Who We Are

Some history

Third Church of Christ, Scientist, Austin, started in 1971.  As a grass-roots effort by a small, local group known as “The Lakeway Christian Scientists,” they started holding services at the Lakeway Inn.

In 1984, the Christian Science international headquarters, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, formally designated the group as one of its branch churches. The Lakeway services continued to be held in various venues while members looked for a more permanent home.

Ten years later, the church received a generous donation of land, and construction began on a beautiful hillside in January of 1996.  The modern limestone building with sweeping views of the Austin Hill Country is nestled into the community of Bee Cave, about 13 miles from downtown Austin.  The building included a central sanctuary seating 80 people, a Sunday School for about 30 children, a childcare room for the very young, a Reading Room, and administrative offices.

On October 6th of that year, Third Church of Christ, Scientist, Austin, formally opened its doors to the community with its members joyfully offering its first service on the property.

A brief history on the origins of Christian Science and its founder, Mary Baker Eddy*

*as found on ChristianScience.com

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, defined Christian Science as “the law of God, the law of good...” (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1). She’d learned that God is infinite Love, and completely good. A clear glimpse of this through prayer has power to heal and transform anyone.

Mary Baker Eddy was a lifelong student of the Bible. And she’d always wanted to find solutions to human suffering. When she was critically injured in 1866, she turned to God with her whole heart. While reading accounts of Jesus’ swift, powerful healings, she experienced a new sense of God. She saw that God, Spirit, is the only reality. And she was completely healed. She wanted to understand what happened, so she studied the Bible and found universal and dependable laws of God. These laws are the foundation of Christian Science.

Since then many people have been healed and redeemed as they learn about their relationship to God through this reliable Science of Christianity.

The religious tenets of Christian Science:

1.    As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life.

2.    We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God.  We acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter; and man in God’s image and likeness.

3.    We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding thatcasts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.

4.    We acknowledge Jesus’ atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious Love, unfolding man’s unity with God through Christ Jesus the Way-shower; and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through Truth, Life, and Love as demonstrated by the Galilean Prophet in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death.

5.    We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal Life, even the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter.

6.    And we solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; todo unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just, and pure.

Learn more at: christianscience.com