Rocky Hill Baptist Church, at 7409 S. Northshore Drive in Knoxville, centers its identity on Sunday worship shaped by the Bible and a conviction that every member is a minister. Its 10:00 a.m. gathering combines contemporary and traditional worship songs with prayer, Scripture reading, and verse-by-verse preaching or teaching. Around that gathering are classes for children, youth, and adults, a Wednesday grocery ministry, and a shared goal of making faithful followers of Christ.
One-Hour Worship Built Around the Text
Rocky Hill Baptist Church meets every Sunday at 10:00 a.m. for worship. The service incorporates contemporary and traditional worship songs and also includes corporate prayer and reading of Scripture. The focus of the gathering is the preaching and teaching of God's Word, usually in a verse-by-verse expository format. The worship experience typically lasts about one hour, making it a gathering centered on biblical instruction as well as song.
Attire is relaxed at Rocky Hill. Some people dress up and others dress down; ladies may wear dresses or slacks, while men may wear sport coats or blue jeans with a clean shirt. What a visitor wears is not an issue, and the central message is simply to come.
The morning service is livestreamed on YouTube, and a collection of sermons is available for later viewing.
A Nursery, Children's Church, and Gospel-Centered Learning
A nursery is available during worship for children from infancy through three years old. After the song portion of the gathering and just before the sermon, children are dismissed from the sanctuary to participate in Children's Church.
Rocky Hill treats children's teaching as an important part of church life. Its programs use gospel-centered teaching, Scripture memory, music, crafts, activities, and games, with the hope that children will come to faith in Jesus Christ. The aim is both to nurture and care for children and to help them learn while having fun, so that the truths of Scripture take root in their lives.
Sunday School begins at 9:00 a.m., giving families an hour before the 10:00 worship gathering.
Wednesday Grocery Ministry and Midweek Classes
The church's regular Wednesday rhythm includes three gatherings:
- Grocery Ministry meets at 8:30 a.m.
- Youth Bible Study and kids gathers from 5:45 to 7:00 p.m.
- Adult Bible Study begins at 6:00 p.m.
The youth ministry also meets once each month for a special game or ministry activity. The gathering is built around five functions of the church: evangelism, discipleship, worship, fellowship, and ministry. Youth and parents are equipped with the Word, with an emphasis on individuals and the heart of each person rather than simply keeping programs organized.
Every Member Is a Minister
Rocky Hill's goal is to make faithful followers of Christ and to see each member ministering to each other, growing in faith, serving the church, and making disciples of all nations. Its mission is Making Faithful Followers of Jesus Christ, while its vision is Every Member Is a Minister. The biblical model in Ephesians 4:12-13 is training the saints for ministry, building up the body of Christ, and growing toward unity in faith and a mature measure of Christ's fullness.
The church covenant describes members as one body in Christ who, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, walk in Christian love and seek the church's advancement in knowledge, holiness, and comfort. Members commit to sustaining worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrine; contributing to ministry, expenses, relief of the poor, and the spread of the gospel; maintaining family devotions; and educating their children.
The covenant also calls members to pursue justice in their dealings, faithfulness in their commitments, and an example in their conduct. They are to avoid gossiping, grumbling, and quick temper, pursue holiness, watch over one another in brotherly love, remember one another in prayer, and aid one another in sickness and distress.
The Good News Rocky Hill Proclaims
Rocky Hill defines the gospel as the good news about Jesus Christ. Its explanation begins with God as the perfect Creator and humanity's failure to meet God's perfect standard. Because sin brings spiritual and physical death, those who rebel without repenting face eternal judgment. The gospel answers that bad news with the person and work of Jesus.
Jesus Christ is both God and man. He lived the sinless life humanity cannot live, then died as a substitute, taking the punishment and wrath that others deserve. He rose again on the third day, demonstrating victory over sin and death. His death and resurrection provide forgiveness and a reconciled relationship with God, not as payment for good works but through God's freely given grace.
The proper response is repentance, turning from sin to God, and faith, placing trust and hope in Jesus and what he accomplished at the cross and in the resurrection. Those who turn from sin and trust in Christ are cleansed of guilt and receive salvation as a free gift that cannot be earned or repaid. Rocky Hill also teaches that those saved will persevere in faith, continually trusting in Christ and treasuring him above all else.
At the end of the story, people from every ethnicity, language, nation, and people group will be with God, worshiping and glorifying him forever. In Rocky Hill's telling, this is why the gospel is good news: through Jesus, sinners can have a relationship with God and are destined for eternal life in his presence.
The Baptist Faith and Message at Rocky Hill
Scripture and the Triune God
Rocky Hill holds to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Scripture is described as the Holy Bible, written by divinely inspired people and given by God as his revelation of himself. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction, totally true and trustworthy, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard for human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions. All Scripture testifies to Christ, the focus of divine revelation.
God is one living and true God, intelligent, spiritual, personal, and the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. He is infinite in holiness and perfect in all his attributes. The eternal triune God reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes but without division of nature, essence, or being.
As Father, God reigns with providential care over the universe, his creatures, and human history according to the purposes of his grace. As Son, Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, lived without sin, died on the cross, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and now stands exalted at God's right hand as the one mediator, fully God and fully man. He will return in power and glory to judge the world and dwells in believers as the living Lord. As Holy Spirit, God inspired Scripture, enables people to understand truth, convicts concerning sin, calls people to the Savior, effects regeneration, cultivates Christian character, comforts believers, bestows spiritual gifts, and empowers the church in worship, evangelism, and service.
Humanity, Salvation, and Grace
Human beings, male and female, are the special creation of God in his own image. The freedom of choice given to humanity became the occasion for sin, bringing a fallen nature inclined toward sin and condemnation. Only God's grace can bring people into fellowship with him and enable them to fulfill the creative purpose for which he created them. Because every person bears the image of God and Christ died for humanity, every person has full dignity and deserves respect and Christian love.
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole person and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. Regeneration is God's work of grace that makes believers new creations in Christ, changing their hearts through the Holy Spirit's conviction of sin and bringing repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus. Justification is God's full acquittal of sinners who repent and believe in Christ, bringing them into a relationship of peace and favor with God. Sanctification begins in regeneration and carries a believer toward moral and spiritual maturity through the Spirit's presence and power. Glorification is the final state of the redeemed.
Rocky Hill also teaches that election is God's gracious purpose to regenerate, justify, sanctify, and glorify sinners, excluding boasting and promoting humility. True believers remain in the grace in which they have been accepted, although believers may fall into sin through neglect and temptation. God's power keeps them for salvation.
Baptism, Membership, and the Church Covenant
A New Testament church is understood as an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel. It observes Christ's two ordinances, operates under Christ's lordship through democratic processes, and holds members responsible and accountable to him. Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. Although both men and women are gifted for service, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.
Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It symbolizes faith in the crucified, buried, and risen Savior, death to sin, burial of the old life, and resurrection to walk in newness of life. Baptism is a church ordinance and prerequisite for the privileges of membership and the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience in which members use bread and the fruit of the vine to remember the death of the Redeemer and anticipate his second coming.
Membership has three routes. A person can join through baptism by immersion, through a statement of faith if the person has already been baptized, or by letter from another Baptist church or another church of like faith. Every prospective member takes a New Membership Class before membership is final. The class usually meets on a Sunday afternoon and lasts about two hours.
The first day of the week is the Lord's Day, observed for worship and spiritual devotion in light of Christ's resurrection. Rocky Hill also expects Christ's personal and visible return in glory, the resurrection of the dead, judgment of all people, everlasting punishment for the unrighteous, and the reward of the righteous in resurrected and glorified bodies with the Lord.
From Knoxville to the Ends of the Earth
The missions ministry begins with the Great Commission and the biblical model in Acts 1:5. Rocky Hill calls Knoxville its Jerusalem, saying the first place to reach the lost is its own community in the Rocky Hill and Knoxville area. It calls Tennessee its Judea and seeks opportunities to meet needs throughout the state. Its Samaria reaches into parts of North America considered unreached with the gospel, and its commitment continues to the ends of the earth, reaching people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. The church offers opportunities to participate in missions both locally and abroad.
This outward emphasis grows from the conviction that the church's biblical mandate is to make disciples and that sharing the gospel must extend beyond the church. The goal is not only to profess the gospel inside Rocky Hill but to live it as witnesses in Knoxville, across Tennessee, beyond that, and among people groups who have not yet heard it.
Education, Stewardship, and Cooperation
Christian education is treated as part of the church's Christian heritage. Rocky Hill says sound learning opens the faculties of those born anew, creates a thirst for knowledge, and belongs with the church's work in missions and general benevolence. Christian schools, colleges, and seminaries are to balance academic freedom with academic responsibility, holding Jesus Christ and Scripture as their governing purposes. The church also teaches that Christians are stewards of the time, talents, and possessions entrusted to them, using them for God's glory and to help others.
Stewardship includes contributing cheerfully, regularly, systematically, proportionately, and liberally to the advance of Christ's work. Giving is available through online giving. Cooperation is also part of the church's calling: congregations should work together in missions, education, and benevolence, while voluntary associations bring people of different denominations into common service when the aims are just and conscience is not compromised.
Peace, Public Order, and Religious Liberty
Rocky Hill calls Christians to seek Christ's will in personal and public life. Its commitments include opposing racism, greed, selfishness, vice, and sexual immorality, and working to provide for people who are orphaned, needy, abused, aged, helpless, or sick. The church also speaks for the unborn and contends for the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.
On peace and war, Christians are called to pursue peace on the basis of righteousness and to work to end war, applying the gospel and the law of love in public affairs. On religious liberty, the conscience is left free from human doctrines that conflict with Scripture, church and state are to remain separate, no denomination is to be favored by the state, and taxes are not to support religion. A free church in a free state is the ideal expressed in this statement of faith.
The family is called foundational and is defined as persons related by marriage, blood, or adoption. Marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman for life. Parents are responsible for providing, protecting, leading, and teaching their homes, while children are described as a blessing from the Lord and are to be taught spiritual and moral values. The church's larger hope is Christ's kingdom, which includes God's general sovereignty and his particular kingship over those who acknowledge him, with its full consummation awaiting Christ's return and the end of this age.
Pastors Focused on People and the Word
Senior Pastor Dr. Scott Whaley was born and raised in East Tennessee and attended the University of Tennessee, where he studied ornamental horticulture and landscape design. He later earned a Master of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Doctorate of Ministry from Temple Seminary. While in seminary, he served as an associate pastor and youth pastor. His call to ministry took root in high school, and his own conversion came through the influence of Christian parents, his sister, and the church.
Associate Pastor of Youth and Discipleship James Cable grew up in Middle Tennessee and studied at Middle Tennessee State University. He earned a Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Beginning in youth ministry through internships, he later recognized that he had valued structure over people and programs over hearts. His ministry now centers on individuals, with Scripture and discipleship guiding the youth gathering.
Office hours are Monday and Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. At Rocky Hill Baptist Church, the shared rhythm of worship, teaching, member ministry, family covenant, practical service, and local-to-global missions comes together around one conviction: to make faithful followers of Jesus Christ who grow in faith, serve one another, and make disciples of all nations.