Popular North Chattanooga ministry Northshore Fellowship is planting the seed of a new church on Signal Mountain at the Mountain Arts Community Center, where a core group of around 90 Northshore members began holding services in September.
Referred to as Mountain Fellowship, the group meets each Sunday from 5-6:15 p.m.
Mountain Fellowship is held at Mountain Arts Community Center each Sunday from 5-6:15 p.m.“We really want to reach people on the mountain who are not presently part of a church,” said Robby Holt, associate pastor at Northshore Fellowship who is leading the group at MACC.
Holt said he is in the process of moving from the Southside to Signal Mountain, where he plans to increase the numbers of the core group from Northshore with non-Christians and non-practicing Christians from the community.
“We want to invite our actual neighbors who don’t know Jesus to join us in our home for meals and conversation, and then invite them to come worship with us,” he said. “We want to be very accessible and welcoming to different groups on the mountain.”
He said the Mountain and Northshore fellowships are part of the Presbyterian Church of America and hold typical worship services which include the reading of scripture, singing and a sermon. Most of the Mountain Fellowship’s new recruits are recent mountain transplants or longtime residents who previously did not attend church regularly or at all, said Holt.
“We’re trying not to attract people away from other churches,” he said, adding that this is part of the reason services are held at 5 p.m.
While Holt feels the MACC is presently an ideal spot for Mountain Fellowship, he would eventually like to move the group’s base away from the town of Signal Mountain, where many churches already exist, to the less-served area toward the Sequatchie County line, he said.
“It’s been a real privilege to be a part of the good things happening [at MACC],” said Holt. “We don’t know how long we’ll be there, but we’ll definitely leave it better than we found it.”
Aside from inviting non-Christians to participate in fellowship, the church’s secondary mission is to embody Christ by working to redeem the community’s most broken people and places.
Mountain Fellowship was recently recognized by the town of Signal Mountain with an honorary resolution thanking the group for the extensive physical labor and funding provided by members to improve the MACC building.
“We think [humans] essentially are stewards, managers of the whole creation,” said Holt. “When we think of how we ought to treat the earth and its places, we ought to have more of a keeper/preserver/giver mentality rather than a taker mentality.”
Mountain Fellowship members are also volunteering with Signal Mountain Social Services to further impact lives in the community.