You may be wondering why I’m up here to speak about the history of our church, especially since my wife, Faye, was up here last month. Let me try to explain.

Some 40 years ago, (and I’m not going to count) I was from another church, another part of the county, when I married that young lady who grew up in this church, and I, not knowing until recently that my ties here were just as strong as hers. 

My great, great grandparents, Lewis and Sarah Tickle were members of this church. Their son, Julius Tickle was the first person buried in our cemetery. My great, great grandfather’s brother, Michael Tickle, not only sold some of the land to the church, he also served on some pretty important committees during this phase of Bethlehem.

A lot was going on from 1857-1882 in our nation and here at Bethlehem. If you close your eyes, you can imagine the talk in the fields of this farming community as our State seceded from the Union, as moms and dads sent their sons to fight, and as the community prayed for the return of their boys who went into battle. 

We don’t have a lot in the record books about Bethlehem’s direct involvement, but we know that Alfred Iseley was pastor here from 1861-1876, and he was a strong supporter of the Southern cause. His oldest sons went to fight, and he himself was known to have fiery sermons directed at those who did not respond to the call to arms. 

Reverend Iseley continued to serve the church for 11 years after the end of the war, and Julian Hughes, in an article published in the Times-News on June 14, 1956, said of Alfred Iseley “His inspiring sermons did much to keep the morale of the dejected intact during the Reconstruction days.”

With transportation and manufacturing destroyed and able-bodied mend in short supply, you can easily imagine that post-war Reconstruction was a struggle in many ways across the South, and church finances were no exception. The money problems of the local churches were tackled in an interesting way that may seem foreign to our way of thinking about church and money. Then in October 1866, North Carolina and Virginia Christian Conference passed a resolution proposed by Elder J. N. Manning, the man for whom Manning Avenue in Elon is named. It was designed to remedy the financial crisis and to encourage members to take seriously the Christian duty of tithing.

The resolution required every church in the conference at its next quarterly meeting to:
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. . . appoint a judicious Committee to three or five, who shall proceed to assess each member of the Church, male and female, according to his or her ability, to pay an amount sufficient to meet all the expenses of the Church; the amount thus assessed to be paid quarterly to the Collector and the Treasurer of the Church” and “that any Church that fails to do her duty in this matter shall be censured therefore.

Where people are liberal enough to throw in and support the cause without assessment, the plan may be of little service, but where the close-fisted policy of many men is taken into some considerable degree in every church, the assessment plan is the only just and equitable way of managing church enterprises. Let us consider an example.  A number of people have associated themselves together as a church for worship and advancement of the divine life. There is quite an expense in keeping up the church. In the membership are two brethren, each worth $2,000.00. One is liberal, the other very close. Without an assessment, one will pay $10.00 a year; the other will pay $2.00 a year. Now, is there any justice in one paying $10.00 a year and the other paying $2.00 a year? 'Certainly not. Now the assessment plan seeks to remedy such an unfair and unequal distribution of the financial burdens.