4. Whereas the Reformers early adopted the practice of observing the Lord's Supper every Sunday, the Christians did not. By 1830, Stone had decided that this was the practice of the early church, and he wrote: "Whenever the church shall be restored to her former glory, she will again receive the Lord's Supper every first day of the week." But he was less ardent than Campbell about "restoring the ancient order of things," and he was disposed to be patient about this as he was about immersion.
By 1830 the Christian churches west of the Alleghenies had, it is estimated, seven or eight thousand members in Kentucky, somewhat fewer in Tennessee, and smaller numbers in all the states to which migrants had been going from these two. There were district conferences in Ohio and Indiana, in Alabama and Mississippi; a Christian church organized in Missouri in 1816 was only the first of several; and there were two conferences in Iowa by 1828.
The growing acquaintance and sympathy between Christians and Disciples led to a number of consultations between their leaders at various places in Kentucky, and finally to a meeting at Lexington, January 1, 1832, attended by prominent representatives of both. It was unanimously agreed that they should unite. Since neither group recognized any church authority superior to the local congregation, actual union could be accomplished only by going to the congregations and persuading them to unite. "Raccoon" John Smith (Disciple) and John Rogers (Christian) went out as a team to carry this message to the churches. Others took it up. Stone's _Christian Messenger_ and Campbell's _Millennial Harbinger_ supported it. Within three years the greater part of the Christian churches in the area mentioned had joined the merger. On the points of difference, especially baptism and evangelistic method, the practice of Campbell and Scott prevailed. The Christians contributed a revived emphasis upon liberty of opinion and upon union, which the Reformers had been in danger of subordinating in their zeal for the restoration of "a particular ecclesiastical order."
There had been, up to this time, no organizational connection among the three great groups of "Christian" churches. Those in New England and those in the southern Atlantic states were not affected by the merger with the Disciples. They tightened their denominational organization and continued their separate existence until, nearly a hundred years later (1930), they united with the Congregationalists.
