Here since 1945

World Missions Our Missions

Our congregation’s humble beginnings can be traced back to the work of a dedicated group of organized Baptists whose sole desire was to purchase suitable building sites for the purpose of establishing future Baptist churches within the growing Roanoke Valley. In the early 1920’s, the Roanoke Baptist Missionary and Social Union formed as an incorporated organization. Around 1940, this group identified a need in the Grandin Court community, and a strategic site was located on Brambleton Avenue.

On the afternoon of September 30, 1945, a congregation gathered at a quaint, new building on Brambleton Avenue for the first Sunday service. Rev. H. Walton Connelly Sr., head of the Evangelistic Department for Virginia Baptists, delivered the first message entitled, “World Missions Our Missions.” At the invitation to join this church, forty individuals stepped forward.

Over the course of the following week, a series of evening revival services were conducted and several people joined the new church. Church historian Glenwood Deacon writes, “Our dream was beginning to come true! Everyone was so enthusiastic that they invited their neighbors and friends to join our happy group.” At the end of 1945, 157 charter members constituted the Grandin Court Baptist Church. What had begun so unceremoniously just a few years earlier on a small, unassuming lot littered with scrub pines, honeysuckle, and poison ivy was now a thriving Baptist congregation.

Today, Grandin Court Baptist Church strives to be that missional community which seeks to bring the redemptive reign of God in Christ to bear on every dimension of life within our community, the Roanoke Valley, and far beyond. Our prayer is to be the gathered community of faith, grounded in the work of the Holy Spirit, equipped and prepared, so as to be a scattered force of transformational change in the world. Through God’s goodness and grace, our church looks remarkably different than it did sixty-five years ago. However, it remains our deep desire to be the faithful heirs of the journey of “World Missions, Our Missions” for the twenty-first century.