Last fall, Bridgewater Church’s Hancock, New York, campus marked two years of “something is better than nothing.”
Bridgewater Church had started six new congregations in New York and Pennsylvania since 2011. In 2023, “it became clear that God wanted us to start another congregation, in Hancock, New York, but not the way we had always done it,” says Bob Kadlecik, pastor of the church’s Montrose, Pennsylvania, campus.
To plant its previous campuses, 25–75 “pioneers” left the Bridgewater congregation to join the new work, and a pastor preached on-site. But Hancock, the farthest campus location, had an even smaller number of launch members and no pastor.
For nearly a year several families from the Hancock area had been asking Bridgewater to move into their community. “They had been driving over 45 minutes to attend the Bridgewater Hallstead campus and wanted to reach their own local communities with the message of Jesus,” Executive Pastor Brett Bixby said in 2023.
“So we started [the Hancock campus] with two small groups and began holding Sunday services with music and a sermon on video,” Bob relates.
“Philosophically, we don’t do video preaching or music,” Bob says of Bridgewater Church. “But we decided that obeying God’s call to go and make disciples by doing something less than ideal was better than doing nothing at all.”
Quarry worker Ben Axtell now leads the congregation with the support of other Bridgewater pastors. “He’s not a pastor, but he loves Jesus and people!” Bob says.
The first service for this newest campus took place on October 22, 2023, in a movie theater in Hancock. In the two years since that time, over a dozen people—nine adults—have trusted Christ as Savior, 10 have been baptized, and about 70 gather for a worship service every Sunday.
Bridgewater Church prays that the Hancock congregation will continue growing so they can one day afford a pastor and recruit musicians.
“What if we had decided to do nothing because it wasn’t ideal?” Bob asks. “We don’t want the lack of a perfect solution to stop us from obeying God in whatever ways we can.”
- Read how Bridgewater Church launched two of its campuses to become a separate multisite church, called Northbridge Church.
