A Cappella Worship on the East Side of Terre Haute
Eastside Church of Christ sits at 4025 College Avenue in Terre Haute, Indiana, a congregation that has occupied that stretch of the city's east side since the early 1960s. It grew out of two earlier congregations meeting on Fifth Avenue and was chartered in May of 1954 as College Avenue Church of Christ with fifty-three members. The College Avenue address and the name have stayed the same, even as the building doubled, the staff grew, and the ministry now reaches well beyond Vigo County through a podcast, short-term mission trips, and a worldwide network of partner works.
The worship at Eastside is built around a cappella singing. Sunday morning gatherings move through prayer, congregational singing without instrumental accompaniment, the Lord's Supper, a weekly offering, and a sermon. The plainness of that pattern is the point: it is rooted in New Testament Christianity and is intended to keep attention on the word being taught. Bryce Woodason, the church's full-time evangelist, and Jon Smith, the preaching and teaching minister, share the pulpit, while Andrea Smith coordinates the children's Bible classes that meet in the education wing before the worship service.
Founded in 1954: A Church Shaped on College Avenue
Eastside began as a cooperative effort between two existing churches of Christ, one meeting at Fifth Avenue and McKeen Street and the other at Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. In July of 1953, the elders and trustees learned that the building at 2505 College Avenue was up for sale, and the two congregations agreed unanimously to buy it with the goal of planting another church on the east side of town. The new work, then known as College Avenue Church of Christ, first met on May 9, 1954, with fifty-three charter members.
Within a decade, the original building had filled to capacity at around 150 members. A building fund raised $70,000, and the current property on College Avenue at Fruitridge was purchased. A new building went up, and the first worship service in that structure was held on December 2, 1962. By 1967, attendance had grown again, and on May 7 of that year the congregation started a second Sunday morning service with a combined attendance of 267. In 1990, the church was once more approaching capacity, so another building fund was started and a larger auditorium with seating for four hundred, plus offices and additional classrooms, was constructed. The old auditorium was converted into a fellowship hall, and the first service in the new auditorium was held on Easter Sunday, 1993.
Through those years, members of Eastside helped start new congregations on the northwest side of Terre Haute and in Kansas City, Missouri, and have taken part in missions in Sweden, Taiwan, India, Thailand, and Panama. The list of ministers who have served since 1954 includes M.F. Cottrell, Gene Carrell, Matthew Morrison, Doug Jones, Ray Hardin, Willis Rush, Verlon Harp, Abe Miller, Coy Sidell, Matt Carver, James Coker, and, since 2022, Jon Smith. Bryce Woodason began serving as evangelist in 2025.
What a Sunday Morning Looks Like
Sundays begin at 9:30 AM with Bible classes for all ages, which run about forty-five minutes. Adults gather in electives around the building while children move to their own classrooms and teens meet in their own graded class. The main service begins at 10:30 and typically runs about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, ending around 11:35.
Families worship together for the opening songs, prayers, communion, offering, and sermon. About fifteen minutes into the service, children who are three years old through third grade are invited to leave for Shine Time, an age-appropriate children's experience with music, prayer, and a short Bible message that lasts until about 11:35 AM. Nursery care is available throughout the morning for infants and toddlers.
There is a designated parking area near the front door set aside for visitors, and greeters stand at every entry to help newcomers find where they need to go. There is no dress code; most people wear something between casual and business casual, but everyone is welcome to come as they are.
The Shape of the Worship Service
The order of the Sunday worship service is simple and unchanging. The congregation enters, prays together, and sings a cappella. Communion is observed weekly as a memorial of the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ongoing person of Jesus Christ, and the church explains that visitors are welcome to participate or simply observe. A weekly offering supports the work of the church locally and around the world; visitors are not asked to give. A sermon follows, with the goal of walking through the text of Scripture in a way that is biblically faithful, culturally relevant, and applicable to daily life.
The a cappella tradition is explained to newcomers as more than a stylistic choice. The church sings without instrumental accompaniment to honor the pattern of worship seen in the New Testament, and the congregation worships together with its voices. Those unfamiliar with the practice are encouraged to sing along or simply listen.
Midweek Bible Study and Sunday Evening Small Groups
Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 7:00 PM are devoted to midweek Bible study for all ages.
Sunday evenings at 5:30 PM are reserved for the small groups that meet in homes around Terre Haute and at the church building. The church describes small groups as the heaviest emphasis on discipleship in the life of Eastside. Members eat together, study together, pray together, and serve together, taking their faith into their neighborhoods through acts of love and mercy. Sign-up sheets are posted at the church for anyone who would like to join one.
Children's Ministry: Bible Classes and Shine Time
The children's ministry at Eastside draws on a deep bench of adult volunteers committed to walking preschoolers through fifth graders toward a fuller understanding of who God is and what He has done through Jesus. Sunday morning and Wednesday evening Bible classes are divided into four graded groups: nursery through age three, two and three year olds, preschool through kindergarten, and first through fifth grade. Andrea Smith, wife of Jon Smith, coordinates the children's Bible classes.
Shine Time, which began in the early 1990s as a ministry started by Frank Jones and his wife, has become a regular feature of the 10:30 worship service. Children aged three through third grade are dismissed during the sermon for a kid-friendly version of the message with singing, praying, and a Bible lesson, then return to their families near the close of the service.
Elev8 and Youth Ministry
The youth ministry takes the name elev8 and meets Sunday nights from 5:00 to 7:00 PM at the church for food, a devotional, and games. The goal of the program is to deepen the youth's understanding of the greatness of God and to encourage them toward godliness.
Men's, Women's, DivorceCare, and Financial Peace
The men's ministry gathers on the first and third Friday of each month from 8:00 to 9:30 PM, and members are invited to sign up for transformational Crucible Project weekends. The women's ministry meets for a Ladies Bible Class on the first and third Tuesday of the month at 10:30 AM in the church library at 4025 College Avenue.
DivorceCare is a thirteen-week support group for those who have experienced separation or divorce. The group meets on Monday evenings from 7:00 to 8:30 PM in a room just inside the front entrance. The first half of each session is a video on a topic relevant to the separation or divorce experience, and the second half is open for voluntary, confidential discussion. Jon Smith facilitates the group. There is a one-time twenty-dollar fee for the accompanying workbook, which is waived for anyone who cannot afford it.
Financial Peace University, led by Riley Bryan, walks participants through budgeting, paying off debt, saving, building wealth, and biblical stewardship. The course is typically offered over nine Monday evenings.
The Cross Culture Podcast
Cross Culture is the church's outreach for letting the gospel have a voice within the wider culture. The podcast engages culture's most pressing questions from a Christian perspective, addressing topics such as truth in a post-truth age, the Bible's teaching on sexuality and relationships, the meaning of Christmas, addiction recovery, and the historical impact of Christianity on the West. Episodes are released on YouTube and Spotify.
Recent episodes have included a two-part interview with Terry Raibley, a leader at House of Hope in Brazil, Indiana, a residential ministry for men seeking freedom from addiction. Other episodes have explored Bible stories that are widely known but rarely understood, the gospel message hidden in Christmas movies, and a tribute to the public faith of Charlie Kirk hosted by Bryce Woodason.
MULTIPLY: Discipleship Training
MULTIPLY is the church's discipleship training group designed to equip members to become disciples who make disciples. Each ninety-minute session offers hands-on training in reading the Bible with sound hermeneutics, starting gospel conversations, sharing one's faith confidently, beginning one-on-one Bible studies, and leading someone through Scripture in a personal discipleship setting. The group meets on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month from 9:00 to 10:30 AM.
Missions: Terre Haute and the World
Eastside has been connected to worldwide mission work for decades. The church has historically partnered with mission fields in Sweden, Taiwan, India, Thailand, and Panama. Today that work continues through an active relationship with brothers and sisters in Ghana, where the church helps develop water wells for local communities and distributes audio Bibles in native languages. Members also travel to Ghana each year to serve alongside those partners in person.
Closer to home, the church supports a children's home through yearly collections and works alongside other Christian churches to offer youth camp at Camp Wabashi, a long-running summer and retreat ministry that has been a part of leading thousands of young people to Christ. The church's own benevolent programs serve local needs, and members also support men's and women's jail and prison ministries, the college campus ministry, Kids Hope USA, crisis pregnancy centers, the Senior Seekers outreach, and Kingdom's Kitchen, the church's effort to serve meals to those facing homelessness in Terre Haute.
Core Beliefs
Eastside's stated core beliefs are anchored in the conviction that Christ is the head of the church and that the Bible is God's inspired word. The church practices a cappella worship as a reflection of New Testament worship, celebrates the Lord's Supper each Sunday as a memorial of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and gives weekly to support the work of ministry locally and around the world. Members commit to prayer, authentic community, grace-oriented service, family nurture, creativity in method, the mobilization of every member, ministry excellence, and reaching people who do not yet know Christ. Salvation is through faith in Jesus, and the church teaches that Jesus will return to judge the world.
Leadership at Eastside
The preaching and teaching work at Eastside is shared between Bryce Woodason and Jon Smith. Woodason, who joined the staff in 2025, holds a bachelor's degree from Sunset International Bible Institute and has been in full-time preaching and teaching ministry for over five years. Smith, who joined Eastside in June of 2022, previously preached in Big Spring, Texas, Sherman, Texas, and Wilkesboro, North Carolina; he served for twelve years as a youth minister before that. Smith holds a Bachelor of Biblical Studies from Sunset International Bible Institute and from Lubbock Christian University, and a Master of Education in Counseling and Human Development from the University of North Texas.
The eldership includes David Adamson, who joined Eastside with his wife Kathy in 2000 after decades of ministry at sister congregations in Terre Haute and was appointed an elder in 2019; Tom Woodason, Bryce's father, who has been a member at Eastside since 1995 and has served as an elder since 2010; and Frank Jones, who was baptized at Eastside in the mid-1980s and has led the Shine Time ministry with his wife since the early 1990s.
The deacons are Eric Austin (outside building and grounds), Riley Bryan (finances and Financial Peace University), Ed Warner (benevolence), and Seth Woodason (inside building and grounds).
Planning a First Visit
Visitors can fill out a short form online so the staff can be ready at the door. Sunday Bible classes start at 9:30 AM, followed by the worship service at 10:30. There is a guest parking area near the front entrance, greeters at every door, and classes and a nursery available for every age. Midweek Bible study meets Wednesday evenings at 6:00 PM. Communion and the offering are weekly, but visiting guests are not asked to give. Visitors can participate as much or as little as they like.
For those who want to learn more or get connected, the church offers one-on-one Bible studies, a call request option, and a confidential prayer request option. Sunday worship is livestreamed on YouTube for those unable to attend in person, and recent sermons are available online.
For more information, the church office can be reached at (812) 235-9322 or at eastsidechurchterrehaute@gmail.com. Giving is available online, the sermon archive lives at eastsidechurchofchrist.us/sermons, and a livestream can be watched on the church's YouTube channel.