About Us
Our Present
Currently located at 4201 West Main Street, Jacksonville, Arkansas, Cross Roads Free Will Baptist is a Christ centered, Bible based, fellowship of believers. Cross Roads is affiliated with the National Association of Free Will Baptists, Arkansas Free Will Baptists, and the Central Association of Arkansas Free Will Baptists. Our schedule of services include:
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10:30 a.m. Worship Service Sunday mornings
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9:30 a.m.. Sunday School for all ages
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6:30 p.m. Mid-week Service Wednesday evenings
David Harper - Pastor (501 580 0324)
Bro. David's E-mail - pastorharper@centurytel.net
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Church- (501 982 1378)
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Cell-(501 580 0324)
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Our People
In His creative capacity, God made every person in His own image and in His own likeness. In His redemptive capacity, God loves all people and desires that all persons repent and be saved. We are all God's creation. God loves each and every one of us the same. Cross Roads Free Will Baptist is a place where people from all backgrounds and ways of life may discover and experience God and the commonality that we share in Him.
Our Past
Cross Roads Free Will Baptist has a history that spans over four decades. Organized in 1960 as the First Free Will Baptist of Jacksonville, Arkansas, the church was located at 2311 Green Acres Road for approximately 46 years. The Lord blessed the congregation at that location. The church grew and several building changes occurred. Most importantly, lives were changed by the saving grace of God. In 2002, property was purchased on West Main Street in Jacksonville and a relocation project began. In 2007, the church name was changed to Cross Roads Free Will Baptist.
History of the Free Will Baptist Denomination:
The Free Will Baptist Denomination is a fellowship of evangelical believers united in extending the witness of Christ and the building of His Church throughout the world. The rise of Free Will Baptist can be traced to the influences of Baptist of Armenian persuasion who settled in the colonies from England.
The denomination sprang up on two fronts at the same time. The southern line, or Palmer movement, traces its beginnings to the year 1727 when one Paul Palmer organized a church at Chowan, North Carolina. Palmer had previously ministered in New Jersey and Maryland, having been baptized in a congregation which had moved from Wales to a trace on the Delaware River in northern Pennsylvania.
The northern line, or Randall movement, had its beginnings with a congregation organized by Benjamin Randall June 30, 1780, in New Durham, New Hampshire. Both lines of Free Will Baptist taught the doctrines of free grace, free salvation and free will, although from the first there was no organizational connection between them.
The northern line expanded more rapidly in the beginning and extended its outreach into the West and Southwest. In 1910-1911 this body of Free Will Baptists merged with the Northern Baptist denomination, taking along more than half its 1,100 churches and all denominational property, including several major colleges. On December 28, 1916, at Pattonsburg Missouri, representatives of remnant churches in the Randall movement reorganized into the Cooperative General Association of Free Will Baptist.
Free Will Baptist in the southeastern United States, having descended from the Palmer foundation, had often manifested fraternal relationships with Free Will Baptists of the Randall movement in the north and west: but the slavery question and the Civil War prevented formal union between them. The churches in the southern line were organized into various associations and conferences from the beginning and had finally organized into a General Conference by 1921. These congregations were not affected by the merger of the northern movement with the Northern Baptist.
Now that the remnants of the Randall movement had reorganized into the Cooperative General Conference, it was inevitable that fusion between these two groups of Free Will Baptist would finally come. In Nashville, Tennessee, on November 5, 1935, representatives of these two groups met and organized the National Association of Free Will Baptist.
This body adopted a Treatise which set forth the basic doctrines and described the faith and practice that had characterized Free Will Baptists through the years. Having been revised on several occasions, it serves as a guideline for a denominational fellowship which comprises more that 2,400 churches in 42 states and 14 foreign countries.
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