Garnett ? This was no church raising.

But the Brethren pitched in to get about 220,000 pounds of church moving about 2 mph.

The old white church had been sitting on a quiet country corner 12 miles west of Garnett since 1889. But the Cedar Creek Old German Baptist Brethren meeting house got moving Friday  with lots of help from the congregation.

After days of preparation that included putting the building on jetliner-sized wheels, Eldon Flory and his Jamesport, Mo., moving crew, hooked a small Caterpillar tractor and a truck to one end of the building and slowly dragged it onto an Anderson County gravel road. Crews from the Lyon-Coffey County Electric Co. cleared the way by raising power lines and removing support cables.

They had quite an audience, totaling about 150 people.

Church members, lots of excited children and just curious neighbors turned the move into an early-morning social.

Male Brethren pitched in, moving boards in front of the big tires to make smoother the buildings’ path onto the gravel. After the first mile, two of the younger church members, Mary Sue Shilling and Kara Flory, handed out soft drinks to the workmen and onlookers from a big orange cooler. Others, like Heidi Filbrun, had no problem getting takers from her tray of home-made cinnamon buns.

Wayne and Lois Flory drove from their home in rural Baldwin to watch the one-church parade.

“My folks, Harve and Elsie, brought me over here to services in 1924 when I was still in diapers,” Wayne recalled, looking through his camera at the passing church.

There were lots of cameras taking pictures to be sent to friends and family who missed the move.

The old meeting house has been replaced by a larger building on the same corner. The first services in the new facility were last Sunday.

The old building was purchased and moved through donations from the congregation. Now sitting on donated land, three miles north of its original site, it will be used for potluck dinners and “young folk” and singing gatherings.