With a church seemingly on every street corner, why start a new church? Why not plug into an existing church down the road? What makes The Hills Church different than all the others? These are great questions we are often asked. Here are some ways we believe we’ve been uniquely called to expand God’s Kingdom in the Pittsburgh region.

FAMILY-CENTERED WORSHIP: At The Hills Church, we believe strongly in the truth, “a family that worships together, grows in Christ together.” Unlike many contemporary churches in our area, we do not separate children from their families during our worship services. According to numerous experts in the field, the trend towards age-segregated worship services has contributed to the recent mass exodus of young adults from the church. Children who grow up attending worship services with their families, including those “hard to understand parts,” are far more likely to see the church family as an extension of their family and adopt the faith of their parents as their own. Sometimes that means the sounds of children can be heard during the service. Other times that means, our pastor preaches with his infant son in his arms because he simply wants to see his Daddy. But, we don’t see these matters as interruptions to be avoided. We view them as symptoms of a growing, healthy family.

BIVOCATIONAL MINISTRY: That’s a fancy way of saying, we do not employ full-time pastors or church leaders. When we dreamed of the sort of church we wanted to become the last thing on our list was collecting enough money pay salaries and benefits. We want to build a church that is as selfless as possible and uses its operating budget bless others rather than ourselves. Additionally, we want to build a church where the ministry is led not by a handful of people at the top doing all the work, but owned by every single member of our congregation. To pursue this dream, we are intentional about our pastoral team being employed part-time. Tom, our Lead Pastor, works in the senior care industry. Kavan, our Worship Director, spends much of his week running the golf department at a local retailer (when he’s not on the course, itself). This isn’t because we’re a little church. This is by design.

NO BUILDINGS, SHARED PUBLIC SPACES: You might have noticed, we don’t have a building. Not only do we not own a building, for much of the year, we don’t even rent a building! So much of the modern church movement has focused on erecting and maintaining massive buildings. We’ve proudly never held a capital fund campaign. Jesus didn’t say he’d be with us whenever we’re in a big, expensive building. He said he would be with us wherever two or three are gathered and we’ve found that to be true even under a park pavilion!

A TRULY, “COME AS YOU ARE” CHURCH: Most churches will say, “come as you are.” Yet, we’ve all attended those churches where you seem to stand out from the crowd and you feel like everyone is staring at you. At The Hills Church, we welcome everyone and consider all to be counted among God’s children, no matter what. Not only are all welcome to attend our services, at The Hills we are intentional about giving all an opportunity to be involved right away. No matter who you are, what you’ve done, or the kind of life you’ve led, you are a child of God and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome you to our growing family.