"Thou shalt remember all the ways

which the Lord thy God led thee..." Deuteronomy 8:2

 

In 1832, the leader of a historic Springfield family, George Bolton Lownes, erected a small church building on a parcel of his farm adjoining Baltimore Pike. He had come to personal faith in Christ out of Quakerism and desired a means of honoring the Lord before he died. In his will he left the chapel as a place of worship, "free for the use" of any who would observe "...the doctrines of the Christian religion as set forth in the New Testament, and especially...the doctrine of the proper divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ..."

 

This building, which is now the oldest standing church building in Springfield, came to be known as "The Blue Church" because Lownes had constructed it of blue Pennsylvania limestone, which turned a shade of blue in wet weather.

 

For the next hundred years, the building was used as a place of worship only intermittently. In 1933, a home Bible study group received permission to reopen the building and the congregation known as "The Blue Church" continues to minister to Springfield and the surrounding communities.