Our Mission
This church was born out of the desire to preserve the concept of unity and the spirit of Christ's work. Our purpose is simply to win the lost and perfect the saints. Our foundation and cornerstone is as Jesus stated, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,"
Luke 4:18
A Brief History of Grace Tabernacle
On Tuesday April 30, 2003 about 35 people came together to pray and seek an answer from the Lord about our future. Our former denomination had said we could not build a church in Martinsville and that we must go out to other churches of our faith and assimilate with them. We prayed if this was what God wanted and if it was we would listen to His voice above all others. One of the reasons we wanted to stay together was that we had gone through great tribulation with each other and felt we should have a right to worship here where many of our members had lived their entire lives in this city and had helped start the original apostolic pentecostal church in town. After much prayer the feeling was mutual in that everyone felt it was right to start a work of our own even at the risk of being asked to leave our denomination. We left the denomination but not the heartfelt principles of our apostolic faith.
Our first service was in the fellowship hall of the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church on Sunday May 3rd at 3:00 p.m. We soon found a building we could rent at 1495 State Road 252 on the North side of town. We are grateful for having it to worship in but the layout does not lend itself well to Sunday School classes or have much parking. The last three years we have looked diligently for property that we could purchase and finally found a spot we felt was right. Our church family was astounded when the offer was accepted and we were able to purchase the land. It is located on 323 West Washington Street in an area of Martinsville that we feel we can be of service to the community in many ways. We teach that salvation is found in Acts 2:38 and our grip is firm when it comes to the doctrine of holiness. Along with dynamic ,Holy Ghost filled services, you can expect to receive something fresh from heaven when you worship with us.
Our present facilities have made it difficult to maintain our growth of both people and ministries. We currently have a strong Sunday School teaching program, vibrant youth program and both men’s fellowship and Women’s ministries. Our focus is on both evangelism and development of the saints. Our new building has started and is coming out of the ground and with it our hopes for greater ministry are rising also. The building we are erecting is not our ending… it is our beginning. We do have a drawing of our church master plan but are most concerned with following “the Master’s” plan.