A Brief History of Stony Point Church

Stony Point Reformed Presbyterian Church was found in 1969 by five families committed to establishing a church “which would proclaim God’s Word boldly and, at the same time, address the real needs of the world around them. The goal was to have a ‘gathered’ church on Sundays and a ‘sent forth’ church during the week.”

Over the next four decades, under the leadership of four senior pastors (David Fleece, Dominic Aquila, Frank Crane and Steve Constable), the church has pursued this goal.

From the beginning, Stony Point Church has been committed to gospel outreach both to foreign lands and to local neighborhoods. Our first regularly supported missionaries were George and Audrey Omerly ministering in Lima, Peru.  After retiring in Peru, they have remained active in spreading the Gospel traveling and teaching around the world.  George is currently teaching seminary in India.  Audrey teaches English as a means of outreach too.

Barbara and David Cross who, in 1969, had been called to plant churches in Australia were the second full time missionaries sent from Stony Point.   The Crosses are still planting churches, but now, in England.  Overall, our career foreign missionary force now stands at thirteen families.

At the local, level folks from Stony Point were instrumental in founding Richmond’s Pregnancy Resource Center and also participated in the ministries of Intervarsity, Campus Crusade for Christ, Young Life, Needle’s Eye and numerous others.

In the early 80’s Stony Point planted a daughter church, All Saints Reformed Presbyterian. Ten years later another was started, West End Presbyterian Church.

In the mid 80’s, recognizing a need to improve the music and worship ministry, the congregation began praying that the Lord would bring willing and gifted individuals to lead the church in this area. Well, Larry and Cathy Julian joined in 1986. They were followed by the Maroons and the Coxes. Now more than a quarter of Stony Point’s membership participates in the music ministry.

God used some conflicts and troubles in the late 90’s to direct Stony Point’s leadership to adopt a more intentional and zealous ministry to youth. The Session called Michael Bryant to serve as Coordinator of Youth and Children’s ministries. His mission is to mobilize all members to serve the young. Thus we now have a vibrant intergenerational ministry which includes children and youth in most every aspect of congregational life.

Today, Stony Point enjoys God’s blessing in a close redemptive fellowship and a growing, more focused outreach to the city. Under Pastor Constable’s leadership the City Church of Richmond (formerly known as Franklin Street Community) was inaugurated in the fall of 2006.  Its mission is to “foster a community which not only sings and hears of God’s glory but shows His mercy and power in feeding the poor and in presenting the message of rescue in Christ to the people of Richmond.”

Finally, as anyone who has gotten an email from Michael Bryant knows, “The best is yet to come!”

Our Vision Today: Fire & Water for the Old Capital

Richmond is one of those cities that has always been shaped by the elements. It was by water that Christopher Newport and John Smith first came to Richmond in 1607. They had set sail with 120 men from the colony at Jamestown traveling up Powhatan’s River as far as Powhatan Hill and waterfalls that blocked their progress.

They made a settlement between what is now the 14th street bridge and the Pony Pasture. A few years later Thomas Dale, the new governor of Jamestown organized another expedition which established a small settlement just below the falls, building the first hospital there and housing among other, Pocahontas.

As time went on, and tobacco increasingly became the stock in trade for Virginians – the Falls of the James became an important center for inspecting and grading tobacco. Again, the river was to play the central role in the area’s development – as William Byrd looked down at the way the river cut through the landscape in a way which reminded him of his native London. ‘Richmond’ he called the place after Richmond-on-Thames.

And from the development of Washington’s Kanawha canal to increasing traffic on the James for the flour, iron and tobacco produced by the city – steamboats, canal boats and in time railroads found their way to Richmond and water provided for her growth in the way it had led to her founding. But alongside water trade, there has been another element in Richmond’s history – fire.

When the state capital was hurriedly moved from Williamsburg to Richmond during the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold defended the city and saw it not only captured in 1781 but also burned by British troops. Richmond recovered and as it grew under the Industrial Revolution with its ironworks, the fires of its furnaces and foundries downtown, people would escape for the weekend to a small but popular resort for the wealthy a few miles upstream in the country for the ‘good air’ at Bon Air.

In 1811 the city was threatened by a fire in its theater district but it was as the Civil War came to a crashing end that fire came to leave its mark on the city. Realizing that he must retreat from his capital in April 1865, Robert E. Lee left confederate soldiers to set fire to the city. Yet the fire spread out of control and it was the image of Richmond burning which greeted Union troops when they captured Richmond, and Richmond in ruins that awaited first Lee returning from Appomattox and then Abraham Lincoln.

Both fire and water have in their time shaped Richmond – sometimes for trade and for growth, often for disaster. As we look at Greater Richmond today we are still faced with a city which bears the promises and the scars of fire and water. The waters of prosperity have not run equally downstream – the city is still a patchwork of marked disparity between its east end and its west.

The fires which burned as the Civil War ended have in another sense continued to burn with the practical segregation of white and African American communities in the city – and not even a “city of churches” has been able or daring enough to address old wounds between them.

In all of this, from the wealthy western and southwestern suburbs to the struggling and crime-ridden neighborhoods of the ungentrified east end – we see massive opportunities for the Gospel of Jesus. Surely, only the fire of the Holy Spirit can convict men and women of their need to serve not themselves and their own interests but Christ as Lord; only the water of His grace can heal such deep divisions in our hopeful but blighted city.

Jesus once said “Is anyone thirsty? Is anyone thirsty? Let him come to me and drink.” It is our conviction that our mission must be to join with other Gospel churches in giving greater Richmond the hope of Christ’s salvation, not simply in words but in what we do in justice, in evangelism, and in reconciliation. It is how we live and pray and hope in His mercy that will make our city young and whole again.

What We Believe

1. There is one God, eternal and self-existing in three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) who are to be equally loved, honored, and adored.
2. All mankind participated in Adam’s fall from his original sinless state and is thus lost in sin and totally helpless.
3. The Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
4. The Sovereign God, for no other reason than His own unfathomable love and mercy, has chosen lost sinners from every nation to be redeemed by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit and through the atoning death and resurrection of His son, Jesus Christ.
5. Those sinners whom the Spirit quickens, come to believe in Christ as Savior by the Word of God, are born again, become sons of God, and will persevere to the end.
6. Justification is by faith and through it the undeserving sinner is clothed with the righteousness of Christ.
7. The goal of God’s salvation in the life of the Christian is holiness, good works, and service for the glory of God.
8. At death the Christian’s soul passes immediately into the presence of God and the unbeliever’s soul is eternally separated from God unto condemnation.
9. Baptism is a sign of God’s covenant and is properly administered to children of believers in their infancy as well as to those who come as adults to trust in Christ.
10. Jesus Christ will return to earth, visibly and bodily, at a time when He is not expected, to consummate history and the eternal plan of God.
11. The Gospel of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ must be published to all the world as a witness before Jesus Christ returns.

Stony Point Reformed Presbyterian Church is part of the Presbyterian Church in America and is a reformed denomination which holds to the Westminster Confession of Faith