Bedrock Church opened a new place of worship Sept. 8, offering fellowship for residents of Forest, with services held in Forest Middle School each Sunday at 10 a.m.
According to Data USA, Forest has a population of 11,600 people, making the city a growing area in Bedford County near the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are eleven current Bedrock churches, and Bedrock Forest is the newest addition.
While each church location offers different forms of service, mission statements and community based on location, they all share the same goal of serving others and building the church body. Chris Dowd, one of the elders at Bedrock Forest, sees the growth of Bedrock as a sign of health in the church.
“Healthy things grow, and growing things multiply,” Dowd said.
Dowd, Jeremy Minor, an elder at Bedrock Lynchburg and Jonge Tate, an elder at Bedrock Bedford, all served together at a church in North Carolina during seminary. Sometime after graduation, the three of them realized that they wanted to plant a church in Bedford. They then moved their families to Bedford to plant Bedrock Community Church in 2007 with the goal of making disciples and planting more churches.
The name of the Bedrock churches came from the nickname given to Bedford by the locals and from the passages in the Bible about Christ being the cornerstone. The philosophy of every Bedrock Church is “Disciples make disciples, that plant churches, that plant churches,” and Bedrock Forest is a direct result of this idea.
Something unique about the Forest location is that it is the first Bedrock Church to become disability accessible, due to the accommodations provided by Forest Middle School and Ester Warren, the senior executive director of the Office of Disability Accommodation Support at Liberty University.
Warren runs the Bedrock Accessibility Ministry, which gives the church an opportunity to reach more people and to help the other locations become accessible.
One of the church’s 350 congregants is sophomore Samuel Mehari, 18.
Mehari has been attending Bedrock Forest since its launch and currently serves with the greeting team and the set up and tear down team for service. Mehari said his favorite part about Bedrock Forest is the relationships he can build with community members and the pastoral team. Bedrock Forest has been consistently growing and reaching a wide variety of demographics including college students like Mehari.
For more information about Bedrock Forest, or any of the church’s other locations, visit www.bedrockforest.com.
Parker is a news reporter for the Liberty Champion.