Our History
Community Baptist Church was established under the pastorate of Brother Larry and Sister Katherine Copley, on November 1, 1981, when twenty-four people gathered together to form a new church. Our meeting place was the old Travis Chapel which was built in 1910 and located on a country road off of Highway AA, near Lebanon. The one-room building, heated by a single wood-burning pot belly stove, complete with an outhouse, was home for the next several years.
In 1987, Brother Larry Copley was called home to be with the Lord, and the church searched for a pastor, unaware that God was already preparing Brother Allen Reeves to follow Brother Larry's humble beginnings.
In 1993, the Lord provided our growing congregation with a building and property on Highway 64, and Community Baptist continued to grow. Soon our congregation began to overflow the building and thoughts of expanding were being discussed.
Sadly, on Christmas Eve in 1997, the church building was destroyed in a tragic fire that devastated our congregation of over two hundred at the time. Undaunted by the tragedy, we held our services in an empty office building in Lebanon while a new building was being constructed in the site of the old one. Within a short time the new building was completed and with over four hundred people attending services each week, thoughts of a new building again surfaced.
In September of 1999, thirty-five acres of land across the highway became available, and Community Baptist Church purchased the land with prayerful hopes of growing and expanding our ministry in the future. For the next few years, plans were discussed and decided upon and the new building was on its way.
So today, we are continuing to serve our Wonderful Saviour by sharing the Gospel and preaching God's Word the same way we always have and Lord willing, always will. It is truly an exciting time to be at Community Baptist Church, and we hope you’ll join us as we continue writing our story.
Our Purpose & Beliefs
- The Bible as the God-breathed, fully inspired, and forever settled Word of God, both the Old and New Testaments.
- The Bible’s account of Creation.
- One God, existing in Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
- The deity, virgin birth, and sinlessness of Jesus Christ, God in flesh.
- The substitutionary death of Jesus Christ on the cross for the sins of mankind, and His bodily resurrection and ascension.
- Salvation and eternal life by grace through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the one and only Savior of the world.
- The Person and work of the Holy Spirit - Convicting of sin, drawing and regenerating sinners, indwelling believers.
- Water baptism by immersion - not as a means of salvation, but signifying the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and the believer’s identification with Him.
- The complete independence of the local church, and assembly of baptized believers.
- The literal, visible, personal, premillennial, pretribulational return of Jesus Christ to take believers out of the world (The Rapture).
- The literal, bodily resurrection of the righteous dead at His coming.
- The everlasting, conscious blessedness of the saved in Heaven and the everlasting, conscious punishment of the unsaved in Hell.
