Dillon
Colorado
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Dillon Community Church
The town of Dillon was established in 1883 as a mining community and railroad stop. In 1910, the town built a new stone school house which left vacant the white, one-room, clapboard school house. In 1912, the Dillon Ladies Aid Society decided that the town needed a church for such public functions as weddings, funerals, community gatherings and to accommodate the occasional traveling preachers who came through the area. Thus, they bought the building from the town for $1.00.
For the next forty years or so, church life was sporadic in this rural, mountainous, wintry town of mining, trains, skiers and hunters. Communities such as Dillon and Frisco were small (30-75 people), and the people were generally disinterested in religion. For almost twenty years from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, in addition to the occasional itinerants already mentioned, some highly dedicated women used the building to house part of the children’s Sunday School Movement in this region. These woman were not allowed to lead worship services or to preach, but they could gather up children from miles around and teach them Bible lessons.
During the Sunday School Movement the consistent use of the building changed to teaching the gospel rather than just for occasional community events. But there was still no pastor and no congregation. Just about anybody who wanted to use the building for a religious or social purpose was welcome to do so if they were reasonably respectable.
In the late 1950’s, an organization called Village Missions targeted Dillon as one of its mission fields. Village Missions provides full-time pastors to rural communities which do not have a strong gospel witness and are not big enough to support financially a pastoral family. A Village Missions pastor is a Bible school or seminary graduate who has a heart for rural, unreached areas and who brings 50% of his financial support with him. In these years, such pastors often ministered alone in a community that viewed him as an outsider. The duty was difficult, and the lengths of stay were short; sometimes less than a year.
For the next forty years or so, church life was sporadic in this rural, mountainous, wintry town of mining, trains, skiers and hunters. Communities such as Dillon and Frisco were small (30-75 people), and the people were generally disinterested in religion. For almost twenty years from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, in addition to the occasional itinerants already mentioned, some highly dedicated women used the building to house part of the children’s Sunday School Movement in this region. These woman were not allowed to lead worship services or to preach, but they could gather up children from miles around and teach them Bible lessons.
During the Sunday School Movement the consistent use of the building changed to teaching the gospel rather than just for occasional community events. But there was still no pastor and no congregation. Just about anybody who wanted to use the building for a religious or social purpose was welcome to do so if they were reasonably respectable.
In the late 1950’s, an organization called Village Missions targeted Dillon as one of its mission fields. Village Missions provides full-time pastors to rural communities which do not have a strong gospel witness and are not big enough to support financially a pastoral family. A Village Missions pastor is a Bible school or seminary graduate who has a heart for rural, unreached areas and who brings 50% of his financial support with him. In these years, such pastors often ministered alone in a community that viewed him as an outsider. The duty was difficult, and the lengths of stay were short; sometimes less than a year.