Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) of Lexington, Virginia, Moves to New Building

Opening Day - 23 October 2011

The congregation of  Grace Presbyterian Church of Lexington, Virginia, held the first service in its new church building at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday 23 October 2011. The new church building is located off Greenhouse Road in Rockbridge County about three miles north of the former church building.

The call to worship was led by the church’s first official pastor, the Rev. Ed Walker, who was called to the church in in the mid-1950’s. A former Welsh missionary to Africa surnamed Ackland served the new church in an “interim” capacity from its founding in 1952 until Mr. Walker was called as pastor. Grace’s current pastor, the Rev. Paul Carter, was called in 1984 and has now served the church as pastor for twenty-seven years.

The Opening Day Congregation

Planning for the new church building began over ten years ago, when the size of the congregation grew to where the capacities of downtown on-street parking and the size of the church building became inadequate. Two Sunday morning church services were held during the school year in an interim effort to address the capacity issues.

Grace Presbyterian Church was founded in 1952 by several members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) who were concerned about the growth of theological liberalism in

L to R - The Rev. Paul Carter, and the Rev. and Mrs. Ed Walker

the PCUS characterized by actions such as the introduction of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which waters down key Christian doctrines such as the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, and by the growing movement in the PCUS questioning the historicity and infallibility of the Bible. Grace’s founders sought to build a church based upon the whole counsel of God contained in the Bible, and upon the Westminster Confession of Faith.

The denominationally-independent Grace Presbyterian Church congregation first met in the Pine Room of the Mayflower Hotel on South Main Street, now Mayflower Assisted Living, before moving to the now-former church a few hundred feet south and on the opposite side of the street from the Mayflower.

In the late 1960’s, Grace Presbyterian Church joined the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RPCES), then became a church of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) when the RPCES merged with the PCA in 1982.

The second Sunday service at the new church building was held on 30 October 2011 during Parents Weekend for Lexington’s Washington & Lee University. Following the opening of the service, Pastor Paul Carter sat with the congregation as the Rev. John Talley, minister of the Reformed University Fellowship chapter at W&L, presented the sermon and presided over the remainder of the worship service attended by several W&L students and their parents.

Students from W&L and from Lexington’s Virginia Military Institute are a significant part of the Grace Presbyterian Church congregation, and are served well by the ministries provided by the church to students of Lexington’s two higher education institutions.

Bob Williams, Managing Editor

Photographs by Janis Wilbur

.

.