“The Wooden Baptistery Cross”
SANDY SPRINGS CHRISTIAN CHURCH
35th Anniversary Celebration, September 10, 1995
by Rev. Linda S. Whitmire

This old wooden cross above our baptistery has seen 21 years of life in this sanctuary. It has presided over 1634 services of worship; over a minimum of 1200 weddings (according to Jayne Leslie-Huybenz and former minister Al Widener, this sanctuary was considered THE place to be married in its earlier years with 3, 4, or 5 weddings in one week not uncommon).

The cross has witnessed over 400 persons step into its baptismal waters, given its blessing to 17 persons sent forth from this church into ordained ministry, and offered its silent message of hope for as many as 200 services of remembrance observed in this place. It has seen this congregation through our times of woundedness and our times of healing; our times of pulling apart and our times of coming together. It has kept faithful watch over each individual who has come into this room in the quiet of mid-week to pray, to dream, to weep.

It has appeared from behind 20 Christmas trees to remind us during our holiday celebrations of the reason, the real reason, we celebrate at all. It has worn the black drape of mourning on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday vigils, and lifted its proud empty beams in joyful hallelujahs for 21 Easter Sundays. It is our own old rugged cross: the centerpiece of our sanctuary, the focus of our heritage, our claim, our calling, our future.

Once its beams supported the walls of a small log cabin that served as home to a Cherokee Indian and as an Indian Trading Post for those making their way down the various trails that led to the river and Johnson’s Ferry. This simple but sturdy log building was one of the earliest structures in this area of Georgia and stood where now our paper recycling bin stands, near the exit from our property onto Abernathy Road.

Some time after the infamous trail of tears, a succession of families lived in what had been the old log cabin, each one expanding it by building over and around it another wooden structure. Along the way one family who called it home painted it red, but with time and disuse the red faded to a dusty rose, and it was this faded rose wooden house that first became a part of the history of Sandy Springs Christian Church.

The late Bill Smith, one of our first Senior Honorary Elders, had purchased the funny looking wooden house and the five acres on which it stood in the early 1960’s as a speculative land investment. But when the original property and home of Sandy Springs Christian on Roswell Road was to be sold, he offered this land at cost to the church for their new building site.

During the planning and construction of the new church when the Sandy Springs congregation met in borrowed space at the Baptist Church on the corner of Glenridge and Mt. Vernon, the little wooden house stood abandoned with its history hidden within. When worshippers first met in the new sanctuary on December 19, 1971, it remained in its spot in the far corner of the property and became instantly adopted by the youth as theirs.

The next year it was transformed into a marvelous haunted house for Halloween, housed one man for several weeks in his transition from the federal penitentiary to life on the outside (a part of the prison ministry of this congregation), and continued to be a gathering place for the small but committed group of young people who were a part of our history in those years.

But the time came when the old house had to be removed to make way for parking expansion. It was then that the original log cabin was discovered prompting Herb Leslie, pastor at that time, to research the rich history of this location and discover the story of the old Indian Trading Post. As the structure gave way to the wrecking crew, the strong beams – perhaps over two hundred years old – of the original log cabin were revealed and an idea was born.

Jack Thayer, a retired IBM executive and a skilled craftsman in wood, decided to present a gift to the church created from those old and sturdy beams. It would be an enduring reminder of not only the church’s connection to the history of this property but would connect it to the far older story of which this church is a part. He would make from two of the old log beams a cross to be hung above the baptistery of the new sanctuary.

With chains, he distressed the old beams to evoke the image of a far older cross; and the old rugged cross of Sandy Springs came to life. With the help of some of the youth, Jack hoisted the cross in place above the Baptistery and secured it. And on a September Sunday morning, 1974, it began its faithful vigil over the people of this congregation.

And so it remains: performing its task of reminding us of that which is enduring and central about who we are called to be: a people of hope, a people redeemed, a people with a story to live and share and grow. The cross performs its role well. And calls us ever forward into the future God wills for those who have called Sandy Springs Christian Church home.

*Information for this article was obtained in consultation with Howard Edwards, Herb Leslie, Bill Davenport, and Al Widener with special information and input from Jayne Leslie-Huybenz.