Our Story

It started in a living room.

Emmaus Church didn't launch with a stage, a sound system, or a building. It launched with people. On a Sunday in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, over a hundred people crammed into a living room because they believed God was doing something here and they didn't want to miss it.

That's who we are. A young, growing church plant full of energy, conviction, and ordinary people who believe the gospel changes everything. We've since moved into Rockvale High School, but we haven't outgrown the living room spirit.

Named after a road.

On the day of the resurrection, two disciples walked seven miles from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. They were crushed. The one they'd put all their hope in was dead. The story was over...or so they thought.

A stranger joined them on the road. He walked with them, listened to them, and then opened the Scriptures in a way that set their hearts on fire. Later that evening, when he broke bread with them at the table, their eyes were opened. It was Jesus all along.

We named our church after that road because we believe that's what a church should be: a place where Jesus meets people in the middle of their journey, not after they've figured it out, but right in the thick of it.

Walk alongside the hurting

He joined them where they were.

Jesus didn't wait for the two disciples to get it together before he showed up. He found them mid-grief, mid-confusion, mid-walk and joined them there. We want to be a church that goes toward people in their hardest moments, not one they have to clean up for first.

Open the Word

He opened the Scriptures and their hearts burned.

"Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" We want the Bible to feel like that. Not a rulebook but a living word that sets something on fire inside you. Every week we open it together and expect it to do something.

Welcome the stranger

They invited him in, and everything changed.

The disciples didn't know who he was. They still invited him to stay. That hospitality is what opened the door to recognition. We believe that people matter before they believe what we believe, and we want our doors and our tables to be genuinely open.

Break bread together

He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

It wasn't the sermon or the program that opened their eyes. It was a meal, the simple act of breaking bread. Community that goes deep happens around tables, not just in rows. We want to be a church known for the kind of togetherness that makes Jesus visible.

Go and tell

That same hour, they got up and went back.

They'd walked seven miles. It was night. They were tired. And the moment their eyes were opened, they turned around and made the trip back to Jerusalem to tell everyone. That urgency. The can't-keep-it-to-yourself impulse of encountering the risen Jesus is the engine behind everything we do.