The Christian line: Harris Prairie Church of Christ

DOCUMENTED 1955–2012 · PRESENT SEAT UNSETTLED IN THE RECORD

Howard's third church — "the Christian" — is the Restoration Movement congregation that the later record knows by the prairie's own name: the Harris Prairie Church of Christ, a Christian Church/Church of Christ congregation of the movement that took its congregations out of the frontier revivals and named them simply Christian. Its documented course in the press and denominational record runs a full lifetime. In December 1955 the South Bend Tribune carried the legal notice of the election of trustees of the Harris Prairie Church of Christ, the election to be held at the church in January 1956, with L. O. Longley named as trustee — an organized congregation, holding property and electing trustees in the ordinary corporate form, with a building to meet in by the mid-1950s. In July 1970 the Restoration Herald, the movement's own paper, counted the congregation as the home church of James W. Greenwood, a minister reared near South Bend. In the mid-1980s the same paper's ministry notices place a youth minister on its staff — Todd Hudson, who served as youth minister at Harris Prairie Church of Christ in Granger before accepting a traveling evangelist's call in 1986 — the mark of a congregation large enough to carry a second staff man. The Tribune's anniversary columns put the congregation at work as the neighborhood's celebration hall across the subdivision decades: a fiftieth anniversary open house in 2003, a fortieth in 2002. In August 2007 the press of record places a funeral at the church and gives its address: 14719 State Road 23. In August 2012 the congregation hosted a national touring concert, the City Harmonic's I Have a Dream tour, on August 18 — a congregation still seating crowds in its own building five years after the funeral notice. The federal geographic record carries the congregation as a named feature, Harris Prairie Church, in the township's church geography. Then the record forks, and the fork is printed whole: the building at 14719 State Road 23 is today the campus of Nfluence Church, whose own site gives that address as its own; and current directories carry the Harris Prairie Church of Christ at both 14719 State Road 23 and at 52153 Clover Trail, under the same telephone number, (574) 272-2069. Whether the congregation sold its State Road 23 building to the younger church and removed to a smaller seat on Clover Trail, or closed and left its directory ghost behind, the record reached by this section does not say: the congregation keeps no reachable website of its own in that record, and the question is printed as a named gap. Settler: the congregation's own current listing and officers, and the Christian Church/Church of Christ directories carried by the Christian Standard's church locator, which track congregations of this movement year by year.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, December 2, 1955 — legal notice, election of trustees of the Harris Prairie Church of Christ (L. O. Longley, trustee).
2. The Restoration Herald (Christian Restoration Association), July 1970 — James W. Greenwood's home church; and the 1992 Herald ministry profile — Todd Hudson's youth ministry at Harris Prairie and his 1986 call.
3. South Bend Tribune anniversary columns, 2002 and 2003 — open houses at Harris Prairie Church of Christ, Granger.
4. Legacy/South Bend Tribune obituary record, August 2007 — funeral at Harris Prairie Church of Christ, 14719 SR 23.
5. HM Magazine and PRLog tour announcements, June 2012 — the City Harmonic at Harris Prairie Church of Christ, Granger, August 18, 2012.
6. U.S. Geological Survey, Geographic Names Information System — Harris Prairie Church and Harris Prairie Cemetery as named features.
7. Current directory listings for Harris Prairie Church of Christ (14719 State Road 23 and 52153 Clover Trl, Granger; (574) 272-2069), printed as the conflicting record they are.