"This Is Our Story:" A Contextual and Appreciative Inquiry-Informed History of the Valley Forge Christian Church

Abstract

This project applies Appreciative Inquiry and a contextual approach to writing a history of the Valley Forge Christian Church in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) enables organizations and communities to explore and appropriate those elements of their stories that inspire hope and confidence. Instead of focusing on discrete problems to be isolated and solved, AI takes a more wholistic approach by asking groups to identify and learn from their times of greatest vitality. In conjunction with the pioneering work of Carol Kammen, who has published extensively on the topics of researching and writing local and congregational history, AI provides a useful framework for exploring and learning from the history of the Valley Forge congregation. This study traces the church’s story from its founding as part of the Stone- Campbell restoration movement amid the challenging circumstances of post-Civil War northeast Tennessee. It continues with the church’s early growth and “near death” experiences in the early twentieth century. It narrates the period of renewal and reorganization that followed, and it concludes with the era of significant growth and vitality that occurred during the latter half of the twentieth century. With the church’s recent observance of the 150th anniversary of its founding in view, this project offers an historically informed resource for the congregation as it reflects on and plans for the continuation of its unique story within the larger story of God’s redemptive and reconciling work.