Crest Avenue Baptist Church, Riverside, California, celebrated its 40th anniversary November 12. Between the morning worship service and a potluck Thanksgiving meal with the congregation, Pastor Robin Montgomery shared how God answered the church’s prayer for a new building 40 years ago.
Robin became pastor of the church, then called Grace Baptist Church, in 1979. The congregation met for services in a small building on a back street in the Home Gardens neighborhood outside of Corona, California.
Pastor Robin Montgomery and his wife, Diane, participate in the 40th anniversary service of Crest Avenue Baptist, Riverside, Calif.
“The church was growing, and we needed a new building,” Robin says. “We began praying and looking for a building or for land to build on. Our resources were limited. The lady who lived next door to the church had always promised to give her house to the church, but after she died, her daughter sold the house.”
One day in November 1983, Robin was home with his youngest daughter, who stayed home from school because of an illness. “It was raining, she was sick, and I was miserable,” Robin says.
Later that morning, he received a call from Gordon Nicholson, then director of Victory Ranch and a council member for Southwest Baptists for Home Missions. He wanted to meet with Robin that morning.
When Gordon arrived, he asked “a lot of questions about the health of the church, how many members, etc.” The church had been growing and was praying and searching for a new building, Robin related.
That’s when Gordon told Robin about a Regular Baptist church just six blocks away from the Montgomerys’ home.
At the height of its ministry, that church—Crest Avenue Baptist Church—had grown to about 250 people but had recently disbanded. The missions organization that Gordon was part of had received the building in trust. Hoping to restart the church, the organization brought in a missionary pastor to lead the church. But when three years passed without much growth, the church family of about 35 people decided to try a different tactic to keep the members together and preserve the building, even though it was falling into disrepair.
“Would your church like to have the building?” Gordon asked Robin.
“At first, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so he repeated the offer. ‘Bring your folks over, and merge with the believers who are already there, no strings attached.’ ” The missionary pastor, Gordon added, wanted to move on to another area to start a new church.
“The next Sunday I informed our church members of the offer,” Robin says. “They were all in agreement that this was the Lord’s leading. Since it was close to Thanksgiving, we arranged to have a potluck dinner together on Thanksgiving eve with the members of Crest Avenue Baptist Church. We had a wonderful time together.”
Robin told the missions organization that Grace Baptist wanted to merge with the other church.
“Everything was moving forward, with both assemblies agreeing. A couple of days later, I started the morning with some anxiety,” Robin says.
When he became pastor of Grace Baptist, he promised the Lord that the church would never borrow money. “Thus, my anxiety. I awakened wondering if the new church owed a mortgage debt. I reasoned that the church might have borrowed money to build that big, beautiful building.”
That morning Robin called Gordon and asked if the church owed money for a mortgage. “Yes,” Gordon replied.
“My heart sank a little. ‘How much?’ ” Robin asked.
Gordon said the church still owed $10,000 dollars.
“My heart jumped with joy, because that is the exact amount we had saved for a new place of worship. We immediately paid off the mortgage.”
Since the beginning of Robin’s ministry at Grace Baptist (which initially could pay him only $50 a week), Robin believed that as the church “trusted the Lord, He would provide, and He did.” And God was still providing.
The Sunday after that phone call, the two churches met for their first combined worship service, using the name Crest Avenue Baptist Church. Since the original Crest Avenue church already had an identity in its neighborhood, the merged church decided to use the Crest Avenue name.
“God answers prayer,” Robin says, “but not always in the way we expect.”
