Restoration Movement

iPad Artwork made on Penultimate

If you are anything like me you love your family. For me family is one of the great things the Lord gave us. When I was in college I had to do a family study and figure out where I came from for a class. While I was working on my family tree and learning some amazing things about my family I was excited to find out the my family came to America during the potato famine in Wales. I really enjoyed that time studying and learning about my family.

One family that I never looked into learning about until this summer was my Non-Denominational Church family. This is a family that I really wanted to understand and know the history and background on. So I did some research and studied about the beginnings of the church that I have had the opportunity to minister in over the past 11 years. When I looked into our past I found the history of the Movement starting form 1800 on up.

In the Non Denominational Church heritage we have two streams that are closely connected and eventually at some point came completely together to make one. One started in Kentucky (which makes me really proud!) with Barton W. Stone and the other started in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia under the leadership of Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander.

The church was dying and atheists were growing faster than the Christians were. So the Christians cried out to God and what happened next was one of the greatest revivals in the history of Christianity. This revivals was called the First Great Awakening and it started because preacher Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." This revival was effective for around 20 years and things started to fade away again. So the Christ followers began to pray and asked God to bring forth another revival. And God brought forth another revival! One of the people who helped start the Second Great Awakening was Barton W. Stone. The revival began in Cane Ridge, KY. Stone studied to become a Presbyterians preacher and was licensed for the ministry in North Carolina. Barton W. Stone became the preacher of the Cane Ridge Meeting Place in Cane Ridge Kentucky. During the time of the revival they had 30 to 40 preachers all preaching at the same time all around this meeting place. Where ever a preacher could find a stump he jumped on top of it and began to preach. Anywhere from 20 to 25 thousand attended the revival. This revival was a very unifying thing for the churches because they had Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodists preachers all preaching at the revival. The Presbyterians didn't like the fact that Stone had preachers from other denominations preaching at the revival so Stone told them he didn't feel comfortable them telling him who could preach and who couldn't. So they rejected the hierarchy and began their own open minded presbytery and called it the Springfield Presbytery. And one year after they begun the Springfield Presbytery it dissolved because of the continued conviction of Stone who did not believe in a hierarchy. He believed that there should be no authority but Jesus Christ and His Word. So after that dissolved someone asked the question, "What should we be called now?" Then a man named Rice Haggard came to their meeting and said, "I find in this Book that the one name that was good enough for all followers of Jesus was Christians. So, why don't we be Christians only?" Stone loved the idea and no one else objected.

The two great ideas that really made this movement great was, 1.) that Christians should go back to the Bible for all of their teaching, faith and practice and 2.) unity among the Church. Stone said that, "Christian unity was our polar star. The polar start is the star that sailers used to sail by. It didn't matter how bad the storm was or where you were, that one star stayed fixed." In 1831 and 1832 the two streams became one with the Campbellites and the Christians. Stone's people called themselves Christians and Campbell's people called themselves Disciples. There were things that they disagreed on but they new that what brought them together was much stronger than what separated them. There was one thing they could really agree on and that was that there should be, "only one creed but Christ and one book the Bible."

I love the fact that a desire to be unified completely and to be consumed by the Word of God is what started this amazing movement. There is obviously much more involved in this movement and more people such as Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott and Racoon John Smith. Maybe later I will write about the rest but I wanted to focus on Barton W. Stone.

Today Kristy, Greens and I had the privilege to tour the church where the revival began. It was so amazing to stand behind the pulpit that Barton W. Stone preached behind for years. It was amazing to walk around the grounds where all these amazing preachers taught the amazing Word of God that started and amazing movement that I am lucky enough to be apart of still today!

Entrance to the meeting house.

Barton W. Stone's pulpit!

Barton W. Stone preaching on a log stump during the revival.

The front door the the church house.

The meeting in Lexington, Ky with Raccoon John Smith and Barton W. Stone to join together in the movement know today as the Non-Denominational Christian Church.