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OUR HISTORY |
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A Brief History of the Evangelical Community Church
The beginning of the Evangelical Community Church (ECC) is rooted in the College Hill Presbyterian Church (CHPC) in Cincinnati. CHPC was a vibrant, evangelical church at odds with the Presbyterian denomination, Presbyterian Church (USA). Starting in the fall of 1994, CHPC began to explore with the Cincinnati Presbytery the possibility of withdrawal from the liberal denomination. During 1995, the Session of CHPC arrived at the conclusion that it would be a good fit to transfer CHPC to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a much more conservative denomination. By September, it became readily apparent that the transfer to another
With this in mind, a small group gathered to plan the formation of a new church. The name Evangelical Community Church was agreed upon. Six people were chosen to make this happen. On Sunday, January 14, 1996, 482 gathered for the first official service held at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Clifton. The organizing committee put out an offer to four members of CHPC’s ministerial staff to lead our fledgling church. They all accepted. The decision was made to have no Senior Pastor. However, after a few years it became apparent that we would function better with a Senior Pastor. A call was made and accepted by Van Cochran to fill that position. After a period of time, it was mutually agreed that this was not a good fit. Van took with him a number of people to form the Northwest Vineyard Church.
We then called Glen Francis to be our Pastor. Glen was one of the staff members that transferred from CHPC. Under his leadership, we changed from an Independent Church to a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church denomination in October 2001. Prior to that, we had already purchased 30 acres of land in Springfield Township. Other defining moments were when Pastor Glen resigned and our Associate Pastor, Rich Lanning, was installed as Pastor on October 2, 2005, ten years after the decision was made to form a new church. In April 2004, we began worshiping in our new church building on a beautiful campus.
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