MARYSVILLE — It’ll be two more months before the first sermon, but that didn’t keep the Marysville Community Church from throwing a party.
The new church, a plant from the Alderwood Community Church, put on a summer bash on Saturday as an introduction to the neighborhood. The first church service is scheduled for 9 a.m. Sept. 18 at Cedarcrest Middle School, 6400 88th St. NE, and the summer bash was a way to get people interested in being there.
Chris Taylor is taking over as lead pastor. He’s planning to focus the first four weeks on what it means to be a church.
“I think a lot of people misunderstand what the church is,” he said.
It’s important to focus on why people gather each week and what they hope to accomplish in their own lives and in the lives of others.
“We gather together for Christ-centered worship, community and mission for the glory of God,” Taylor said. “We want to be a blessing for the community. We want to serve the community and be a light in the community.”
The plan is to have age-appropriate activities and Bible studies for children during services. Worship blends contemporary and traditional hymns.
Outside of Sunday sermons, the church aims to help around Marysville. Already, a 50-person start-up team has worked to collect more than 500 pounds of food for the local food bank. The church also bought new chairs for the Cedarcrest cafeteria since the school plans to host them on Sundays.
The Alderwood Community Church aims to plant five new churches in the next 15 years and Marysville is the first. The last time the church expanded was more than 20 years ago when the Snohomish Community Church opened. Though the Alderwood and Snohomish churches still have close ties, the Snohomish church has become largely independent, Taylor said.
The main church in Alderwood has been around for about a century and usually has about 1,300 people at its Sunday services.
There’s a reason Marysville was selected as the location for the first church plant.
“We found that this area is growing almost exponentially,” Taylor said. “Real estate is cheaper and a lot of Boeing families are moving north.”
It’s also a relatively “unchurched” area, he said. There is one church for about every 2,500 people, based on the church’s surveys.
“There are great churches in Marysville, but because of the growth, there’s a need for more,” Taylor said.
In January, he hopes to start small location-based groups of four to seven families that meet in their neighborhoods during the week “just to do life together,” he said. The groups would talk about that week’s sermon, have dinner and pray together.
Taylor has a 13-year background in ministry. He grew up in Texas but didn’t start going to church until he was in middle school, when his stepdad shared his Christian faith. Taylor went on to study the religion and served for a while as a missionary in Cameroon, Africa, before becoming a pastor at a church in Dallas, Texas. He moved to the Marysville area about four years ago and lives there with his wife and 2-year-old son.
“Marysville is a ripe harvest field and we believe that God is calling our church to plant a new church there,” Brad McConnaughey, senior pastor at Alderwood Community Church, wrote in a message for the new church. “The elders and pastors believe that God has his hand on Chris Taylor and we are sending Chris and his wife Haley to establish a healthy, thriving church.”
For more information, go to marysvillecc.com or email reachus@marysvillecc.com.
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
