A copper container from 1964 was removed from a cornerstone of First United Methodist Church in Athens and opened Sunday as part of the church's bicentennial celebration. Inside the container were a church bulletin from that morning's services, newspaper clippings and a photograph of church member Ethel Mae Hightower Garth.

Once upon a time — 1924, to be exact — a group gathered in Limestone County to place a box inside a cornerstone at First United Methodist Church in Athens.

A few decades later, in 1964, a second group gathered, this time to place a copper container handmade by a church member in a different cornerstone of the same building.

On July 15 of this year, a third group gathered outside the church on Jefferson Street to retrieve not only the two capsules but the items contained within them. This gathering was part of the church’s 200th anniversary celebration, something the Rev. Kenny Baskins, senior pastor, described as a look to the past and to the future.

“Celebrating history is not just looking past but looking forward,” Baskins said. “We’re a 200-year-old church that’s been a part of a 2,000-year-old movement, but it is as relevant as the 21st century.”

Keeping with the theme of twos, Baskins and FUMC are taking two years to celebrate the milestone.

“If you’re gonna celebrate 200 years, you gotta spend at least two years doing it,” Baskins said.

Each month, the church has invited guest speakers to share how the church has blessed them and their families, he said. Some of the speakers have been members their whole lives and can trace their lineage to the early days of the church. Others have been members for less than a year or just a few weeks.

“The one thing we’ve experienced,” Baskins said,” is people have enjoyed hearing the stories of members. We’ve used people who joined a month ago to a man who has been a member of the church for 91 or 92 years. We have a family speaking next month who can trace their history back 150-plus years.”

The celebration will culminate Oct. 28 with a visit from Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, children’s choirs and what Baskins describes as “quite a bit of program.”

But for now, there are time capsules.

Baskins said the church held two services Sunday before traveling to the Beasley Center, where church historian Richard Martin — a man of “78 years who has been coming to the church for 79 years, because his momma brought him before he was born,” Baskins said — donned gloves and unveiled the items inside the capsules.

The box from 1925 contained a Bible, paperwork on members, letters and even a couple newspaper articles from the Alabama Courier and Limestone Democrat about the building of the church. The 1964 capsule contained a Huntsville Times article on moon exploration, a roster of the church’s members at the time, a Bible and a photo of Ethel Mae Hightower Garth, the member for whom FUMC’s Garth Chapel was named.

“We had a couple of senior members who were there when the (1964) time capsule was built,” Baskins said. “They were all small or fairly young at the time.”

He said some of the members were in their 20s, and they spent the unveiling reminiscing about the time capsule’s creation.

“It brought them back to that time in their life,” he said.

The church plans to create new time capsules for future generations to open. There are also plans to turn a portion of the church library into a church archive, where items from the previous time capsules can be displayed on a rotating schedule.

“It’s a challenge to us here now to make sure the legacy of Christ that we’ve been living lives on into the future,” Baskins said. “We are celebrating the past, but we are anticipating being a blessing to people in the future.”