Living Water is an independent church with a heritage from the Restoration Movement.  Our heritage believes we can be Christians only and we do not need to attach other titles to our name.  We seek to be a non-denominational church and not an inter-denominational one.   

We are a self-governing fellowship, led by the leaders that God has given us and the Spirit has chosen to work through.  Since we are self-governing, we are also self-supporting and receive all of our financial support from the members, attendees, and friends of Living Water.

Our standard for our Christian walk is the completely accurate Word of God - the Bible.  Our standard for practices and methods come from whatever is effective at remaining true to the Bible, in line with our vision, direction, and effective for our time and culture.

 

Living Water Christian Church: we'll help you CONNECT with God, GROW in Jesus and SERVE people inside the church and in the community, and GO make reproducing disciples.

 

 

 

The fish gained increased prominence when early church leaders, with eyes and ears tuned to allegory, promoted other creative usages. Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225) taught that just as water sustains fish, "We, little fishes, after the image of our Ichthys, Jesus Christ, are born in the water." This aquatic birth is baptism, God's promise of new life and sustaining power.

Want to read more about the history behind the fish symbol?  Click here.

We believe in the God who created us for a relationship with Him & His Son.

We believe in the complete accuracy of the Word of God and see it as the book of life and practices for the Christian’s walk.

We believe in the death, burial and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead.

We believe that man is reconciled to God through the free gift of grace.

We believe that the process of salvation includes faith, confession, repentance and baptism, and needs to be a personal choice and activity.

We believe that God has bestowed gifts upon every Christian that make them important to the local church.           

Living Water Christian Church traces its roots to the early 19th-century American frontier.  A group of New England Christians broke out of denominationalism, announcing their intention to follow the Bible only.  Another group in Kentucky, and still another in Pennsylvania, each independent of the others, felt the spirit of unity moving them to stand with, not against, fellow Christians.  Under the leadership of minister Barton W. Stone, some Presbyterian leaders in Kentucky published The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, putting to death their denominational connections.  They said, "We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit ..."

The early leaders of what later came to be called the Restoration Movement believed unity in Christ was - and is - possible.  To achieve it required letting go of human traditions and loyalties to dynamic personalities.  Christ alone could be exalted.  The ideal of the church that emerges from the pages of the New Testament must be the standard for today's congregations.

The only way to determine what the church should be and how Christians should behave is to study New Testament documents in which the churches of Christ are presented in splendor - and in shortcomings.  While there is no single church that we should imitate, the ideal of the church as the body of Christ, the household of faith, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and the people of God is clearly pictured.

In a unity effort initially separated from the Stone movement, another Presbyterian minister, Thomas Campbell, published his Declaration and Address in 1809.  He had earlier migrated to Pennsylvania from his home in Ireland.  While still there, he had grown restless with the strictures of his denomination. 

His son, Alexander, meanwhile, had reached similar conclusions in his studies in Ireland and Scotland and, when father and son were reunited in America in 1809, each embraced the other's position.  In time, the son surpassed the father as the leader of their unity movement.

In his Declaration, Thomas Campbell set forth the following principles:

1. That the church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures ...

2. That ... there ought to be no schisms, no uncharatible divisions among [local congregations].

3. That ... nothing ought to be inculcated upon Christians as articles of faith; nor required of them as terms of communion; but what is expressly taught and enjoined upon them, in the Word of God.

4. That ... the New Testament is as perfect a constitution for the worship, discipline, and government of the New Testament church, and as perfect a rule of the particular duties of its members, as the Old Testament was for the worship, discipline, and government of the Old Testament church....

5. That ... [no] human authority [has] power to impose new commands or ordinances upon the church, which our lord Jesus Christ has not enjoined.

From that day until now, millions of others have decided they also wanted to be Christians only, without the complications of denomination.

In 1988, Paul and Judy Hatfield were inspired to begin a new ministry, and called it Star City Church of Christ.  Their heart was for the people of the Roanoke Valley, and wanted to focus on people, not the “stuff” of a building.  They began meeting in a hotel conference room, baptizing in the hotel pool.  Countless lives were touched and changed through this ministry. 

In 2002, Star City Church moved to the former Hanging Rock Swim Club on Swimmer Lane in Salem, VA and became Living Water Christian Church, where the church family is growing and impacting the valley for Jesus Christ. 

 

 

 

He sought desperately to get back to a "simple evangelical Christianity," founded on the Bible and the Bible alone. Only this—not creeds or confessions or liturgy—could bring unity to Christians: "The testimony of the Apostles is the only and all-sufficient means of uniting Christians." And only in unity could Christians effectively evangelize: "The union of Christians with the apostle's testimony is all-sufficient and alone sufficient to the conversion of the world."