United Brethren Church

United Brethren Church.—The United Brethren Church of Greenville, Pa., was organized in March, 1875, by electing David Renninger, class-leader, and A. P. Hill, steward. Rev. C. E. Price was pastor. A board of trustees was elected by the Quarterly Conference of Sugar Grove Mission, to negotiate for and purchase a church property for the use of the society in Greenville; and the property formerly owned by the Covenanter Church, on Third street, west side, was purchased.  This church, though late, comes to fill her humble mission, to do her part in promoting the revival of true religion, and to aid in every moral reform. 

The history of this church is, substantially, a history of revivals of religion. More than a hundred years ago, when vital religion was at a low ebb in America, among the older and well-established churches, William Otterbein, a missionary from Germany to the German Reformed Church of the United States, and a contemporary of Bishops Coke and Asbury, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, preached and exemplified vital godliness, and called upon his parishioners to live better lives than they then did. This led to persecution; and, finally, exclusion of the ministers from their churches; but he did not abate his zeal one jot, but continued to show the people their sins, and to exhort them to flee the wrath to come. Many large meetings were held in the open air, where other ministers, of like zeal and faith, united with him, principal among whom was Martin Boehm, formerly of the Mennonite Society.

Otterbein was, at this time (1774), pastor of a congregation in Baltimore, Md., which had been reformed and remodeled from the old standard. The constitution and by-laws governing this congregation, which were most whole some and Scriptural, were adopted almost literally, and incorporated into the Constitution and Discipline of the Church of United Brethren in Christ. Mr. Otterbein and his congregation were merged in the latter, with other co-laborers and their congregations.

The first conference of ministers was held in Baltimore, in 1789; another one in 1791, and another in September, 1800, when the church was fairly organized, bearing its present name.

In 1815, the General Conference was held, which drafted the original discipline. The itinerant system of ministry was adopted—quarterly, annual and general conferences, with presiding elders and bishops, or superintendents, to oversee the general work and preside. 

Churches in Greenville in the 1800s

The polity of the church is non-Episcopal. There is but one order of ministers, except as officers. Appointments are usually made by committees, and delegates to the General Conference are elected from among the elders, by a popular vote of the members.

We have a Home, Frontier, and Foreign Missionary Society, with missions and missionaries in Africa and Germany abroad, and in nearly all the States and Territories of the Union, and in Canada, in a very flourishing condition. We have twelve academies and colleges in the several States, and one Biblical Seminary, at Dayton, Ohio, all in fine working order, ably manned and conducted.

Rev. C. E. Price was appointed by conference to another charge, and Rev. David Kosht succeeded him, October 1st, 18Th. Rev. Kosht also has charge of a congregation in Sugar Grove township, at Kennard Post-office, and also another in West Salem township.

The present [1877] number of members of the Greenville Church is thirty. A Sabbath-school was organized in the spring of 1875. It has at this time (October, 1876) eight teachers and officers, and thirty scholars, and a small library of fifty volumes. Kennard Church has a membership of about twenty; West Salem Church has about thirty members, and a Sabbath-school, with nine officers and teachers, and about fifty scholars.

History of Mercer County, 1877, pages 99-100.