Crossroads Heartland Church: Better Together

When Scott and Wendy Hubbard moved to Lodi, California, they already knew they had accepted another challenging pastoral assignment. The official church records for the Lodi Church listed membership and worship attendance at zero, since the church had been closed five years earlier.

Pastor Scott accepted the assignment to start a whole new ministry, as he had done in two other pastoral assignments. Over the next six years under his leadership, worship attendance grew to an average of 129, with a Sunday School enrollment at 119. But then he received an unusual phone call that has dramatically changed their congregation’s ministry.

The caller was Pastor Chris Chavez from the new independent Heartland Community Church in their town. After some initial greetings and small talk, Pastor Chris explained that his congregation had been researching different denominations and their theological teachings. As an independent church, they were interested in joining a denomination that taught and functioned like the Church of the Nazarene.

His question was “Do you think our two churches could be merged into one larger Nazarene congregation?”

From that inquiry a process began for the two pastors and their congregations to get to know one another better. For over a year, there were shared board and staff meetings, combined worship services and even town hall type meetings to process questions from both congregations. Sacramento District Superintendant Stephen Scott came to meet with the Heartland Community Church and their leadership to discuss further the details and requirements for a merger of the two churches.

As the congregations began to fellowship and worship together, an enthusiasm grew for the merger to take place. They planned for that special Sunday in October, 2008 to have their official service for uniting the two separate congregations into one community of faith.

The name they chose for the new church became Crossroads Heartland Church of the Nazarene. Their ministry tagline explained it well; “Better Together” was printed under their new church name.

The formal service for merging the two churches had an announcement and invitation for the public to attend in the local newspaper. A large wedding cake was prepared for the fellowship time after the service. At the appointed time, each church stood separately to take their vows for this congregational union. And, the marriage of these two churches has been a blessed event.

In fact, instead of having two different groups worshiping together, now is has become three: the original Lodi Church of the Nazarene, the Heartland Community Church and a new group of attenders that hadn’t worshipped in either church before the merger. And now, the third group is about to outgrow the other two existing congregations.

With the merged congregations worshipping together at the property of the Lodi Church of the Nazarene, space for worship and Sunday School classes has been very limited. Due to their growth, the church now has four worship services each weekend, with two on Saturday evening and two on Sunday morning. Pastor Scott and Pastor Chris share the pulpit each Sunday, with both of them preaching the various points of each sermon. As unique as that sounds, it seems to be working well for them.

On Christmas weekend of 2008, the church worship services registered over 600 in attendance. Considering that the Lodi Church of the Nazarene was averaging around 130 in worship and the Heartland Community Church had been averaging just over 300 in worship attendance, it appears this merger has made some serious progress in their mission. The church has been averaging around 500 each week in worship, and increased their weekly offerings by $1,000 a week. They have already started to discuss future plans for a 10,000 square foot multipurpose building on their existing property. They hope to break ground within the next year.

Both Pastors are encouraged by the progress since their official merger. The membership classes continue to enroll new families. Multiple new ministries have been started that are representative of the needs of both congregations and their ministry area. Each congregation has accepted a role of ministry to assist the other church.

And perhaps, this is clearer no where else than the pastors themselves. They have become close partners in ministry. They both agree their styles in pastoral ministry are very different. Pastor Chris is more of a rancher type pastor, while Pastor Scott is more of a shepherding type pastor. But they see those styles as complementary for each other and this growing congregation.

Pastor Scott emphasized as he closed his interview with GROW, “We have learned how important it is that as leaders we are committed to each other. We’ve agreed to keep pride and ego out of this process, so the growth of the ministry can’t be stopped. With every critical decision, we have learned to consider the perspectives of both groups.

“We really believe we are better together.”