Celebrating 35 Years of Faithfulness

Thirty-five years ago today, on a bright November Sunday morning, a group of families gathered in their pastor’s living room to start a new church. These families believed that God called them to start something new in the community, and that small group of people has grown into something beyond their wildest dreams.

There were around 40 of us that first morning. I’ll never forget it: we did worship together, and as the only teenagers around, my sister, the pastor’s oldest daughter, and I had to take the kids outside to babysit while the adults made plans. If I recall correctly, we had lunch as well.

One of the things I remember most about that day was that my grandparents drove down from Cartersville after service at their church and brought us a monetary donation and our first Communion tray.

We must have been the first contemporary church in the county because we had a reputation as the “rock-and-roll church.” The presence of Kerry Livgren, guitarist and songwriter for legendary rock group Kansas, as one of our founding members and leaders helped contribute to that rep.

The next Sunday, we moved to a local motel for a few weeks and then a shopping center. The next year, we bought our first building, where we grew until it was bursting at the seams.

In 1997, we became the first church in Newton County to rent a school building for services. We officially changed our name from Grace Fellowship Church to Eastridge Community Church (now simply Eastridge Church), and in 1999, we moved into our current building on land that we bought from the Livgrens.

We became one of the first churches in the Southeast to launch a Celebrate Recovery ministry at the start of the new millennium, and our CR is still one of the largest in the country.

We started a campus at Lake Oconee in the late 2000s, and our founding pastor, Rob Raynor, took on that congregation as a church plant in 2008. That church later became two thriving churches.

At that point, Scott Moore, who was our original youth pastor and served in several pastoral roles, became our lead pastor. In 2012, we launched a campus on the south side of the county, and it quickly grew as well.

We continued to grow under Scott’s leadership, even during the pandemic. I spent 13 years on staff over two different spans, and we learned how to navigate the complex nature of multisite ministry.

The last couple of years have brought us big changes. A leadership change in our CR ministry led Scott to take on that ministry as pastor. He had already been preparing Kurt Petersheim, then the youth pastor (and part of one of the founding families when he was a toddler), to take his place one day. Kurt shepherds our congregation wonderfully as lead pastor.

After years of trying to navigate the waters of multisite ministry, our elders and pastors realized that God is leading us to turn our second campus into its own church. It’s exciting because instead of one church trying to satisfy the needs of two campuses, we’ll be two churches partnering together on multiple initiatives!

I’m grateful to God, of course, for His faithfulness to Eastridge for 35 years, and I’m thankful for the amazing people who have loved, served, worshiped, and given as part of the Eastridge family. Here’s to the next 35 years — and beyond, Lord willing!