October 8, 2004

Musical Churches

By Bea Baechle
Editor

You could call it divine timing. Just about the time that the Reverend R.G. Moore III learned that he would need to find a new location for Church on the Rock Baptist, Evergreen Presbyterian Church decided not to renew its lease at the Evergreen Community Center on Sunday mornings.

It was an answer to a prayer. Moore felt blessed to find a spot so quickly and so close to their previous location, but that’s not to say he signed the short-term lease worry-free. The steep rental fee that sent Evergreen Presbyterian Church looking for a new location will be a challenge for Reverend Moore’s tiny congregation to muster.

“We will continue to go forward. I have faith that somehow, someway, if we’re meant to be in Evergreen, God will find a way,” said Rev. Moore.

BridgePoint at Silver Creek had been hosting Church on the Rock’s Sunday morning services and Wednesday evening Bible studies for about a year and a half when the facility first opened.

“We have more residents now,” said BridgePoint Director Diane Atkinson, “and parking was becoming difficult for residents’ family members, particularly on the weekends, when people came to visit.”

Add in the steady growth of the facility, as well as the growth that Church on the Rock was seeking, and the parking issue would have increasingly become more and more difficult. Another form of outreach that Atkinson hopes to begin at BridgePoint is a Sunday morning brunch open to the community, which would have been difficult to do previously.

She acknowledged that if it had been a resident-only church service, Church on the Rock could have stayed indefinitely. But since none of the BridgePoint residents regularly attended the services, she felt that it wasn’t meeting the needs of the residents.

Reverend Moore said he welcomed BridgePoint residents to the services, but that some of the residents may have felt uncomfortable with the fact that Church on the Rock was a predominantly African American-based Baptist church.

Church on the Rock began as a congregation of 10 people 14 years ago in the backyard of Moore’s mother. It grew to about 70 members, but many church members moved out of the area in the mid-‘90s. The church met at the Seventh Day Adventist Church on Yerba Buena for five years before BridgePoint.

“By our faith and our continuing to invest in people who invest in us, we will survive,” said Reverend Moore, who dreams of the day when Church on the Rock finds a permanent home.

For now, he’s focusing on growing his congregation with this spiritual mission: he seeks “excellence in the ministry of Jesus by evangelizing all persons to accept Jesus, by educating all Christians to grow into the moral and spiritual likeness of Jesus and by enlisting all members in personally extending the message and mission of God’s love in Christ.”

Church on the Rock Baptist meets at the Evergreen Community Center, 4860 San Felipe Rd., every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. For more information call (408) 532-ROCK or e-mail churchontherockbaptist@yahoo.com.