Building foundations that last
Hillside Church has been blessed with our present facility through the vision and boldness of Pastor Marvin Francine and the congregation who, in the 1970’s, made the decision to leave their previous location in Willow Glen and build our current home at 545 Hillsdale Ave. That move took sacrifice, both financially and preferentially in making the decision to move. We have now seen over 40 years of fruitful ministry in this building, and we have tremendous opportunities ahead. In order to move forward, we must address the physical needs of our building to adequately prepare ourselves for future ministry.
We have an electrical system that is faulty and requires full replacement, including replacing our main switch gear and all panels throughout the building. We have carpet that is beyond its useful life, and needs to be replaced with updated flooring throughout the majority of our building. Our parking lot is cracked and sagging in several areas, and needs to be regraded and replaced to suit our parking needs moving forward. While none of these projects are specific to ministry expansion, effective ministry impact and Gospel proclamation requires that our building be suitable for ministry operations. It is our prayer that as we address these foundational components of our property, the Lord would continue to use this campus and the people of Hillside Church to ‘change the world one soul at a time through the message of Jesus Christ’.
Ministry expansion
As we look at the future ministry of the church, one area that has been on the hearts of leadership going back to our BEYOND HILLSIDE PLUS task force in 2015, was the idea of multiplication and growth through church planting and church revitalization through multiple campuses. As Hillside has grown in number at our own campus, both within our English and Spanish speaking congregations, parking and overall facility space has become limited, with no room for expansion.
Concurrently, as we have grown and our overall presence in the surrounding communities has increased, so have opportunities for ministry expansion. Hillside has been approached multiple times in the last 12 months to pursue opportunities to revitalize struggling churches through an acquisition and multi-site model. Our ‘Be One, Build One, Bring One’ mission includes Hillside reproducing healthy churches throughout the Bay Area.