By Colleen McFarland Rademaker, Senior Archivist
Last month, while assessing small donations of archival material that accumulated prior to my arrival as senior archivist, I peeked into a manilla envelope. It was one of many in the pile, and I anticipated finding inside it the usual stuff of religious repositories – sermons, worship bulletins, congregational meeting minutes, or a well-worn devotional book. What I saw surprised me. As I reached inside, my hand touched something flat, soft, and wooly on one side. Is that… an athletic letter?
Archival collections are, of course, full of letters exchanged through the mail. But in my experience, athletic letters are not very common. Even in college and university archives, they are rare finds – perhaps because they represent achievement, or perhaps because they are sewn onto jackets and sweaters that never lose their cool vintage vibe. Whatever the reason, an athletic letter is one of the last things I would expect to be donated to the Disciples of Christ Historical Society.
Jeffrey E. (Jeff) Farmer gave us the athletic letter along with clippings, ephemera, and photographs documenting his experiences growing up in Central Christian Church (CCC) in Wichita, Kansas. The collection is a record of the support and guidance he found as a pre-teen and teenager in the community and church of his baptism. In the correspondence that accompanied his donation, he fondly remembers the youth group, youth drama productions, the Boy Scout troop, and the youth basketball team – the source of the athletic letter. He also reflects on the significance of the congregation in his adult life.
“Most importantly, the spiritual foundations I received at CCC marked me for life. I became an ordained minister, a youth pastor, a church planter, a senior pastor, a Bible college president, and a denominational president (with Open Bible Churches). (…) Our family is deeply grateful to the Central Christian Church leadership, and volunteers, who led us to Jesus and to a love for the Bible… and to a love for unchurched people.”
The historic written records of Stone-Campbell congregations provide us with a lot of factual information; all too often, they are silent on the impact of the congregation. In providing a glimpse of congregational life through the eyes of a boy, this collection might help us see our Christian communities and their influence on the young a little differently. It might also prompt us to reconsider congregational record keeping from the perspective of impact.
