A local church has a new name and a new home.
Christ the Redeemer Reformed Church — formerly known as Christ the Redeemer Reformed Presbyterian Church — will hold its services at 510 Depot Road in Fields Landing, the
former location of Calvary Community Church, starting Oct. 2.
“Our church has been small and for more than 20 years just leasing and renting buildings or rooms
in Eureka,” said Pastor John Kistler of Christ the Redeemer Reformed Church. “We never had enough money to buy a property. The Calvary Community Church pastor retired recently, and
the group is disbanding, so they heard we were hoping for a building and transferred their building and equipment to us. So, for the first time, we will have a building. And, of course, any of their people who would like to visit or join us are welcome.”
Kistler says he believes that Christ the Redeemer Reformed Presbyterian Church initially started
by meeting in people’s homes, until it got big enough to afford to lease a building.
“That was probably about 20 years ago,” he said. “We did a monthly lease arrangement at 1427 California St., an old church, for about 15 years. So, we had a steady location and building for use
except when the owners had a monthly club meeting. When they decided to sell the building
during COVID in fall 2021, we could not afford to buy, and they asked us to leave so they could sell
it.”
He added, “We have been meeting by renting a room in the Veterans Memorial Building on H
Street for almost a year. It is a nice facility, but we could only afford to rent the room on Sunday
mornings, thus all other meetings (like the Wednesday night Bible studies each week) had to
be done in members’ homes or other locations.” Kistler said it was a “complete surprise” and a
“miracle” when Christ the Redeemer Reformed Church was offered a “transferred gift” of the
church building by Calvary Community Church.
“One of our deacons was sitting at a Eureka restaurant having breakfast with a friend and
heard that a local church had stopped meeting. Our deacon asked how to find out about this. And
the friend pointed across the room and said, ‘There is the retired pastor over there.’ So, they chatted briefly and the retired pastor, Pastor Dennis Hartman, said they were looking to give it
to another church. They got his phone number and I called, and within a week or two the other
church officers had agreed to transfer the building and its assets to us for our use.”
Kistler said, “We felt it is an answer to prayer, since we have been praying for years to be able to
afford a building of our own. And it is a miracle because it came out of nowhere and without any
real difficulties. It is hard to remember that praying does change things, especially when the
answer comes only years later. But it is a perfect time. We had a building for a long while as a
lease, but didn’t realize how helpful that was until we lost access to it.”
Members of Christ the Redeemer Reformed Church met at their new church building initially
on Sept. 14 to look around and celebrate with pizza. They also visited with Hartman, who answered various questions for those attending.
“Everyone is delighted with the building and we are trying to figure out how everything works
(sound system, security system) and arrange the utility bills and such in our name,” Kistler said.
He added, “One neat thing about this building in particular is the giant (marquee) wall facing
Highway 101. I always called it ‘the Sign Church,’ because of the gigantic sign that recently said ‘Jesus is the Answer.’ We have the opportunity to come up with great inspirational slogans every few months. For now, we have put up ‘Christ the Redeemer,’ which is truth and also the first words of our church name.”
Christ the Redeemer Reformed Church will hold its first official service at the new location on Oct.
2 at 11 a.m.
“We have (adult) Sunday school at 9:30 a.m. Everyone is welcome. The sermon title and
subject is ‘Surprised by Jesus,’” said Kistler, who has been pastor at the church for the past three
years. He replaced his father, who served the congregation for 15 years before him.
Also new, as noted earlier, is the church’s name.
Kistler explains: “We are not leaving the Presbyterian denomination for any doctrinal reason or any split. We were part of a small Presbyterian group (Scotch and Irish background) from Ohio for several years, and we were the only one outside of Ohio. So, we really could not fellowship or work together with them easily. We wanted to join a group that had more local churches of our beliefs in our region. … So, we are joining the URCNA (United Reformed Churches of North America), which is more of a Dutch background group of 120 churches, and almost half of those are in the western U.S. We will be able to join them for bi-yearly meetings and share resources for missions (domestic and international) and planning and etc. Starting this month, we will be called our church Christ the
Redeemer Reformed Church, just dropping Presbyterian from the name.”
For more information about Christ the Redeemer Reformed Church, go to Christtheredeemerrpc.com for now. Shortly, the website will change to 101church.com.
