West Peoria Residents' Association

   The West Bluff Christian Church-always reaching out to the community around it-leaves a legacy of ministries, two of which were unique.  From 1949 into the late 1950s, West Bluff Christian provided Thanksgiving dinners to which Bradley University's foreign students from countries such as Holland, Japan, Belgium, Iraq, Korea, Russia, Columbia, Jordan, and China were invited.  Active in this effort were Dr. Lawrence Lew, a well-known Bradley professor, and his family-all members of the church.

   Probably the most well-known of West Bluff Christian's ministries is Common Place-begun in the 1960s and incorporated in 1967 under the directorship of West Bluff member, Richard Tunks.  The Howett Street Christian Church building is the headquarters for this comprehensive inner city ministry of neighborhood development, emergency care, and pre-school education.  The building was purchased from the church in 1993 for $1.

   In 1936 the West Bluff Messenger became a monthly and later a weekly newsletter of the church that was published until 1951.

   In 1933 West Bluff offered its first Vacation Church School, the largest in the city that year with over 200 children in attendance.  Also, in the 1930s, a strong Christian Endeavor association for young people was also active at West Bluff, and one of its pastors was the chief sponsor of the Peoria Christian Youth Council for college-age young people-an organization that sponsored many interdenominational and interracial events in the city.

   From the earliest years, West Bluff Christian Church and West Peoria always enjoyed a special relationship.  According to the church's historical records, "What had begun as a rather natural association with the neighborhood when West Bluff was the only church had become slowly and surely an intentional pattern of ministry to the growing vicinity." The 1948 church yearbook states that the church "seeks to serve the community of West Peoria and its surrounding territory."

   The church even became a place to which West Peorians were invited for an evening's entertainment.  Organized in January 1931 as a way to raise money for the church's building debt, the West Peoria Fellowship Club was organized by the men of the church to offer dramatic presentations and other events to area residents-a practice that continued for many years. Over the years the church has invited West Peorians to participate in other social activities such as Quilting Club of the 1940s and 50s and the Senior Citizens' Fellowship begun in 1971.

   In 1941 West Peoria and the church began a special relationship when West Peoria's first Boy Scout troop, sponsored by the church, was founded.  That partnership lasted until the recent closing of the church and has produced one of the strongest scouting programs in central Illinois.

   West Bluff Christian Church has been more than a good neighbor.  Its service to West Peoria includes many activities such as the July 4th Flag Raising Ceremony at the flagpole, the scouting program, the use of the church at election time, and civic meetings held at the church before West Peoria had its own city hall.

   In the late 1990s, West Bluff Church offered West Peorians yet another service by turning a junk room into a library of 3,000 books donated by church members and West Peoria residents. Others donated books, bookshelves, carpeting, a computer, a TV, and their time to staff the small library. In 2001 Marge McCaughey, the person most responsible for establishing and maintaining this library, was awarded the Studs Terkel Humanities award-a bronze medallion- by the West Peoria City Council.  McCaughey was also instrumental in the founding of Common Place and tutored West Bluff children at the church. According to the Peoria Journal Star, the Terkel award-"named after an oral historian who chronicled the extraordinary accomplishments of ordinary Americans and is given to those whose efforts often go unnoticed- was awarded to about eighty others in the state through the Illinois Humanities Council.

   Historical events in the United States played a role in the history of West Bluff Christian Church.  Both Prohibition-instituted by the Volstead Act, which became the 18th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution on January 29, 1919-and the repeal of Prohibition through the passage of the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933, were studied and debated by the West Bluff congregation.  In fact, Mrs. Lulu M. Burner-the woman who influenced the church's move to West Peoria-had been the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, an organization established in the 1870s to fight against the societal ills caused by alcohol.

   During World War I, the West Bluff Chapel joined the missionary and evangelistic efforts to spread the Gospel to soldiers returning from Europe and from American Army Camps.

   Also, the great coal shortage in the winter of 1917-1918-one of the many negative effects of the war-forced the West Bluff Chapel and other churches to close down or curtail their services until warmer weather returned.

   The Great Depression, begun with the collapse of the stock market in 1929, came right at the time the West Bluff congregation was building a church on top of the basement church at Kellogg.  In the 1920s, prices were high, some church members were jobless, and some had lost their homes.  However, the church continued raising money to pay off the frequently refinanced mortgage.   Unique fundraisers included "Jitney Dinners"- a meal where each helping cost five cents-and "Womanless Weddings"- popular fundraisers in the Midwest during the 1920s-1950s, featuring a cast of all men dressed for a formal wedding from flower girl to mother of the bride.

    The Great Depression provided the church and this community a most visible symbol of unity-the flagpole, which stands at the northeast corner of the sanctuary-that was a gift from the Civil Works Administration laborers as a gesture of gratitude to the federal government for jobs it provided after the stock market crash.

   In the 1930s West Bluff's minister-Rev. Barnett, who also served as the President of the Peoria Ministerial Association made up of 120 churches in 1936-became a crusader against corruption at a time when organized crime gangs (begun as a result of Prohibition) were active in Peoria and slot machine gambling machines-believed to be detrimental to society-were available in drugstores and grocery stores.  During this era Barnett, his family, and the church received bomb threats and other ominous warnings.  Eventually, the Illinois Liquor Commission banned slot machines from the county.

   During World War II, the first Peorian to enter the U. S. Army under the conscription act was a West Bluff young man, Corporal T. Curtis Cation-a member of West Bluff Christian.  The congregation lost one of its young men-Capt. Max Talbott, a West Point graduate and a Silver Star recipient for bravery on Bataan.  He died of malaria in a Japanese prison camp on Corregidor.

   In the 1950s, through the efforts of the church's Cross and Compass Sunday School Class and the Christian Women's Fellowship, the church provided a home and a new start for World War II refugees, including a husband from the Ukraine and his wife from Poland who had last been in a German detention camp, a Polish-born couple from a European refugee camp, a Czechoslovakian couple, and two Japanese families displaced from California.  Several of these refugees made their homes in West Peoria.

    In the spring of 1972 West Bluff members were gathered at the church for the 100th Anniversary Disciples Women's Work, a celebration involving a dinner and a dance in costumes of the period.  The festivities were interrupted when the group saw great columns of smoke filling the sky from four blocks to the south, where fire destroyed half of the Jumer's Castle Lodge.

   Information for this article was taken, for the most part, from two historical booklets compiled by the West Bluff Christian Church, one covering the era from 1910-1974 and the other the era from 1974-1984.  Some information was taken from issues of the Peoria Journal Star.