Our History

A UNIQUE BEGINNING
Chesapeake Community Church had a unique beginning when in the fall of 1985, Bridge Fellowship of Bel Air merged with Edgewood Christian Community. Within two months the Church at Joppa joined the other two churches. Mike Phillips, pastor of Edgewood Christian Community, became the senior pastor of the new church.

The merge was the result of each church realizing that they had the same vision for what God was doing in this area. It became clear that by joining together they could more effectively utilize the various talents and resources that God had given each individual church. The goal of our new church was to build a community of believers in Christ who shared more than their Sunday worship service. This vision was of a truly New Testament church as described in the book of Acts knitting itself together and witnessing to the grace and glory of Jesus Christ.

A CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
Our Christian School was begun in the basement of Mark Turek’s townhouse in September of 1980 with a Kindergarten class of very few children. Just as our church has grown, our school has grown over the years and now serves students from kindergarten through high school.

A FAMILY OF CHURCHES
In 1985, the fledgling church became associated with a larger family of New Testament churches under the oversight of the apostolic team of PDI headed by C.J. Mahaney. Dave Harvey, Senior Pastor of Covenant Fellowship Church of Philadelphia, is the team member who currently works with the pastors of our church.

A NEW BUILDING
In 1988, we completed raising funds for our multi-purpose facility located in Joppa. Construction began shortly before Thanksgiving and was completed in time to hold our first service on Easter Sunday 1989. We eventually outgrew this facility for our Sunday morning gathering. It now serves as our School Building and houses part of our Christian school and our Sunday morning Children’s church and classes.

A CALL TO MEXICO CITY
In March of 1990, we sent out our first cross-cultural church planting team under the leadership of Mike Phillips to Mexico. Jim Cannon, who replaced Mike, currently serves as Senior Pastor of Chesapeake Community Church and is joined in ministry by the other members of our pastoral staff.

ONE CHURCH, TWO LOCATIONS
In 1992, we were, by God’s grace, outgrowing our Sunday morning meeting at our Joppa facility. As we prayerfully considered how to be more effective in reaching our community, we sensed that God was leading us to establish two Sunday services, one in Bel Air and one in Joppa, rather than establish two separate services at Joppa. After much counsel and prayer, the church sent about 90 members to establish a separate Sunday morning meeting at Southampton Middle School in Bel Air in the summer of 1994, while the other members continued the Sunday meeting service at Joppa.

ONE CHURCH, ONE LOCATION
In January of 1998, after over three years of faithful ministry of our members serving as one church meeting in two locations on Sunday morning, we merged the two Congregations of Chesapeake back into one congregation and relocated our Sunday morning service to Fallston High School, as we could no longer fit in our Joppa facility.

ANOTHER NEW BUILDING
By God’s grace through the generous free will offerings of our members, we established a new facility on our Joppa property and resumed our Sunday gathering on our property in December of 2001.

A CALL TO BOSTON
In June of 2001 we had the great and joyous privilege of sending a church planting team under the leadership of Paul Buckley and planted King of Grace church in Methuen, MA, the north Boston area.

A CALL ONWARD AND UPWARD
As we look back with gratefulness on God’s goodness and faithfulness over the years, we see ourselves not as a great church, but as a greatly blessed church, and we look forward with confidence that God will complete the good work He has begun in us as a church and will be with us as we move forward together to serve His purposes by His grace, for His glory.