Community Church Movement

The Community Church movement aims to bring together and support local community churches.

Community churches have existed in the United States since the early nineteenth century. Small communities did not always have the population or finances to sustain churches of all Christian denominations, so community leaders would cross denominational lines and pool their resources to support a single church. A fictional example might be the Walnut Grove, Minnesota church in the Little House on the Prairie television show. By the early twentieth century, with the ecumenical movement in full swing, community churches were ready to cut formal ties with denominations and to demonstrate Christian unity through diversity. Community churches began to understand themselves as post-Protestant and postdenominational.