Almost immediately after forming the Synod of the South, the ministers looked into forming a seminary closer to home for the education of the ministry and the growth of the church. Many of the ministers were traveling for more than thirty days on horseback to attend Synod meetings in the North. While they were gone, the churches and the congregations suffered in their absence. The solution they agreed to work towards was an academy called the Clarke and Erskine Seminary, which later became known as Erskine College and Seminary. While the larger Presbyterian Church was a mix of Scottish and English Presbyterians, several smaller Presbyterian groups were almost entirely Scottish Seceders, and they displayed the process of assimilation into the broader American religious culture. Fisk (1968) traces the history of the Associate Reformed Church in the Old Northwest from its formation by a union of Associate and Reformed Presbyterians in 1782 to the merger of this body with the Seceder bodies to form the United Presbyterian Church in 1858. It became the Associate Reformed Synod of the West and remained centered in the Midwest. It withdrew from the parent body in 1820 because of Confessional disagreements regarding the administration of sacraments. The Associate Reformed Synod of the West maintained the characteristics of an immigrant church with Scottish roots, emphasized the Westminster Standards, used only the Psalms in public worship, was Sabbatarian and was strongly abolitionist and anti-Catholic. In the 1850s however, it exhibited evidence of assimilation. It showed greater ecumenical interest, greater interest in the evangelization of the West and of the cities, and a declining interest in maintaining the unique characteristics of its Scotch-Irish past. In 2008, the ARPC had 39,681 members in 296 churches. The denominational office is located in Greenville, South Carolina. Also, the denomination operates a conference center, Bonclarken, in Flat Rock, Henderson County, North Carolina. The conference center is surrounded by private property owners, many of whom trace their ARP roots to the beginnings of the denomination. Membership in the ARP Church is concentrated in the Southeastern United States, especially North Carolina and South Carolina. There are also numerous congregations in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Virginia. The ARPC has churches in Canada and in most states of the United States. Separate synods exist in Mexico and Pakistan. The ARP Church was among the first to send missionaries overseas to China as early as 1880.