Who We Are
The Restoration Digital Library exists to provide free access to the Restoration Movement's primary sources, empowering students to grasp the enduring call to restore New Testament Christianity today and for generations to come.
Dr. Barry Jones
Founder & Digital Archivist
Freed-Hardeman University
B. A. - Bible; B. S. Psychology
​
Harding Graduate School of Religion
M.Th.; DMin.
John Jones
Digital Archivist & Researcher
Freed-Hardeman University
B. A. -Bible; M. A. - New Testament; MDiv.
Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand;
PhD - Study of Religion
​
​
Barry's passion for Restoration Movement history ignited while studying under Dr. Earl West at Harding Graduate School of Religion. As a full-time minister, he struggled to travel to distant libraries to fuel his research. Discovering searchable PDFs and document scanning changed everything—he began digitizing Restoration journals for his own sermons and Bible classes.
His flagship project preserved the entire Firm Foundation (1884–2010). Many issues existed only on degrading microfilm, locked away in far-off libraries and costly to access. Barry invested the time, expense, and effort to scan them, secured copyright permission, and made the full run available in high-quality PDF. This work revealed a larger crisis: our oldest journals and microfilm copies are deteriorating, risking permanent loss. Barry committed to preserving as much as possible.
Today, the Restoration Digital Library spans terabytes of high-resolution scans of primary sources from the Restoration Movement worldwide. It exists to be used—by students, preachers, scholars, and anyone hungry to study this heritage.
Barry's son John caught the same vision while at Freed-Hardeman University. After moving to New Zealand to work with churches of Christ there, he became one of the library's earliest heavy users, drawing on its resources for research and writing. John has just completed his doctoral thesis on the Associated Churches of Christ in New Zealand and has enriched the collection with terabytes of material from British, Australian, and New Zealand Restoration sources.
​
We host the library on Dropbox—a reliable platform that guards against digital decay while enabling easy sharing. We've partnered with libraries at Freed-Hardeman, Harding School of Theology, Lubbock Christian, Lipscomb, Abilene Christian, Annesbrook Church, and others to safeguard and expand this history.
Unlike models that lock physical documents in distant archives, we embrace the Restoration plea for open access. These teachings belong to everyone willing to study them—no barriers, no miles to travel.
It is our prayer that these files prove valuable in your work and that you help keep them available for future students of the Restoration Movement.
