History

Hillside began life in the West Lawn Fire Department basement in 1972. Two families and a minister right out of Bible College began meeting that fall and within a few years the church had grown to about 40-50 on Sunday mornings. In 1975, the congregation bought 7 acres in the Fritztown community and soon began construction of a small building.

The location was beautiful, but not very accessible at the time and the church struggled in those early years. In 1982, the first minister, Bob Hale, moved to a church in Pittsburgh and Dewey Mulliken became the minister. He left at the end of 1984 to go to the mission field and the church found itself with less than 20 people (including children) regularly attending by the spring of 1986. The members decided that even though the situation was critical, they would not give up. With the help of some other Pennsylvania churches, they hired W. Sheldon (Shelley) Lee in the summer of 1986. Shelley, Sally and their three children moved here that July and the church has slowly, but steadily gotten stronger. It was entirely self-supporting by 1989 and the building has gone through a number of renovations, including major expansions in 1992 and 2007.

In the 27 years that Shelley has been here, the congregation has been marked by three things: sincere, informal worship, home Bible studies, and missions. About 25% of the church's income is given away in Christ's name through community benevolence and worldwide missions (see the “Missions) tab). We are also involved in short-term mission work. For instance, we have sent teams from the church to the Gulf after Katrina, to the Dominican Republic, to Diamond Willow Ministries in South Dakota, and our youth group also leads a mission project each summer.

The congregation is quite diverse, especially for a church in the country. For instance, we have a Spanish language Bible class on Sunday morning at 9:15am and we also translate the sermons as they are being preached and broadcast them wirelessly to those in the sanctuary who find it easier to listen in Spanish.

In the early years of this millennium we realized that we could not grow further without expanding again. Because of that, we built a new worship area that seats 225 and has a much improved guest welcome area and foyer. It is completely handicap accessible and has really opened up our ministry in many ways. We also doubled our parking and added office space.

Recently, the decision was made to not only expand our building, but also our staff as well. In December 2010, Tim Baker was brought on to be our new Associate Minister, specializing in youth, children, and young families.

We do not know what the future holds, but we do believe that God is going to continue to work through our congregation. We invite you to check us out and see if Hillside is a place where you can grow and serve.