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February - September 1998 was time of planning. Pastor Jim and the "steering team" met regularly to make decisions for Cross+Road's future, analyzing potential land sites, searching for temporary worship facilities, developing programming, and gathering others for the first worship service. On September 13, 1998, Cross+Road Lutheran Church worshiped for the first time, meeting at Clay High School in Green Cove Springs. Over one hundred people attended our first worship service.
In July 1999, we moved to Doctor's Inlet Elementary School. The month before, land was purchased for Cross+Road by the Mission Investment Fund of the ELCA. Our future four-and-a-half-acre building site is located at the corner of County Road 220 and Lake Shore Drive West.
Our greatest asset also became our greatest obstacle--growth. Average worship attendance grew to one hundred twenty-five or more each week, crowding us in the small cafeteria. Our 1999 Christmas Eve service saw over one hundred sixty people worship with us. Cross+Road needed to find a bigger space in which to worship.
In October 2000, we moved to a brand new school--Thunderbolt Elementary. Attendance steadily climbed, worshipping one hundred forty or more on Sundays and peaking at two-hundred twenty on Easter 2001.
On September 16, 2001, Cross+Road Lutheran Church officially "organized" as a self-supporting congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Ninety-one families joined as charter members. As a new church, our mission is to gather all people together in following Jesus, equip them to do the work he has entrusted to us, and send them out transformed for ministry, so that they might gather others in following Jesus...
In 2003, Andy Boesenecker was hired as a full-time director of music, growing Cross+Road's music program to better serve an ever-growing congregation. In Spring 2004, we broke ground, yet officially construction on our 8,400s.f. multi-purpose building did not begin until Summer 2005. Finally, in March 2006, we began worshipping in our new building averaging 250 people each Sunday between two worship services.
Cross+Road is not done by any stretch of the imagination. Instead of looking at the arrival of our new building as "mission accomplished," we instead see it as "just the beginning." We look forward to what God will do with us and this new tool as we seek to better serve our community.
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Copyright © 2006, Cross+Road Lutheran Church, All rights reserved.