Our Story

As featured on www.historichillyard.com:

On January 3, 2005 Crosswalk Community Church opened its doors in Hillyard. We opened with the goal of actually being a “community” church, that is, involved in and improving the community we lived in. Our sense of this vision came from the book of Jeremiah when the Israelites found themselves in a new city and a new community. In the twenty-ninth chapter they receive three distinct instructions that we at Crosswalk have taken to heart and adopted as our own. The people are told to 1) settle down permanently and plant gardens 2) Increase in number and 3) seek the peace and prosperity of the place where you are. It is our visions to live these instructions out in our new home in Hillyard. Crosswalk didn’t begin in Hillyard but we do believe this is where we were intended to settle. The following is our story of how we arrived home.

Like most things God does, Crosswalk began incredibly small and insignificant. It began as a name. Crosswalks are about safety and getting from one place to another. We knew that a church is about helping people safely negotiate their journey of faith, as their lives take them from one place (or way of living) to another. Before we had a church, we had a name.

Starting the church wasn’t easy. We were going to meet, just a few of us, in our living room. The night of our first meeting a couple we were really hoping for and counting on called us to say they didn’t feel like they were supposed to be a part of Crosswalk. We had meetings that first few months where literally not one person showed up. I’d prepared a study of some kind and I’d look over at my wife and say, “Well, let’s go get some ice-cream.” We had a lot of ice-cream in the early days.

But we prayed, and people we knew stuck with us. College kids I knew from when they were in high school came on board. Some of them are sitting in chairs here at Crosswalk in Hillyard today. We lost our only two families just weeks before we were scheduled to launch our first public service. So there we were with a pastor and handful of college students, thinking we could just pray a little and people would come to church. And they did. We handed out doorhangers and had a little free advertising on the radio and on October 10, 2001 we had our first service in the gym at Evergreen Elementary School in North Spokane. We had 55 people at our first service, most of whom were people we knew from other churches who felt bad for us and thought they’d show up for just one Sunday. But we had others who came that were actually looking for a church home, and some of those people are still sitting in chairs here in Hillyard every week.

Those first months were rough. We averaged anywhere from the high teens to the low thirties in attendance – and that was counting pregnant women as two! At some point, our financial situation drove us to find a cheaper place to meet. We settled at the Ramada Inn on the Newport Highway. We had a conference room there – in fact, there’s a new church meeting there today so it couldn’t have been all that bad. On our first Sunday there, I stressed that this was a temporary home and that if we were still there a year from then we’d have somewhat failed. A year later I realized that maybe pastors aren’t so good at judging what’s a failure and what’s a success. We were still there, but it didn’t feel like a failure. It felt like there was something more out there, and if we were patient, God would provide.

I had been meeting for a while with a group of pastors for prayer and fellowship. One of those pastors was at the former Terrace Heights Baptist up on the South Hill. Our church was just barely making it and our resources were about to run out. Their church had a hundred year history that had just about run its course – about a dozen or so faithful people remained. We were two pastors thinking separately that between us we had the makings of a pretty good start on a church. We were right and God brought the two congregations together. I still remember the first meeting with the dozen or so people remaining at Terrace Heights. They looked me over, and asked me questions saying to themselves, “So this guy thinks he can be our pastor, huh?” Most of the people at that meeting drive down from the South Hill to Hillyard every single Sunday.

When the merger was complete we turned our attention to our location again. The Ramada just wasn’t cutting it. We almost tied ourselves to a lease in an old dance studio on Market. When it fell through, we were devastated. When we remember how disappointed we were then, we just laugh. Thank God that he protects us from ourselves sometimes. Because a short time later I read in the paper than an old Catholic School on Gordon Street was having a yard sale. I thought, maybe they’ll have some good books. So my wife and I came down on a Saturday just for a drive. I bought three books. A few months later Crosswalk bought the building. And a year or so after that, here we are. That’s our story in a nutshell. It’s important to tell, I think. At different times and at different tellings we emphasize different details, not unlike the gospels telling the same story of Jesus in different ways but however it’s told we end at the conclusion that we were supposed to end up in Hillyard.

In Jeremiah’s vision, the people were to settle in and plant gardens in their new community. Gardens do two things: they speak of self-sufficiency and they create spaces of beauty. Crosswalk hopes to become self-sufficient in Hillyard so that we can have an abundance and give back to the community. Already we have had food drives, free community movie nights, school supply drives, and have sponsored neighborhood families for Christmas. Also, we have planted literal gardens on our property, turning bark into grass, rocks into flowers, and forgotten dirt patches into shrubs and plants. We intend to make our little patch of ground in Hillyard into a place of beauty that the whole community can take pride in.

Jeremiah tells the people to grow in their new community. On January 22nd of 2006, just over a year after moving here, we had our largest attendance ever for a Sunday service – 87 people! Our goal is to provide another place of worship where the people of Hillyard can feel at home to learn and grow at their own pace.

Lastly, Jeremiah says that the people are to seek the peace and prosperity of their new community. Crosswalk is committed to making this a reality. Jeremiah tells the people to pray for their community and Crosswalk regularly prays for the people and businesses of Hillyard. Jeremiah concludes his section on the community with these words, “Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” That’s our story and that’s our goal and we’re thrilled to be in Hillyard to live it out.