Cedarbrook Community Church was birthed on March 12, 1989. We were thirty nine years old. Our years of campus ministry had taught us some things, but we still had a lot to learn about starting and growing a church in a community setting.

We started with 40 people (if you counted the kids) and met in movie theaters, community theaters, and high schools until we moved into our permanent home in 2001. This place we started and built and grew has seen a myriad of changes over the years and gone through countless revisions and iterations. What started as a “seeker targeted” church grew into a faith community that was more about worship and serving the needy and we learned from our more liturgical brothers and sisters the value of incorporating some of their practices into our worship. From the original 40 we grew to a community of hundreds and hundreds of people. Yet the parade of people who call Cedarbrook home never stands still – it is always moving, always changing. If I’m honest, sometimes that’s hard. So much coming and leaving.

Somebody once told me that loving a church is like hugging a parade. I think that pretty much sums it up. At any given moment, the church is simply a snapshot in time; the next frame could feature a largely different cast of characters with a new plot line. 

But there are many who marched in the parade for a little or a long while who left their mark and hold a special place in our hearts and we are grateful for them all. 

To name just a few: 

There is Reuben who was a wiseman in our first children’s Christmas pageant.  Maybe five years old, he came striding up the aisle with his crown and his fake beard, carrying his mother’s bath salts – his gift for the Christ child – as though it were indeed the most precious of all gifts. With his flair for storytelling and creativity, he grew up to be our Children’s Pastor and developed a Children’s Ministry that was, by far, one of the most inviting things about Cedarbrook.  

There is Leonard Cave, a world renowned artist who asked if he could carve a cross for the front of the auditorium. “A cross should be disruptive,” he said.  “But not too disruptive.”  What a gift that sculpture is to our community, inviting us into worship week after week.

There is Iris, an amazingly gifted vocalist, who came to us in the early days and invited us into a true and authentic worship experience that taught us what to look for in others who would come later to fill that roll.  

There is Chris Christensen and Gloria who grandparented the church and taught us all what it meant to be the hands and feet of Jesus.  

There is Joe Loconte, who was the driving force behind an active and vital singles group in the early days of the church and who grew up to be a prolific author and apologist for the faith.

There is Joe Mehailescu who brought his sense of design and his eye for beauty to making Cedarbrook’s home an inviting and welcoming space – whether it was the Montgomery Playhouse strewn with garland on Christmas Eve or choosing the wall colors and bathroom tiles for the new building.  

There is Anne Barker who mothered the staff and really the whole church in her role as the first church administrator. 

There is the Drama team who in the early days provided live dramas to illustrate the message.  Who brought us the infamous Cave Man sketch with its wardrobe malfunction and Vivian the homeless woman in “Stolen Jesus”.  

There is Daren Hull, our first youth pastor, who thought he was Batman, who loved our teens well, and who brought fun and adventure to the staff.

There is the Woo-hoo Award, chosen each year by the Star Chamber and awarded to a staff member as a way to roast him or her at the annual Christmas party where we packed  everybody into our living room and ate chili and cinnamon rolls.  

There is Ken Jackson who walked through the doors on that first March morning and has become, as much as anyone else, the face of Cedarbrook. Call him an Associate Pastor, the Spiritual  Formation Pastor, the Small Groups Guy, he wears all the hats. The wisdom, grace, and insight he brings to the church and the pastoral staff has been invaluable in all of the renditions of the parade. 

There is Silent Night by candlelight where it was so dark you could’t see who was in the parade.  But it was beautiful.

There is the Good Friday Service where we came to the Table to remember and to share the bread and the cup and to sit in silence on this holy night. 

There is Chris Dorr who helped us create “Night in Bethlehem”, a living nativity where for years we created the village of Bethlehem with 70+ characters in costume who interacted with our guests as the beggar or the rabbi or the wood carver or the women drawing water from the well or Roman soldiers on horseback.There were sheep and goats and donkeys and llamas. And a manger down the hill which held Mary and Joseph and the baby.  

 There are the ones from that original 40 who still call Cedarbrook home and the ones who moved here shortly after to join the team:  the Chins, Sarah Marusich and Bruce, the Ervins, the Pattons, the Smiths, Molly Mercado Jackson, Jan and Marna. The ones with the institutional memory of who we were and who we are becoming.  

And there are our children. The ones who folded the bulletins, set up the chairs, tore down the chairs, the first ones to arrive to any given meeting and the last ones to leave, who set up the first computer network in the building, served in the nursery and on committees and bore witness to all the joys and sorrows along the way. I’d like to think that all those years and experiences had something to do with the remarkable people they grew up to be:  sacrificial, caring, kind and servant hearted. 

   

Church can be the source of our greatest wounding and our greatest joy. I would say over the the last 35 years, for us it has been both, and I know many others can say the same. Would I choose to do it over again?  I think so. Perhaps, after all, it is not a choice we made but a call we answered. In the end, what we have wanted for the past five decades is to be Jesus People. That looks a little different now than it did in 1970, the church we started looks different today than it did in 1989. But then again, so do we.