In 1896, Nashville was still a small town, and there wasn’t much on the east side across the river. So a small group of people met in East Nashville to talk about starting a new church, and on October 17th of 1897 they had their first official gathering as a church in a building on the corner of 17th and Fatherland, with Pastor James Tomskissick as the preacher. They met and they grew as the city grew around them, and then in 1908 they built their own church building, which is still there today.
Then in 1957 there was a fire that damaged that building significantly. That building would eventually be restored, but in the interim the church decided to purchase some land on Old Hickory blvd in Madison to build a new place to worship. Today we still gather in that building. In 2007 the Lord enabled us to add an educational wing connected to that building. So we’ve been in the current location for 62 of our 122 years.
God has worked through many wonderful people over the years to cause a ripple effect for His kingdom in Nashville.
OUR STORY
Our Beliefs
JESUS
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, our Lord, and Savior. He is God in human form, divine and co-equal with the Father and Holy Spirit. Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, is the example of how to live, taught God’s truth, and offered himself as our atonement and the perfect sacrifice for the sins of all people by dying on a cross. He then rose from the dead, thus demonstrating his power over sin and death. He ascended to heaven and will return again one day to judge the living and the dead.
THE BIBLE
It’s the uniquely inspired Word of God (2 Tim. 3:14-17; 2 Peter 1:16-21). The Bible is the rule of faith and practice for Christians. We affirm that Scripture is the authoritative revelation from God by which we know God’s will and the authority of Jesus. We are striving to stress what we believe the Bible clearly stresses and allow freedom in what we believe are matters of opinion. We are striving to become better students of the Word of God. We approach Scripture with absolute confidence that it is God’s word in its entirety. We also approach this Holy Word with humility knowing that there are some things too marvelous for us to understand and knowing we may be flawed in our interpretation at times. But we are pressing on to understand it better as we endeavor to use sound principles of Biblical interpretation.
SALVATION
Salvation is found only in Jesus Christ. We are saved by God’s grace through faith (Eph. 2:8-10). When a person precisely crosses over from being “lost” to “saved” is God’s call! That said, we believe God has commanded how we come under His umbrella of grace: believe and place our trust in Jesus Christ for salvation and in Him alone (John 1:12; 3:16; 20:31; Romans 10:10); repent of sins by turning away from sins and turning to Christ (Acts 2:38); confessing Jesus as Lord (Romans 10:9,10; Matt. 10:32,33); being baptized for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), to have our sins washed away (Acts 22:16), to be clothed with Christ (Galatians 3:27). We practice believers’ baptism by immersion as we believe this mode represents the meaning of the word and was the practice of the New Testament church. We also believe immersion captures the picture of being buried and raised with Christ (Romans 6:1-4). We urge people to remember that if God’s grace was removed from the equation, all of these actions (believing, repenting, confessing and being baptized) would be absolutely worthless. We simply believe these are the normative responses of anyone in the New Testament who wanted to be a follower of Jesus. Therefore, we should respond in the same way.
GOD
There’s one and only God. We believe He is one being in three persons – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He’s the source of all creation (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1,2), which He sustains (Col. 1:17) and is currently redeeming humanity and all creation (Romans 8:19-22).
THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of God, co-equal with the Father and the Son. He is present in the world to make people aware of their need for salvation through Jesus. He also lives in every Christian from the moment of salvation. He gifts every Christian with specific abilities and talents to play a role in the Kingdom of God, He manifests and works through Christians to do God’s work in the world and the lives of the people around us, He gives understanding of spiritual truth, and He gives guidance through life.
THE CHURCH
The church is the body of Christ on earth, the community of believers throughout the world. Upon surrender to Christ (in faith, repentance, confession and baptism) a person enters into a family of believers called the Church. We believe God intended the church to be for the glory of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:12), a royal priesthood and a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9). We believe the church is a community of God’s ambassadors holding out the gospel of Jesus to the world (2 Cor. 5:20) with the goal of leading all people to become disciples (fully devoted followers) of Jesus (Matt. 28:18-20). We believe the church should hold to the things the very first Christians believed to be vital for their growth: the Apostles teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread (communion) and prayer. We also believe Christians should follow the example of the New Testament Church by worshiping together the first day of every week (Acts 20:7 & 1 Cor. 16:1,2) in honor of the resurrection of Jesus. Involvement in the church is needed for encouragement and accountability (Hebrews 10:24,25).
JESUS’ RETURN
When? God alone knows. Our responsibility is not to attempt to determine when that will be. We are responsible to be ready whenever that day comes in our lifetime or not. We believe He will return and bring with Him those who’ve already died in Him (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). The details of how all of this will come about and when are in God’s very capable hands. At the return of Jesus we believe all of humanity will be divided into two groups: those who are saved and those who are lost. The saved will experience an eternity of fellowship with God and the saved in the new heavens and new earth. The lost will experience eternal separation from God (1 Cor. 15:51-58; 1 John 3:2; Revelation 21:1-5; 2 Thess. 1:8-10; Rev. 20:11-15).
OUR DENOMINATION
We’re not affiliated with any denominational structure or hierarchy. We have a theological heritage with the Restoration Movement, also known as Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. The Restoration Movement began in the early 19th Century as a response to the disunity that had grown over time among protestant churches. We believe it’s unhelpful to embrace extra-biblical creeds as tests of fellowship. Instead we try to stand on the scriptures alone as the foundation for faith and practice, and we try to model our church after the ones described in the New Testament.