The Woods Mission Sunday School started in 1864 and was the predecessor of the North Presbyterian Church of Kalamazoo. According to the North Presbyterian Church website, it took fourteen years from 1864-1878 to develop the Mission Woods Sunday School into an organized church. The sunday school met at 2:30 pm on Sunday afternoons often, espcially in the winter, in schoolhouses.

Mission Woods church was, according to an 1876 edition of the Kalamazoo Gazette, located on the corner of Burdick and Ransom street. Sunday School was held at 2:30 PM. Based on the certificate dated August 1867, the school superintendent was D. O. Roberts, and the secretary was J. G. Ketchum. A notice at the bottom indicates that the design is copyrighted by "J. H. Bufford's Sons," 1876. Bufford's sons were print manufacturers based in Boston around this time, as seen by advertisements found in the Gazette and The Christian Statesman (1878 and 1880, respectively).