The Mission Legacy of Bristow Adventist Church

BRISTOW, OKLA. – “Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it,” said octogenarian June Hurst, laughing about her request to God for something to do for Him to keep her busy during the pandemic. That something became preparing for the Bristow
Seventh-day Adventist Church’s 75th anniversary celebration, which took place on June 28. 

Hurst (who was one of the committee members, along with Frances Fisher Cook, Gayle Putnam East, Laura Baker Weber and typists Tammy Curtis and Caroline Fisher) researched the church’s founding members, which included Cook and Weber’s families, along with the John Groom family. In 1978, Cook’s aunt, Lorena Wilcox, published a book entitled History of the Bristow SDA Church. 

Hurst created an in-depth 24-page history booklet and made and displayed many pictorial historical posters highlighting the past 75 years of church family growth and mission work. Cook laminated tablecloths full of photos of church members and their families from past decades, which now cover the tables in the fellowship hall.  

The church’s history begins with Edwin Butz, who became a Seventh-day Adventist in 1887 when he was about 23 years old. He and his wife served on Pitcairn Island, sailing there on the Adventist schooner Pitcairn in 1895. In the meantime, Butz’s cousin, Effie Seeburger, married Henry Will Fisher. When the Butz family returned to the United States on furlough, they visited the Fisher cousins in Missouri to share the Good News. The Fishers began keeping Sabbath, stopped using pork products (a mainstay in their farm life) and started feeling the slap of ridicule from their extended family members who did not embrace the Adventist message. To ease the conflict, the Fishers bought farm land from a freedman in 1903 in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) and moved there in 1905.

Along with neighbors, John and Hulda Groom—who had settled on land nearby the Fishers in the 1890s—families began worshiping in homes. However, evangelist Harold Williams catapulted the Sabbath keepers to church status after a series of tent meetings in August 1949, when 26 charter members joined the Adventist faith. The December 1949 church clerk’s report stated there were 56 church members, including charter families such as the Bakers, Bresees, Fishers, Murphys and Stubblefields. To accommodate these faithful families, a small brick church was built at the corner of Sixth and Poplar streets in Bristow, where the church remains today in expanded form. The official “Grand Opening” was held on June 24, 1950, with Oklahoma Conference officers attending.

A church school was started in a church classroom in the fall of 1963, with Aleta VanHoose as the sole teacher. Bristow Adventist School still operates, serving students in grades 1-8. It’s now located at the edge of town with its own building and grounds.

The brave legacy to follow God’s Word in the late 1800s has resulted in a church that still supports mission work: at least 40 of the descendants of the charter and founding members have continued to share the gospel at home and around the world as missionaries or student missionaries. The high Sabbath celebration in June included several special guests, including former Bristow church pastor Don Fortner and wife, Joyce, who shared one of her legendary children’s stories. Fortner continued sharing his legacy of incredible piano skills during the services. Another special guest was former Bristow pastor Dale Tunnell, who presented an energetic Sabbath school lesson and the afternoon program: This is Your Life, Bristow! Shane Anderson—part of the extended family of several Bristow church members and lead pastor of Pioneer Memorial Church in Berrien Springs, Mich.—was the main speaker for the worship hour. Anderson remarked that the church has the “highest ratio of church-member-to-international missions” that he has seen in his pastoral ministry: approximately 55 members to 50 countries.

Anderson’s daughter,  Ellie, a returning student missionary from a Bolivian orphanage, gave the opening prayer during Sabbath School and Anthony Sandoval, a frequent visitor, musician and returning youth missionary from Thailand, humbly shared his riveting testimony. The two youth spent this summer as Pentecost 2025 Bible workers in nearby Okmulgee. 

Everyone gathered at Kenny and Debby Fisher’s home for a corn roast and visiting before vespers in their front yard.

Bristow church pastor Andrew Spooner reminded the 180 attendees at the celebration, “our ultimate desire is that we, as God’s people, would be encouraged, revitalized and inspired to redouble our commitment to missionary service, both at home and abroad, and to focus more intentionally on our personal relationships with Jesus and our preparation to meet Him one day very soon when He returns.” 

By Caroline A. Fisher