Commemorative Church Plates

I was fortunate enough to take a picture of our church
plate before its demise.

I’ve seen church plates here and there, especially at thrift stores, but I never have given much thought to them. Most of the churches that I’ve attended in my life have been newer churches. Or if I did go to church in an old building, it wasn't the original church. 

It wasn’t until I started.until I started going to an old church a few years ago and saw the plate that they had that I began to appreciate this old tradition. 

That church is called Clearview United Methodist. It was established in 1910 but the current building was built a few decades later. When I first attended, we had a church plate, but we no longer do. More about that below.

Commemorative church plates began as early as the 1890s and made in Germany, but they were mostly popular in the 1940s through the 1970s in the United States. 

Today my interest in church plate history was born at the thrift store when I found this other one below. I was at the Salvation Army and stumbled upon it for just $3.99. And while I don't attend St. Lukes, they are part of what is called the South Pinellas Connection, of which I'm a part of. It's four different churches that share pastors, a secretary and other expenses and participate in events together. Since Clearview is part of that group I thought I'd pick it up for them.

I was thrilled to find this today at the thrift store!

My plan for the plate was to just wash it up and give it to my pastor to take to the St. Lukes Building. But then things got really interesting. I looked on the back and saw some very different markings. I was able to Google the images and got some amazing results.

The old fashioned marking in the middle was stamped when the plate was made by The Homer Laughlin Company. "Rhythm" was the style of plate. That's all Homer Laughlin did was make the blank plate. There were no markings on it except for most likely the gold edging. The "H" stands for the month of August (A being January, B being February and so on). The "55" was the year that it was made. "N" stood for the factory, which was in Newell, West Virginia. And the "4" was the building in which it was fired. How cool is that!

After the blank plates were made, they were sent to the World Wide Art Studio in Covington, TN some time later. Churches would then submit the artword and order plates as fundraisers. A little information was added on the back about the church to commemorate the piece.

I am thrilled to have found not only this plate but all this information. I hope they treasure it over at St. Lukes as much as I do!

People Are More Important Than Things

So what happened to Clearview's Church Plate? Simply put, it got broken. It was proudly displayed in a prominent area of the church, and someone accidentally bumped the shelf that held it and it toppled over and cracked.

But the most important thing is this: that person who broke the plate was in church that morning. He or she heard the good news of Jesus. Their life has been changed. And that's what church is really all about.  Commemorative plates are so nice to have. Those reminders of earlier days are such a treasure. But they're nothing compared to a human soul.

I have a search set up on eBay and I look at thrift stores, hoping to replace it. Perhaps one day I'll find one. But if not, that's okay. I'm so glad that we have people in the building who knock over plates and love Jesus.