Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 25, 1993                   TAG: 9307230046
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY  
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS
DATELINE: INDIAN VALLEY                                LENGTH: Long

INDIAN VALLEY CHURCH WAS DEAD, BUT LIVES AGAIN

Yet at Indian Valley Presbyterian Church on Sunday, worshipers had traveled these roads - as I had - all the way from the Roanoke Valley or from Floyd, Christiansburg or Blacksburg an hour or more away.

They came, they said, to the pretty white church on a knoll on Virginia 754 out of family loyalty, admiration for the pastor, the Rev. Bryan Childress, and a sense that they are needed as a Presbyterian presence.

Indian Valley is a church that died briefly and lives again.

With summer flowers tended by members brightening the front lawn beside the entrance ramp and a commercial-style sign advertising the revival services that start today, it is hard to believe that six years ago, as Childress put it, "They didn't have enough money to pay the light bill" and the picturesque little white building was put up for sale.

Indian Valley church was part of the former Fincastle Presbytery then, and I was covering its meeting in the spring of 1987. An amazing - some said miraculous - item of business to reopen the church was on the agenda.

Over the six months following the closure, some former members of the church, long inactive, as well as newcomers to the community got a petition together for reactivation of the congregation.

Childress, a son of the community who had retired from full-time ministry after a long pastorate in the Marion area, was serving temporarily the Slate Mountain Presbyterian Church a half-hour's drive away.

Six years later, Childress - at 72 still tall, straight and energetic - continues to drive about the mountains in his pickup truck conducting services at Slate Mountain at 10 a.m. and at Indian Valley 16 miles away at 11:30.

His promise to serve Indian Valley Presbyterians at the re-opened church if they would commit themselves to regular attendance and sacrificial support has been kept. Since news of the renewed congregation hit the presbytery meeting more than six years ago, Indian Valley no longer needs to be considered a chapel of Slate Mountain.

Sunday, 29 adults and six children were present when Childress arrived just in time for his second service of the morning. Attendance was said to be off.

All don't all come from the rolling hills and valleys of western Floyd. Jerri Hubbard, a Slate Mountain-area woman now going to school and working in Blacksburg, drives down regularly to play the piano, the only source of music.

Gertrude Phillips grew up in Indian Valley but now lives in Christiansburg. A greeter at the door, she comes out of loyalty to her deceased mother and other relatives.

James Flinchum drives from Riner. His mother, long active in the old Indian Valley Presbyterian Church, is remembered in a stained-glass window installed not long before the 1986 closing.

Childress, the pastor, is a son of the Rev. Robert Childress, a Buffalo Mountain native who grew up to become a legend in the Floyd-Carroll-Patrick areas. Subject of a book, "The Man Who Moved a Mountain," he organized several rural congregations and once was pastor of Indian Valley.

Indian Valley Presbyterians worship in a block building erected in 1946. Records show it had 75 members then. Many factors, Childress indicated, contributed to the decline which closed the church in the 1980s. With the merger of Southern and Northern Presbyterian churches several years ago, Indian Valley chose its old affiliation with Abingdon Presbytery whose headquarters are in Wytheville.

"At the time of the reopening, a few of the people who had voted to close said they needed a chance to make amends for not supporting the church," the pastor said. "I didn't work on the guilt."

Instead, members do a lot of community visiting; they go weekly when possible and have intensified this in preparation for the revival meeting at which the pastor and three guests will preach.

A sojourner to Indian Valley finds a warm welcome. Signs at confusing crossroads are helpful. A ramp has been added for those who can't climb the front steps, but the building with its limited social and teaching space in the basement is hardly up to full accessibility, the pastor noted.

Being operated on a tiny budget, the church has no secretary to prepare bulletins, no choir and no organ, but five little girls sang their best about Jesus having "the whole world in his hands." At the pastor's suggestion, the congregation applauded heartily.

Childress was both song leader and principal male singer during the three hymns from a 1976 revised version of "The New Church Hymnal." He began the service at 11:35 with a short responsive reading on "Abundant Life" and developed this theme in his Scripture reading from John 10 and in his sermon.

Hymns, "He is So Precious to Me," "Showers of Blessing" and "Amazing Grace" - all six verses - were sung at intervals throughout the 55-minute service. I missed the Doxology, as characteristic of Presbyterians as the Bible and pulpit.

Indian Valley Presbyterian has no air conditioning, nor was it needed, with breezes from the open windows and three overhead fans. Most men were coatless.

Unpadded pews were shiny and the green carpet and stained-glass windows picked up the colors of pines and black-eyed susans visible in the meadows beside the church. Birds twittered except when an occasional car passed on the winding road.

Childress preached for 15 minutes on the value Jesus' "abundant life" can bring to modern folk, who so often think they don't need it. This lack of concern for God's providence is coupled with indifference to the needs of others and is a major frustration of Christians today, both clergy and laity, in both cities and the country, the pastor said.

He offered no ready solution for this indifference but reminded his congregation that Christ was a social activist, a healer and a responder to any individual need.

For the future, church leaders have bought a small home and are seeking a pastor young enough to continue mission development.

Sunday Sojourner appears monthly in the New River Current. Its purpose is not to promote a particular point of view but to inform readers of a variety of worship styles.