Celebrating the Rich History of Christ Church United Methodist
On November 20, 2025, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of Christ Church United Methodist. But we’re just getting started—both in making history and in bringing our history to life.
We seek to use the stories of our past to inspire present members to kindle the church’s future. We don’t want to simply pat ourselves on the back for what previous generations accomplished.
Brief History of Christ Church United Methodist
Christ Church United Methodist traces its history to 1806, when a group of Methodists began meeting in a log cabin on the current site of Louisville Metro Hall. The small congregation moved to a Market Street site in 1809 and then to the current site of the Kentucky International Convention Center in 1816. There it became Fourth Street Methodist Church.
In 1835, after significant growth, Fourth Street Methodist split into three congregations. One of them, Brook Street Methodist Church, was our grandmother church. That church moved to East Broadway in 1865. (The site is now home to a Norton Cancer Institute facility.) Broadway Methodist Church became one of the strongest churches in the Louisville Annual Conference, and it helped organize several local congregations, including the Highland, Fourth Avenue, Beechmont, and St. Paul churches.
Moving East
By 1925, however, the Broadway area was becoming more commercialized, and church members began flocking to the new eastern suburbs. In 1954, after decades of declining membership and financial support, church leaders began planning to move as well.
While efforts continued to sell the Broadway property, Pastor James W. Averitt launched a placeholder congregation, Indian Hills Methodist Church, on August 28, 1955. It met in Garnett Hall on the Masonic Homes campus off Frankfort Avenue. On November 20, 1955, the new congregation merged with the Broadway congregation, thus uniting Louisville’s oldest and newest Methodist churches. With a churchwide vote on January 8, 1956, the combined church became Christ Methodist Church.
Christ Church opened its first building on September 1, 1957. It included a 190-seat chapel (later named Averitt Chapel) and a small wing of classrooms and offices.
Additional space opened on what is now a 13-acre campus in 1962, 1974, 1997, 2007, and 2009. The original building could almost fit in the footprint of the 2009 sanctuary.
The Church and Its People
But Christ Church’s history has never been about buildings. It has always been about people. At a 1956 groundbreaking, Sunday School Superintendent Joseph D. Raine, Sr., sent everyone forth with a benediction that echoes across the years:
“May the structure that we erect here be not only a place of great beauty and magnificence, but a place of love and understanding, where we who now make this humble beginning will be urged to better Christian living, and where our children and our children’s children will come to learn of thy great love, a place that will forevermore serve this great community with spiritual leadership and inspiration.”