Macon’s oldest church congregation is turning 200 this spring. See how it’s celebrating.

Churchgoers, religious leaders and community members flocked to Christ Church on Thursday for a once-in-a-century experience — the church’s 200th anniversary.

As attendees filed through the heavy wooden doors into the church’s nave alive with the thundering music of the organ, the weight of history sat heavily upon them. Christ Church is the oldest religious congregation in the city, and has seen generations of Maconites worship in its pews.

Russ Henry, a member of the vestry who chairs the church’s history committee, said Christ Church’s anniversary is not only the anniversary of the congregation itself, but represents an important cultural milestone for the city of Macon.

“It’s really the 200th anniversary of organized religion in Macon, Georgia,” Henry said. “We’ve been practicing religion, actively worshiping in this town now for 200 years.”

An irreplaceable piece of history

Christ Church was founded on March 5, 1825, by a reverend named Lot Jones who was on a missionary tour of Georgia, according to the Georgia Historical Society.

At the time of Christ Church’s founding, Macon was in its infancy. It had been created two years before as a frontier town after the U.S. government forcibly removed the Creek Indians from their native land, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

The city was sparsely populated — with many white inhabitants having just moved onto the land after it was distributed through a lottery — and its economy relied on the Ocmulgee River.

Christ Church initially met in public spaces before building its first church building at what is now the corner of Walnut and Second streets in 1834. The congregation soon outgrew the structure, and constructed the gothic building it currently resides at in 1851.

The building has been roughly the same ever since, save for a restoration project in 2000 for the church’s 175th anniversary, Henry said.

Over the years, the church has become well known among architecture buffs for its grand design and one-of-a-kind features.

“Everything as you walk through the church, every single little thing, is old,” Henry said. “So every little thing in this church has got a lot of history to it.”

One of its most famous is the 17-foot-tall stained glass window that depicts the “Parable of the Good Samaritan,” a Bible story where a man rescues a stranger who is dying on the side of a road. The window was made by Louis Comfort Tiffany and installed in 1883, Henry said, and was the first Tiffany window installed outside the northeastern U.S.

While the window’s inscription says it is in memory of Asher Ayres, the brother of the architect who designed Christ Church’s current building, Henry said no one knows who commissioned the window or how it got to Macon as Tiffany’s records documenting the window were lost in a fire.

Even through its many changes, the spirit of the church’s history is alive and well in the church’s walls — literally. Henry said many of the bricks behind the church’s stucco were taken from the original 1834 church structure. A few smaller stained glass windows decorated with geometric patterns were also pulled from the old church to preserve the congregation’s history.

Christ Church seeks to connect modern congregants with the past in other ways, too. The organ, which was installed during the restoration project in 2000, took about two years to craft and has more than 2,000 pipes in it, ranging in size from half an inch to 16 feet. But what makes it really special, Henry said, is that it was custom designed to mimic an organ that was in the church’s original structure in the 1840s.

“(The maker) took what they knew about that organ and tried to make this one sort of mimic it, although on a much greater scale,” Henry said.

Honoring past and present

As Christ Church leaders and congregation members gathered to start planning the 200th anniversary celebration in 2023, the most important goal was to celebrate the past and look towards the future, Henry said.

The festivities celebrating the church’s bicentennial began in January and are set to run through May. Thursday’s bicentennial service marked the keynote event.

While Christ Church’s 200th anniversary is Wednesday, the service was held on Thursday to avoid conflicting with Ash Wednesday, which is a day of fasting and prayer that marks the beginning of Lent for Christians.

“It just seemed a bit counterintuitive to have a big celebration, so we had to move it, which is okay,” Henry said.

The service featured a plethora of special guests, including Middle Georgia religious leaders representing many faiths and denominations and Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta Robert C. Wright. Congregation members and the community also packed the pews.

To mark the occasion, the church’s chimes rang out over downtown Macon for the first time in years. Henry said Christ Church sent the chimes to be repaired in 2020, but the pandemic created delays that held the chimes up for years. They were recently returned to the church, and the congregation decided it would be fitting to unveil them shortly before the service.

Another piece of the church’s history also made an appearance. A baptismal bowl and a communion plate and cup that were used when the church was first constructed were brought out during the service. They were previously used during the church’s centennial celebration in 1925 and Henry said he hopes to connect congregants with the church’s history.

“They haven’t been (out in public) since 1931,” Henry said. “It’s kind of like opening a time capsule.”

Thursday evening’s service was resplendent in a manner only rivaled by royal weddings and coronations. Hymns rang from the church’s belltower leading up to the event, and golden light filled the knave as Wright spoke from the altar, which was enveloped in banks of flowers.

The pews were packed with church members and the community, and as their voices joined in song, it felt like Christ Church was destined to stand for 200 years more.

This story was originally published March 4, 2025 at 6:00 AM.