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It’s ‘not about a building’ at this 100-year celebration
Middle Tennessee church celebrates a living legacy of faithfully serving its surrounding community.
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COLUMBIA, TENN. — Jubilant singing rang throughout the West Seventh Street Church of Christ auditorium on a recent Sunday as Christians gathered in celebration of the 100-year-old building.
Randy Owens, the congregation’s preaching minister of 20 years, leaned against the podium and looked out at the crowd of about 500.
“I’m going to go and speak for those who were here in 1925,” Owens said. “I wasn’t here. You weren’t either. But I think I’m right in saying this: that there was never the intent that anyone who would come into this building would walk away saying, ‘You have a beautiful building.’ Instead, they would walk away after being with this church in worship and say, ‘You have a beautiful God.’”
“There was never the intent that anyone who would come into this building would walk away saying, ‘You have a beautiful building.’ Instead, they would walk away after being with this church in worship and say, ‘You have a beautiful God.’”
More important than the history is the present, he explained. Throughout the week the downtown building transforms into what serves its surrounding community, 45 miles south of Nashville.
“We’re grateful for those who’ve gone before, and they’ve passed the baton to us in faith, and it’s now for us to keep going forward,” Owens added.
The announcements on Sunday morning are proof of the congregation’s mission-minded attitude. Ministries and opportunities to volunteer are rattled off in a list.
On cold winter nights, the gymnasium becomes an overnight warming station for unhoused people. The church’s newest building acquisition, formerly a private counseling office, serves as a multipurpose community outreach center.
“It’s not about a building,” Owens told the crowd. “We have a wonderful building. But it’s not about a building. It’s about God, and God has been good to us.”
Randy Owens preaches at the West Seventh Street Church of Christ 100-year celebration. The projector screen displays the church’s men’s Bible class in 1925.
The faithful who have gone before
The legacy of the West Seventh church stretches far beyond 1925.
While the building is 100 years old, the congregation dates back to a group of Christians that gathered in Middle Tennessee more than 200 years ago — in the infancy of the Restoration Movement.
That group of faithful preachers and Christ-followers joined Christians who attended a series of gospel meetings held by Alexander Campbell in the 1830s.
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A few years later, the modern-day West Seventh Street Church of Christ was founded under another name, then on the corner of South Main and Ninth Street.
The exact timeline is a bit muddled, Owens said, but one thing is clear: the faith of the former congregants.
“Sometimes the dates don’t match,” Owens said. “One would write this date as the beginning, and another would cite this date as the beginning. So we are not really sure. … It’s really just about how many people have gone before us, and what they have done. They have been faithful to the Lord and for future generations, and so we are truly benefiting from their dedication and their service and their sacrifice and that steadfastness.”
Bill Alsup, an elder of West Seventh Street Church of Christ, examines one of the congregation’s historical Bibles.
But half a century ago, the church — like many in the present — was aging.
Chris Allen, a member for 50 years, began attending the West Seventh church when he was only a little boy.
“This was an old person’s congregation,” Allen recalled. “It was all pretty much everybody 60 and over, and we had about 200 to 300 members — about half of what sits in here today.
“Then we got a preacher named Ted Burleson who came and he was a young man, and a lot of young families started coming here … and it all started encouraging a younger congregation,” he added.
Linda Simpson holds her granddaughter during worship service.
Owens found a similarly diverse congregation when he became the preacher in 2005.
“West Seventh has continued to honor its older people,” Owens said. “At the same time, it has welcomed younger people and young families and young singles. So it’s been a wonderful mix — a healthy mix.”
Teaching Jesus, building relationships
The generational diversity was something John Corn noticed when he joined 13 years ago.
“It is truly a church of different people,” said Corn, who became a West Seventh elder eight years ago. “It is not wedded to only serving one group of people.”
“It is truly a church of different people. It is not wedded to only serving one group of people.”
And as an elder of a historical church, “you pray a lot that you don’t mess something up,” Corn added with a chuckle.
The younger families are what attracted Suzi Parrett, the church’s director of children’s ministry, to West Seventh in 2010.
“We’re really growing,” said Parrett, who joined the ministry team in 2021. “We are growing everywhere, but in the preschool classes I had to acquire two more rooms, and so my focus has really been on the utilization of those two rooms and focusing on the younger families.”
Children line up to climb inside an Egyptian sarcophagus during a biblical history lesson on a recent Sunday morning at the West Seventh Street Church of Christ.
About 120 children attend the nursery to sixth grade each Sunday.
“You see a lot of enthusiasm,” Parrett said. “It’s encouraging because you see (the young families are) excited to be there through enthusiasm. They invite people. Their community is very important to them.”
There’s no special trick to the children’s program growth either. While the church has placed a lot of care into developing Faith Farm, its children’s program, the lessons come from the same Bible stories told in 1925.
“It’s first and foremost, we’re going to teach Jesus, but then we’re going to establish relationships,” Parrett said. “Because to us, that’s the most important thing. Everything else follows.”
A mission at hand
A few years ago, the attendance growth prompted a conversation among the church’s 10 elders about how to accommodate all the members.
The downtown church is fully surrounded by developed real estate. With already scarce parking, members fill the parking lots of the neighboring post office, brokerage and shopping center on Sunday mornings. Inside, the congregation packs into the pews and balcony seating.
So church leadership tried splitting Sunday morning into two services.
They discussed moving to a new location.
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“It was decided that, with other congregations in the area, we needed to remain a downtown church,” Owens said. “It has its limitations, obviously with real estate and property, and yet, we have continued to thrive and to do well.”
But accommodating a bigger membership isn’t the main priority anyway, Corn said.
“I Googled it recently because we were having a conversation, and Google came back with 50 churches — so we don’t need more big churches,” he said. “We need church plants. We need organizations who can deal with people on a one-on-one basis, whether that’s a church or whether it’s part of a church or a ministry of a church.”
A need that church leadership believes God recently met through the recent real estate acquisition of an adjacent private property.
One car remains parked on the street after Sunday service at the 100-year-old church building in Columbia, Tenn.
“God presented that opportunity to us through an organization who was at least friendly towards Christianity and was willing to sell us the building,” Corn said. “It never went out for bids. It sold for less than it was appraised.”
The new outreach center, which opened in August, is already serving the community.
During the week it houses the food pantry, a sewing ministry and counseling services. On Sunday it transforms into additional classrooms. The church is adding elders to help with shepherding.
At the 100th anniversary celebration, Owens studied the faces of people filling the pews.
Some were the descendants of original West Seventh members. Others were newcomers, at the beginning of their journey with the historical congregation.
“I love the history, but the church doesn’t worship the history,” Owens said. “‘We acknowledge it. We’re grateful for it. But there’s a mission at hand, and there is a fire within our bones to live out God’s calling, to share the Gospel and disciple others and be a light.”
“I love the history, but the church doesn’t worship the history. We acknowledge it. We’re grateful for it. But there’s a mission at hand, and there is a fire within our bones to live out God’s calling, to share the Gospel and disciple others and be a light.”
AUDREY JACKSON is a correspondent based in Louisville, Ky. Reach her at [email protected].
