10/05/2026
Throughout the Mountain State, there are cities, towns, counties, and even entire regions where a family or individual seeking a confessionally Reformed and Calvinistic church may find one within a reasonable distance of home. Yet in other parts of our state, such churches remain exceedingly scarce, and in some places they are altogether absent.
According to the religious-affiliation data the Directory has been examining, Boone County, West Virginia’s major Christian adherents are approximately the following:
• Baptist (Arminian) - 32.8%
• Restorationist - 19.7%
• Methodist - 19.1%
• Non-Denominational - 12.7%
• Other (Holiness, Roman Catholic, etc.) - 15.7%
To the best of our present research, not one existing church in Boone County openly identifies with, or can reasonably be situated within, the broad historic Reformed and Calvinistic tradition—whether Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, or even Non-Denominational. By this, we do not mean conformity to every distinctive of any one Reformed confession or denomination, nor are we defining the tradition solely by the standards of the Directory. Rather, we have in view those foundational doctrinal convictions and practical commitments broadly shared across the historic Reformed tradition. At present, we have been unable to identify a congregation in Boone County that cumulatively embraces:
• The Nicene Creed
• The Doctrines of Grace
• The Five Solas of the Reformation
• An Evangelistic Mission
None of this is intended as a criticism of every congregation presently laboring in Boone County, nor can religious statistics ever measure the true spiritual condition of individual souls. Numbers, while helpful, cannot tell us where or how God may be quietly at work, and denominational labels cannot tell us everything about the faithfulness of a local church, or the work of reformation that may already be taking place within it. Nevertheless, what we have found does bring something worthy of our prayerful attention into view: there remains both room and great need in Boone County for a healthy, evangelistic, confessionally Reformed and Calvinistic church. And we believe the small town of Madison deserves particular consideration.
Geographically, Madison sits between two areas of southern West Virginia that are comparatively better served: the southern coalfields of Logan and Mingo Counties to the southwest, and the Kanawha Valley to the northeast. Yet between these two areas lies Boone County, with Madison at its heart.
It is with communities such as this in mind that we have begun an initiative we are calling “Churches Close to Home.” The aim is simple: to identify communities throughout West Virginia where like-minded believers who desire to belong to a Reformed and Calvinistic congregation presently have none within approximately thirty minutes of their homes. Having extensively identified these areas of the Mountain State, we want to pray intentionally for them, better understand their particular needs, and gather useful information that can be placed into the hands of faithful evangelists, missionaries, church planters, established churches, and church-planting networks willing to prayerfully consider laboring there.
Furthermore, it is our conviction that the local church ought ordinarily to be more than a place to which Christians commute once or twice each week. We long to see believers worshiping in churches near enough to home that they may truly share life together: serving alongside one another, evangelizing their neighbors, practicing hospitality, bearing one another’s burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ, catechizing and discipling their children, knowing and being known by their elders and deacons, and becoming an identifiable presence within the communities where God has placed them.
There is also something especially compelling about Boone County when we consider its history—for the Reformed and Calvinistic stream is not altogether foreign to this part of West Virginia. The nineteenth-century Baptist minister, James Mitchell, whose name appears among the ministers of the Teays Valley Association in an 1835 Baptist register, is known to have labored in Boone County and helped establish churches there.
The broader history is equally significant. The Teays Valley Association had been formed from the Greenbrier Association in 1812, and when that history is traced farther upstream, we find connections to the Ketocton Association, one of America’s earliest associations of Calvinistic/Particular
Baptists, and ultimately to churches with ties to the Philadelphia Association and its confession, the Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742)—itself an American revision of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/89). In other words, historic Reformed and Calvinistic Baptist Christianity is not a foreign theology being newly imported into the mountains of West Virginia. Its roots reach deeply into our own religious inheritance, and men standing within this broader theological stream were already laboring, preaching, and establishing these churches in Boone County generations ago.
In more recent years, however, attempts to establish a lasting Reformed and Calvinistic presence in Boone County have been “touch-and-go.” Of more recent years, Christ Community Church in the small community of Seth represented another such effort. That congregation was eventually absorbed into a few churches in the Kanawha Valley, and the work in Boone County ultimately ceased. Once again, the county was left without a lasting Reformed and Calvinistic witness, and as best as we have been able to determine, the percentage of these churches in Boone County stands at 0%. And that number is precisely the reason we are praying.
We are not interested in assisting in the planting of churches merely to place another dot upon the map, for West Virginia does not simply need “another church.” Nor do we desire works built upon pragmatism, entertainment, or seeker-sensitive methods that may gather a crowd while obscuring the very message sinners most desperately need. Rather, we long to see healthy, faithful churches established upon the Word of God, centered upon Christ, and committed without compromise to the proclamation of the gospel, which is “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16). We desire pulpits from which the whole counsel of God is faithfully proclaimed; churches rooted in the historic Christian faith once delivered to the saints and shaped by the great truths recovered in the Reformation: Scripture alone as our final authority, Christ alone as our only Mediator, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, and all things unto the glory of God alone; churches where the sovereignty of God in salvation is preached without embarrassment, and the free offer of the gospel is proclaimed without hesitation; where sinners are earnestly called to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ; where believers are discipled in holiness; where neighbors are loved and evangelized; where sheep are known and shepherded; and where the ordinary means appointed by Christ are faithfully practiced from one generation to the next.
Therefore, we are praying that God would raise up men willing to labor faithfully in such places. We are praying for evangelists willing to sow where others have not sown, pastors willing to shepherd with patience and endurance, churches willing to send faithful men, and church-planting networks willing to look beyond the places where growth may come quickly and consider communities where the need is great, faithful churches are scarce, and Christ is worthy to be proclaimed.
Ultimately, we are praying that the next work in Boone County will remain. We are praying that God might be pleased to establish a local Reformed and Calvinistic church in Madison whose roots sink deeply into the soil of Boone County, a church that will preach Christ when the work is small, preach Christ when the work is difficult, and, by the sustaining grace of God, still be preaching Christ long after those who first planted and labored there have gone to their reward. We pray that such a church might become a spiritual inheritance entrusted to our children and grandchildren, who will themselves faithfully carry on the work and contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.
We are asking churches, pastors, missionaries, church planters, and ordinary Christians throughout the Mountain State:
• Pray for Boone County.
• Pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up and send forth faithful evangelists, missionaries, pastors, and church-planters willing to labor in Madison.
• If you are a like-minded believer already living in Boone County or the surrounding area, prayerfully consider whether God might have you become part of such a work, praying for it, gathering with it, serving alongside it, and helping establish a faithful local church close to home.
If you are an evangelist, pastor, missionary, church-planter, established church, or church-planting network burdened for underserved communities in Appalachia, we would love to speak with you. There are already individuals and families throughout in Boone County, and especially the town of Madison, who love these truths and long for faithful churches nearer to home. Among them are men whom, in time, the Lord might raise up and qualify to serve as elders or deacons. Others stand ready to pray, serve, give, open their homes, evangelize their neighbors, and put their hands to the work, should God be pleased to establish a faithful church among them.
May the Lord of the harvest do what statistics, strategies, and even directories cannot do: to raise up laborers, open doors, save sinners, gather His sheep, and build His church.
For Christ’s Kingdom in Christ’s Mountains!
