While Elder Smitzer was eagerly sought after to become the Elder of the Pompey and Manlius Baptist Church and Society on at least two occasions, when he did agree to come to Manlius, the record keeping procedures for the Church failed (or records were lost) and there is little information about his calling or his service as Elder, or the events that took place in the Church. Elder Smitzer is only mentioned by name three times in the minutes available. On June 3, 1849, Elder Smitzer prayed at a Covenant Meeting. On September 12, 1849, he was appointed a delegate to the 1849 Fall Onondaga Association Meeting. In the Church letter to that meeting, the Clerk Hiram Smith reported that the Church was called to part with their former Pastor (Brother Alexander Smith), but subsequently secured the pastoral service of Brother John Smitzer in whom they (the Church) are happily united and whose labors have already proved a blessing in the conversion of many precious souls. In December, 1850, Elder Smitzer opened the Annual Meeting with prayer, after which he asked to be excused.
In 1850 a great interest of the Onondaga Association was manifested in the work of the Baptist Missionary Union. Although disclaiming the authority of the Association to dictate to member churches, they respectfully and earnestly requested the churches to raise certain sums of money for the cause. The amount requested from each church was listed. It varied from $10.00 from the smaller churches (i.e., Bridgeport), $75.00 from Manlius, and $200.00 from the largest churches, which were Fayetteville and Elbridge. The author lamented that only $722.00 was raised out of the total $1000.00 requested and said it showed that it was with our fathers even as it is with us: to pass resolutions was present (easy) with them but to perform that which was resolved was not. Several churches, however, "so abounded in liberality that they did more than was asked of them." Both the Fayetteville and Manlius Baptist Churches fell in the liberal category.
Several items of business were mentioned in the few notes available. In a July 5, 1851, meeting it was reported that the village served notice upon the Trustees to have the sidewalk in front of the meeting house and lot repaired. A committee of Brothers C. Parker and Sheldon Graves was appointed to look into buying insurance for the meeting house in some safe mutual insurance company. The Church, once again, voted to circulate a subscription for raising funds to employ a teacher of sacred music to teach a singing school in this Church from the present (July 1851) through the fall and winter.
In the minutes to the 1852 Onondaga Association Meeting the Clerk from Manlius wrote in the annual letter that "the last of the members who first composed the Church has died, one of a company of nine baptized in Limestone Creek, AD 1796, which was probably the first time a baptism took place there." The name of the member was not given.
