The goal of this site is to share accurate location and contact information for “churches of Christ” worldwide.
Generally, these churches --in the United States-- are distinctive with respect to certain Christian worship practices.
Of course exceptions and variations exist, certainly across language and national boundaries.
ChurchZip does NOT include all churches of any kind or type.
As a service to the majority of users visiting this site,
we limit our scope to churches world-wide having all of following practices:
We only serve churches not otherwise served by any existing denominational headquarters site.
We only serve churches that use no clergy/laity titles and/or distinctive garments in worship services.
We only serve churches that celebrate the Lord’s Supper on a regular weekly basis.
You may have noticed some important changes recently made.
Without taking anything away,
we have added 10 new information elements to each record to help our users find what they are looking for.
These additional information elements aim to fully disclose uncommon but evolving church practices
among listed churches.
We are expecting churches to self-identify their own records with respect to these questions of worship practice.
Of course we scour the web daily to find updates to our records.
These new facts captured are:
Egalitarian (yes/no/unreported) This term is often contrasted to a "Complementarian" theology where only men take the lead in all parts of the worship service. A church having an egalitarian theology would have both men and women taking the lead in varous services.
Multi-Campus (yes/no/unreported) Certain churches have established multiple sites for worship, under the governance of a mother congregation.
Instrumental or Band (yes/no/unreported)
Both Instrumental AND Acappella Worship Services (yes/no/unreported) Certain churches have "both" instrumental and acappella services, sometimes at different times.
Social Media Presence (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, LiveStream). Some churches use one or more of thes social media platforms as an alternative or supplement to a web site. We capture the address of that information for churches who use this.
These new pieces of information are intended to save people time in finding what they are looking for.
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Earle West, Franklin, TN
ehwest@gmail.com 908-216-5054
CLICK HERE TO ADD NEW RECORDS
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This information therefore is absolutely "unofficial" and should only be considered
a casual work, subject to errors and omissions of all kinds, and numerous ad-hoc contributors.
At the same time, I would very much like to receive corrections, and you can submit them yourself at any time.
To correct the information for a particular church, display it in the search list or map, and click on "Edit" on the record to provide
your changes.
We vet all submissions within a few days.
To add records CLICK HERE TO ADD NEW RECORDS. This procedure
attempts to affix the location before adding details to the new record.
This enables us to include listings of churches in countries not having standardized street addresses.
It is my goal to have the largest and most accurate directory of churches of Christ, worldwide.
Users should be aware that we are unable to know about any of the more subjective loves, beliefs, teaching, theology, fellowships, conventions, institutional affinity, and/or periodical alignment held by the church leader(s) or any members of any church.
Moreover, the criteria above may very well be met by churches not using the nom de guerre "Church of Christ."
Some church names we have seen include "The Lord's Church," and "The Way." We have also seen numerous alternatives in non-English-speaking countries.
We have no specific criteria regarding a church's provenance, restoration history, or state of fellowship among other churches.
There is no cost for users or churches to utilize this site! Please do not ever PAY someone to correct their information.
Updates and new records may be input on-line at any time by anyone. However,
all records are quality-checked for very basic consistency before publishing. Errors do
get through, and email is a good way to fix any point of confusion.
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In the fall
of 2000 a significant amount of US directory data was seeded
in into the project by Dennis
Kelly, Searcy, AR, USA. Eighteen months later, non-US
data was provided by Mac
Lynn, Nashville, TN, USA.
In 2002, Salvador
Cariga, The Philippines, Roy
Davison, Alken, Belgium, Randy
Matheny, Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, Theodore
Lucas, India, Graham
Fisher, the United Kingdom, Kim Voraritskul, Thailand,
and Fielden Allison, Kenya provided guidance and/or data for the project.
In 2003, an
(unamed-by-request) team of people have provided a
very large database (20,000 records, since reduced to 16,000)
of churches of Christ in India. In early 2004, Wendell
Broom provided to us a copy of his nearly 4,000 (since
reduced to 3,600) churches of Christ in Nigeria in 2004. During
their May, 2004 visit to the US, Lendal
and Peggy Wilks brought over their list of 107 churches
in Mozambique and more than 1,700 churches in Malawi.
In July, 2008, Bren White provided
a list of 319 French-speaking Churches of Christ around the world, which is the work of Barry Baggott, Doyle Key, and Bren.
In February, 2010, Ruth Zimmerman, Ontario, Canada, provided detailed records for 175 congregations in Papua New Guinea.
All
records, from every source, are generally vetted and matched
to our global database of latitude and longitudes for the
nearest poplulated place, based on a US government gazetteer.
Starting November 30, 2014, we are replacing most all of our lat/long
values with new, much more accurate, values from Google.
Thanks to Matt Prewett
of the Saturn Road church of Christ in Garland, TX for providing
funds for providing county-level data for the entire US and
all of the Canadian postal codes.
The United States government has also provided a significant amount of
free geographic data that is needed to provide the unique
"find-within-radius" feature of the site worldwide.
The data these
folks provided is protected under United States copyright
law, and is used here by permission.
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ChurchZip
, a privately held for-profit corporation, owns
all of the software, data, presentation, intellectual property,
and patents pending that are embodied in the system at this
time. Copyright protections are asserted to prevent economic
and/or other forms of abuse. The same underlying software
system is currently used for commercial purposes for SkiWhere.com.
Of course,
this site would have very limited value if it were not for
people like you, who silently provide an incredible non-stop
stream of updates for everyone to share. Please check out
all the listings you know about. Click
here to update a listing right now!
We openly list
all other known similar directories and occasionally use them
to verify new or changed listings, and to harvest new listings
from people who post to those sites. If you know of other
relevant directories, please write.
Check our list of other directories.
The good news
is that hundreds of thousands of seekers
are served with information about the congregation nearest
them.
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ChurchZip
is a ministry, not a business.
We do have a limited amount of commercial
advertising on the site to cover hosting expenses.
Our
goal is to make it easy to find the church of Christ wherever
someone might want to find one. By offering up each congregation's
own local web site, we encourage further inquiry into each
congregation's practices.
ChurchZip does NOT include all churches of any kind or type.
We rely on leaders
within each congregation to tell us whether or not they fit the
characteristics above. We ask no questions about what anyone
'believes,' but we do ask about what is practiced. We also
don't consider "theatrical" events of any kind to be defined as a worship service.
Please write if
you know of any listing incorrectly identified in this category.
We can probably point you to other directories, should this one
fail to meet your needs.
We browse all possible sources on the Internet and elsewhere to check for accuracy and changes.
Trustworthy directory operators are always willing to make corrections and/or additions
you provide to them.
Don't EVER pay someone to correct their own records. We welcome your corrections
and/or new records. Freely we receive, freely we give.
Help
Wanted!
We are always looking
for contributions of data describing churches around the world.
If you have directory information we don't have, or have updates,
join the effort!
If you have any direct knowledge of mission outposts or churches of Christ
in countries outside of the United States, we would be pleased to update our records accordingly.
If your congregation is involved in funding such outposts, your good stewardship may well
lead you to provide that information for all to share.
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