Lockney Christian College (3): Apparent Troubles

Following five years of successful work as president of Lockney Christian College, G.H.P. Showalter resigned and moved to Bethel, New Mexico, near Portales. He explained that he was going there to help S.W. Smith, a co-founder of the school at Lockney, to establish another school.[1]

In retrospect, this move seems related to a string of events, all of which reflected and made for instability. In 1902, the year Showalter resigned, W.O. Hines, Arthur S. Kennamer, and N.L. Clark purchased Lockney Christian College. The new owners changed the name to Lockney College and Bible School.

The next year, Clark, who was then serving as president, announced that he would be moving to Grayson County, Texas, some 300 miles to the east. Clark was moving there to become president of Gunter Bible College, a school that was always controlled by non-Sunday School advocates among the Churches of Christ, and that eventually trained hundreds of students of that persuasion, including 150 preachers. Then, during the 1903-04 school year, Lockney Christian College was apparently never in session.[2]

Were these unexpected changes at Lockney connected to the fact that over the next few years, N.L. Clark, one of the new owners, and who succeeded Showalter as president, would emerge as a prominent leader among non-Sunday School advocates? The details are not easy to track down. But it may be noteworthy that in 1904, when Showalter returned to serve a second time as president, his first act was to restore the name of the school to Lockney Christian College.[3] It might also be significant that, to this day, in the towns of Lockney and nearby Floydada, both of which have been dwindling in population for decades, there are congregations of the non-class persuasion and congregations with separate Bible classes.

Notes

[1] Handbook of Texas Online, R. L. Roberts, "LOCKNEY CHRISTIAN COLLEGE," accessed February 12, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kbl14.

[2] Ibid. See also Robert M. Platt, "A History of Lockney Christian College," 1960, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Research Center, Canyon, TX, 17-21. For more on N.L. Clark and Gunter Bible College, see M. Norvel Young, A History of Colleges Established and Controlled by Members of the Churches of Christ (Kansas City, MO: Old Paths Book Club, 1949), 152-58; and Handbook of Texas Online, N. L. Clark, "GUNTER BIBLE COLLEGE," accessed February 16, 2019, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kbg22.

[3] Platt, "A History of Lockney Christian College," 21.