Welcome!

Thanks for visiting the online home of the Church of the Risen Christ in Trenton, Tennessee and St. Mary Episcopal Catholic Church in Memphis, Tennessee. We are glad that you visited our website, and we would love for you to come by and worship with us.

Here, you will find a caring church family, with a warm and loving atmosphere. Our goal is to worship our Savior and bring glory to Him in all that we do. We seek to love and encourage one another in our faith and to answer the questions of those who are looking for hope. Our church family is dedicated to learning and living out the teachings of Jesus Christ in every part of our lives.

In a divided world, we believe choosing unity over uniformity is a healing way forward as we join God’s work of renewal. Too often, the church has become a place of fear, judgment, and exclusion — more focused on numbers and control than on love and nurture. We long for something better: a church shaped by grace, compassion, and hope. You are welcome here — to grow with us in the way of Jesus, to be formed by love, and to find a community of belonging

Our prayer is that if you don’t know Christ as your Savior, you would receive His free gift of salvation which He purchased for you by willingly dying for your sins and rising from the grave on the third day.

We hope to see you and your family soon!
-Your friends at the Church of the Risen Christ & St. Mary Episcopal Catholic Church

A word from our Pastor…

Pastoral Greetings in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ! 

 We extend a welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, filthy rich or dirt poor. We extend a special welcome to those who are carrying newborns, skinny as a rail or could afford to lose a few pounds.

We welcome those who can sing like Andrea Bocelli or like myself, can’t carry a note in a bucket. We welcome those who are “just browsing”, just woke up or just got out of jail. We welcome those who have perfect attendance pins since they were a child and those who haven’t been in church since little Joey’s baptism. We welcome those that are certain where they belong and those still searching. 

We extend a special welcome to those who are over 60 but not grown up yet, and to teenagers who are growing up too fast. We welcome soccer moms, NASCAR dads, starving artists, tree-huggers, latte-sippers, vegetarians, junk-food eaters. We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted. We welcome you if you’re having problems or you’re down in the dumps or if you don’t like “organized religion”, we’ve been there too.

We offer a special welcome to those who think the earth is flat, work too hard, don’t work, can’t spell, or because grandma is in town and wanted to go to church.

We welcome those who are inked, pierced or both. We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now, had religion shoved down your throat as a kid or got lost in traffic and wound up here by mistake. We welcome tourists, homosexual, heterosexual, not sure, seekers and doubters, bleeding hearts…and you! A hearty Christian welcome is extended to you!

WELCOME HOME!

The Reverend Father
Justin L. Gates
Priest

THE HISTORY OF THE INDEPENDENT MOVEMENT…
The Church of the Risen Christ stands within the historic stream of the Independent Episcopal Catholic Movement—a worldwide family of churches preserving the apostolic faith, the seven sacraments, and the episcopal order, while exercising spiritual freedom apart from Roman jurisdiction.

Our lineage reaches back to the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands in the early 1700s, when bishops sought to uphold apostolic succession and catholic faith without submitting to papal infallibility. From those roots grew the Old Catholic and Independent Episcopal traditions, which later took shape in the English-speaking world through figures such as Arnold Harris Mathew in Britain and Joseph René Vilatte in North America.

In the twentieth century, these traditions flourished into a network of autonomous, yet communion-minded churches. Through the Anglican Free Communion (International) and its American expression, the Episcopal Free Fellowship, our Church inherits this sacred trust: a faith that is ancient yet alive, catholic yet free, traditional yet pastoral.

We proclaim the risen Lord in the fullness of sacramental grace, welcoming all who seek Christ in reverent worship, sound teaching, and compassionate service.