June 1966

The congregation in Waynesboro began in a rented store building in 1960. At the first Sunday service, thirty-six people were in attendance. Since then, the church has grown to almost two hundred people meeting each week to worship and praise God.

Over the past forty-seven years, members of the church at Waynesboro have sought to show Christ to our local community by working with community leaders to establish homes for the physically and mentally disabled, by visiting and supporting the elderly in our community, and through numerous, unadvertised acts of kindness and mercy on the part of our members in the workplace, schools, and homes. In addition, we have reached out to the local community through Vacation Bible School, a day care center (in the 1980’s), a bus ministry, gospel meetings, Ladies’ Days, Youth Rallies, and special lectureships. We keep outgrowing our facilities—we’ve been through four buildings already. An addition was added to our present building in 1981 to accommodate our educational programs.

Our Chuch Vision

The Churches of Christ emerged in the United States in the early nineteenth century as part of the Restoration Movement. That movement was spawned from the simple idea that Christians could more readily achieve the “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” by seeking to base their practices and beliefs on the simple truths of scripture. While this idea may seem self-evident, it was actually a very revolutionary concept in the religious world of its day. That’s because it explicitly rejected practices that are based solely on man-made creeds…the very creeds that have often been a source of division.

The movement is called the “Restoration Movement” because it’s goal is to restore the beliefs and practices of the first century Christians…those who first knew Christ and who learned at the feet of His apostles. This “restoration” can only happen as we seek to allow scripture to serve as our basis for doctrine and life.

During the early-to-mid nineteenth century, the Scottish theologian Alexander Campbell and American theologian Barton W. Stone articulated many of the ideas on which this restoration movement is based. Among the more important principles underlying this approach are the following.

• The Bible will serve as our only creed.


• Each Christian is capable of understanding the important themes of the Bible and each Christian is responsible for pursuing an understanding of those themes. While the whole church community aids in the process (see Eph 4:11 -13), each Christian bears primary responsibility for his/her understanding of God’s word.
  
  Because of this respect for the “common Christian” and because of our disdain for formal creeds apart from Scripture, the Churches of Christ consider each individual congregation to be autonomous from all others in terms of governance and practice. Each congregation answers to Christ, the Good Shepherd, and not to some centralized “office” that sets policy and beliefs for all congregations.



Restoration of DaVinci's Last Supper


• On debatable matters (and there are many of them!), we want to “speak where the Bible speaks, and be silent with the Bible is silent.” That is, we will stand firm on the clear teachings of scripture, but will respect the differences that inevitably arise on those matters where clear scriptural instruction is not present.


• We are “Christians only.” Hence we will seek to refer to ourselves only as “Christians” or “disciples” or “followers of Christ,”.