Chestnut Ridge Church

This is not Chestnut Ridge Church (CRC), but the Protestant church in our little town. (CRC pics here.) I took this picture on Friday on my way up to the hill when I was anticipating the sunset. CRC is much bigger, but a nice stone building, too. Since I was talking about "my church" yesterday, I thought it might be a good time to also say some words about CRC because I already mentioned it several times and linked it to my "English Input" section, too. Before going on though, I wanna say that I'm actually not really qualified to write about CRC. I've only been there once and if I give any false information, please Billy (or whoever else): correct me! I don't claim to know everything about it, but I just want to give you a personal impression so you might understand how I came to appreciate their sermons.

I don't like big churches. That's what I told the friend who invited me to come with him to CRC on Dezember 24, 2006. I prefer the "big family size congregations", but I didn't have any plans for that Sunday so I said I would love to join him. I was curious about that church he was so enthusiatic about. He had been a student at West Virginia University (WVU) in Morgantown himself and knew CRC when they were still a congregation of less than 100 people. Well, I was looking forward to some additional spiritual input, I hoped to get that Christmas feeling far away from home and I love to "broaden my horizon" anyways. So I didn't care about CRC not being an Adventist church and off we were to Morgantown.

On our way, JP told me about how everything had started. Living room setting and the vision of planting a church. In December 2006, they had just moved into a huge new facility they had especially built for their needs. When I was a teenager, I had been part of a growing church, too. We moved from 3 families in a small living room to a bigger kitchen, to a little special room and finally to a room for about 60 people. It was a great time, but when I was about 18, everything started to fall apart. Accusations replaced productive outreach and I remember some meetings that were pretty sobering for a harmony seeking adolescent. Honestly, I was curious about this exploding church. What did they do? How would it feel? I mean... did they only preach about love or what made the difference? I couldn't imagine the "just love"-theory. Wouldn't have looked like JP. So I had to wait until we got there.

A nice huge stone building with an even larger parking lot - and loads of people eager to get inside. A lot of young people! At the doors, there were beaming faces who greeted and smiled at you. They seemed to be old friends of JP because they almost broke his ribs bearhugging him. Inside, I felt a little bit lost because everything was so huge. I felt like I just entered a concert hall, but somehow it was different. If I would have been there on my own, I guess I wouldn't have looked lost for more than 3 min and somebody would have asked me if I needed some help. Then I saw the cookies and coffee (coffee... please throw your prejudice overboard and just read on...). I don't know how many different kinds of coffee, cookies and pastry they had. Everything for free, of course. I wasn't hungry but I noticed the pleasant atmosphere it created in the lounge. It just invited you to stay after the service to talk and get connected.

On our way inside the auditorium, somebody gave me a candle. That auditorium was huge! I'm bad at guessing but it has more than 1000 seats for sure (maybe even 2000)! We sat down and waited for the service to start. I knew the music wouldn't be very "conservative", but I had decided to not let that disturb me. I loved the message and the way it was presented. Yes, it was somehow "professional", but it didn't feel like a show. It felt real. Pastor Tim and Pastor Bill didn't try to play young, I guess they're just young at heart. They seemed honest and didn't try to pretend that they were perfect. At the end, CRC made me the greates Christmas gift of 2006: singing Silent Night with hundreds of candles in a dark auditorium. I sang it in German and felt at home far away from home.

After the service, we were standing in the lounge, I had a look at their library, watched the people around me, got introduced to a bunch of them and saw all the people I had seen on the stage walking around and talking to people, too. It felt like I could have walked up to Pastor Tim if I would have liked to or ask the people at the info point if there would have been any questions about anything. We even got a tour around the builing with its different floors and confusing hallways. That was when it hit me: WHAT A VISION! A lot of rooms were still under construction, but I got a glimpse of how that church worked. A big church needs "cell groups" and this facility wasn't designed to just host some services on Saturday and Sunday. Church meant community, meeting needs, using talents, encouraging people to get involved, creating a place for growth and reaching out to the unreached in your neighborhood. They like to emphasize that church is not about the builing but the people and they really mean it. By then I knew I had been to the first big church I liked.

Back to the woods, I checked out their homepage and learned even more. Their vision has grown with the task. Besides h2o, the WVU campus ministry, they already have 2 daughter churches. Pastor Tim came to Morgantown with the vision of planting a church. Now they're aiming on reaching WV for Christ. I started to listen to the messages online and there are three things I like about them: they are easy to understand but challenging, they're bible-based and practical at the same time and they're easy to remember because they have a logical structure and a clear conclusion, challenge or appeal they aim at.

So yeah... CRC is not an Adventist church (I understood that they are an independent church, somhow belonging to Great Commission Churches and Great Commission Ministries ) and we (as Adventists) have things we share with them like the baptism of faith and other aspects we don't agree on. Nevertheless, I included them in my input links because they have been - and still are - a big blessing to me. If you need a Christ centered message with relevance in your everyday life, go ahead and check out their media section. If you have more questions, get an account on theRIDGE social network or check out their weBLOG section and ask people who actually attend CRC. You could also watch their "all about us" video. Maybe just one more thing: I'm not saying I want to see CRC copied in my/our churches. What I wanna say though is that I would love to see dead churches finding a vision and transforming into living ones!

I hope you'll get inspired as well as challenged just like me.
Have a great rest of the day!

maria