We drive our cars up and down the roads of our community rarely, if ever, realizing that we stand upon the shoulders of giants. Their work before us paved the way for our presence now.

Once what we now call Pennsylvania Route 16 was a mass of trees reaching to the sky. There were glades where deer fed, bison roamed and limestone caves were inhabited by wolves. Generations of Native Americans also lived off the bounty of the land. Even now one occasionally finds a flint arrow point or stone axe head surfacing in the springtime after a heavy rain.

Then was heard the sound of horse teams, wagon wheels and the echo of steel axes upon the hardwoods. Settlers came from the east and, before that, from distant European and African shores. Logs were turned into houses and houses into homes for little families seeking their Garden of Eden.

Soldiers came as well. Natives in war paint, Englishmen and Scots in Redcoats and colonial pioneers clad in buckskin traveled the roads now paved over and studded with light poles and power lines and, following them, more families seeking opportunity and a good life in this lush and verdant valley.

An innumerable host of families have called Waynesboro home since those early days. Centuries later, families are still coming to this community, seeking a life and a livelihood. There is opportunity to be had, jobs and careers to be found, a pleasant climate that accents the four seasons and great natural beauty.

John Wallace came around 1749 or 1750, settling on the property that is now a part of the Waynesboro High School. He envisioned a thriving community and passed that vision on to his son, John Wallace, Jr. John Wallace Jr. created a plan for a town he wanted to name, Waynesburg. He petitioned for a charter, named the town in honor of the General he served under in the Revolution, Gen. Anthony Wayne, and laid out the first lots in town in 1797. The town was later named Waynesboro, because there already was a Waynesburg in the western part of Pennsylvania.

As the village became a town, blacksmiths, merchants, farmers and artisans came to the community. John Bourns, an early settler and blacksmith, understood the need for spiritual nurture and sought to encourage the formation of churches to offer spiritual sustenance to the community. He helped to build the log-meeting house that still survives on East Main Street.

Much of what we enjoy--or even take for granted--is ours because of those who came before us. Their names are rarely mentioned now: the Renfrew sisters, John Wallace, Sr. and John Wallace, Jr., John Bourns, Nathaniel Wilson, Jacob Gruber and many others. Their legacy is our community. And this is the story of just one part of that legacy, the people of the Christ United Methodist Church.