, 1940, when services were first held in the new church building at 14th and Avenue X. Soon after, the congregation required more space and a new sanctuary was built in 1952 on University Avenue. With a slogan of "Open Hearts, Open Arms, Open Minds," St. John's has been a congregation with a tremendous sense of civic responsibility and deep concern for those in need. Activities and Programs have included assisting migrant workers in the 1950s and 60s with child care at the Migrant Day Center, making health kits, providing health screening clinics for the community in the 1960s and 70s, and numerous mission trips. Since the 1970s, the St. John's/St. Paul's Benevolence Program has focused on feeding the hungry. Imbued with a "loving energy," St. John's will continue to meet challenges with a spiritual and social conscience. (2019)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Ranching Heritage Center — 1.0 mi
  A Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.
• Buddy Holly Center — 1.6 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.
• American Windmill Museum — 2.7 mi
  Lubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.
• Lubbock Lake Landmark — 3.0 mi
  A bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.

More markers nearby

• Home Management House Program, School of Home Economics — steps away
• Texas Tech Alumni Association — 0.2 mi
• First Baptist Church of Lubbock — 0.4 mi
• Texas Tech Judging Pavilion — 0.4 mi