Big Springs ? John Conard remembers the first time he walked into Big Springs United Methodist Church.

After the initial surprise of being wrapped up in several bearhugs, he felt at home.

“I sometimes tell my friends we’re not a hand-shaking church; we’re a hugging church,” says Conard, who lives in Lawrence. “We’re all such close friends. It was a shock at first when I got all those hugs that day. But then I realized that’s just the way they are.”

No doubt there will be more hugs than usual going around Sunday, when the church celebrates its 150th anniversary with a special service and other events aimed at remembering the church’s founding.

“This is an exciting time in the history of the church,” says Mary Saville, a church member. “It’s amazing what they had to go through to keep their world going, let alone all the politics and the founding of the church.”

The congregation was founded in 1856 as the first United Brethren church in Kansas. At the time, Big Springs, located 12 miles west of Lawrence on U.S. Highway 40, was a spot where travelers on the Oregon Trail would stop for water.

Despite being located near the pro-slavery towns of Lecompton and Tecumseh, Big Springs became a center for Free State activity. The Free State party had its convention there in September 1855, and the Rev. W.A. Cardwell, the church’s first pastor, was confronted several times by armed pro-slavery men.

Cardwell also took a stand against liquor in Kansas Territory, leading his parishioners into the town saloon and smashing whiskey barrels.

The original church site, located just across Highway 40 from the current site, burned in 1892. After several years of uncertainty – and apparently without meeting – the congregation moved an abandoned church in Whiting to Big Springs in 1898. That building sufficed until 1932, when a new church was built debt-free during the Great Depression.

The United Brethren church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1946 and became the United Methodist Church in 1968.

“It makes me feel very humble to think of what they went through to establish this place,” Saville says. “They couldn’t have done it without God.”

Today, the congregation has about 100 members. Most of the people live near Big Springs, now a small unincorporated community and a shadow of its former self, but some drive from Lawrence and Topeka.

The church participates in food drives and does other mission projects through the year.

Johnny Trammel, a member since 1992, says he used to go to a large Topeka church before deciding to try Big Springs United Methodist Church.

“Once my wife took me to this church, it changed my heart,” he says. “I’d bet you money, marbles or chalk that this church will be here in another 150 years.”