The Little Church

Everything about the brand-new Disciples of Christ church that was dedicated in Dallas last Sunday is appropriate and pretty. Its walls are soft pink adobe brick, its sprucewood ceiling is vaulted and beamed with fir, its windows are of stained glass, its altar of carved oak. There is only one unconventional thing about it: the Little Church is only 21 ft. by 40 ft. and all its appointments are scaled to size. For its membership of 65 is composed entirely of children from six to twelve.

The Little Church began 13 years ago, when a Dallas adman named Frank D. Brimm organized a group within the congregation of the Central Christian Church to build a 15-ft.-by-20-ft. white frame church as an experiment in religious education. It was an unqualified success, and when Central Christian moved in 1951 a fund was started to build another Little Church. Eventually $10,000 was raised--some of it contributed in the memory of Founder Brimm, who had died.

Oldsters worried at first that the children would indulge in more didoes than devotions, but they were soon impressed. "They do not play," says Mrs. Ilene Timmerman, 48, leader of the Little Church. "Sometimes they are more serious than we are." They lead their own prayers ("It might be anything from 'thank you for the new kitty at home' to 'thank you for a wonderful world' "), serve their own communion of wafers and grape juice, and pass their own collection plates.

"It is not a matter of entertaining children," said "Miss Ilene" last week. "It is a matter of training them. It instills a desire to go to church. If we can achieve that, we have achieved something."

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