Rock Creek Fellowship: The First Five Years

In the late 1990’s a multigenerational Sunday school class at Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church began to talk about starting a new church. The Tower Sunday school class included Bob and Susan Bosworth, Chip and Vicky Murray and Rob and Liza Vannoy, all residents of the Hinkle/West Brow area. They envisioned a community church near their homes, a church where natives, newcomers, parents, grandparents, and children could worship together… and simply.

In March 2000 they invited a few other neighbors to discuss the idea. Meetings and picnics in their homes that spring stirred interest.

In May the group decided to have a summer experiment like that of the Little Brown Church on Signal Mountain. Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church agreed to monitor the experiment. If evidence existed after ten weeks that God was blessing the experiment, it would continue with their support.

God did bless.

No one had any experience in starting a church. The steering committee met weekly at the Murrays’ and prayed a lot. Ethan and Linda Pettit, Don and Judy Dutton and Henry and Jane Henegar joined their neighbors on this committee.

Camp Lookout hosted the first worship service June 25, 2000. The Rev. David Arthur of LMPC preached on unity as Jesus taught in John 17. Guitar and mandolin were the instruments of choice for traditional hymns, the early favorite being “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” The first autumn Abigail Harris (later married to Billy Lavin) organized the music with templates of worship. By Thanksgiving that year Isaac Wardell was hired as music director, the first paid employee of Rock Creek.

The committee found a home at the West Brow Community Center on Griffin Road, beginning July 9, 2000. The steel front door was pocked with bullet holes. Two big voting machines (bigger than upright pianos) occupied one wall, evidence of the Calvinist doctrine of election. A billiards table occupied another. Mice occupied the springy-floored kitchen. The windows were boarded up outside and sheetrocked over inside as defense against marauders. The price was right, however. Any member of the West Brow Community League could use the building, having paid annual dues of $25.

Rob Vannoy rigged up an air-conditioner that would roll in and out of the back doorway. It made more noise than the preachers, a delightful assemblage of more than 35 men on the first 52 Sundays (Rennie Scott, Robby Holt, Dan MacDougall, Ray Clark, Ethan Pettit, Chuck Neder, J. R. Caines, Reid Henson, Walter Henegar, Krue Brock, Phil Gagliardi, Roger Lambert, Dick Cain, Hamilton Brock, and others. Eric Youngblood, who was about to complete a Master of Divinity degree at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, preached the two Sundays before Christmas that year.

The men preached to an often-cooing crowd of children, who moved freely from lap to lap. Ethan Pettit led worship and reminded worshipers regularly of how much we have to learn from the little ones among us. Rob and Jon Vannoy built benches to accommodate the crowds, and a loud speaker outside carried the message to those who were tending the restless school-age children. Somebody tacked a quilt over the pass-through into the kitchen, so babies could snooze or howl in private.

The first Sunday of the month was communion Sunday, and people brought food for a celebratory breakfast after worship.

Having been offered land for a building on the Lula Lake Land Trust near Rock Creek, the steering committee named the new congregation Rock Creek Fellowship.

LMPC appointed a temporary session to assist the steering committee. Teaching Elder David Arthur and Ruling Elders Ben Dady, Cartter Frierson, and Ted Hope were assigned to assist Ruling Elders Don Dutton and Henry Henegar. Members were received beginning in January 2001 and Charlie and Deb Tucker were the first to join. Other charter or early members were Abigail and Billy Lavin, the Bosworths, the Murrays, the Vannoys, the Duttons, the Henegars, Caitlin Pettit, Lawson Konvalinka, Cathy and Rock Thomas, David McKinsey, Amy Lanoie, Crissie and Bill Moore Smith, Kyle Smith, Kurt Smith, Karter Smith, Kip Smith, and Kelly Smith.

The first Sunday School class met after church to discuss the sermon. Later it met around the corner from the WBCC in the Tuckers’ living room on Scenic Highway.

In April 2001 a pulpit committee invited Eric Youngblood to be the pastor and accepted the call as of July 1, 2001, three days after his 28th birthday.

One year later, July 7, 2002, Rock Creek Fellowship was particularized as a full-fledged congregation of the Presbyterian Church of America.

Installed as Ruling Elders were Troy Duble; Don Dutton, formerly an elder at Chattanooga’s Covenant Presbyterian Church; and Henry Henegar, formerly an elder at Chattanooga’s First Presbyterian Church. Ordained and installed as Deacons were Billy Blea, Nathan Brauer, Kelly Gilbert, Jon Vannoy, and Rob Vannoy. All lived in the Hinkle/West Brow community.

At the same time Eric Youngblood suggested enlarging the WBCC instead of building a new building on the Lula Lake Land Trust. A capital campaign raised $90,000. Covenant College allowed RCF to worship in Sanderson Hall for three months while Calvin Ball and Tower Construction Co. completed the additions and improvements: a larger worship space, an entrance porch, a screened porch, a new kitchen, two Sunday School rooms, central heat and air, and for the first time, windows! The children’s room, dubbed “The Creation Room” included four walls of the original art work of children (from Katherine Vannoy on up) to practiced artists like Katherine’s father and Summer Bosworth.

By January 2003 a second service at 8:30 a.m. was added. Attendance at the two services peaked at 360 that winter. This experiment lasted until that spring.

Teenagers’ Sunday School met Sunday mornings in the homes of the Smiths, the Rob Vannoys, and later the Buck Roebucks.

Children’s and adult classes met at the WBCC. The worship services became more and more crowded.

In the fall of 2003, Allen Duble, who had served as a Ruling Elder in six other churches around the USA, Kelly Gilbert and Dr. Bill Moore Smith were elected to the Session.

On Feb. 15, 2004, a rented house a few yards north of the Tuckers on Scenic Highway provided room for more Sunday School classes and offices for Eric Youngblood and Charlotte Price, the new church secretary.

In June of 2004, David Bruce Woodworking ceased production and Graham Vannoy Construction Company downsized, leaving Michael Warren’s 8,000 square-foot building on Durham Road in Rising Fawn vacant. The building had been designed in 1999 by the same Rob Vannoy who had helped establish RCF in 2000. Not a few noticed that it seemed to have been designed with the church in mind, from the start.

A planning committee chaired by Don Dutton accepted from Michael Warren a loan of the building to RCF in exchange for insurance, taxes, and utilities.

The Tuckers then accepted the Session’s invitation to live in the building as caretakers. Having prayed for years that their work would become worship, they received the richest of answers to their prayers. And Rock Creek Fellowship’s meeting house became home, in every sense of the word.

Remodeling began in July 2004 and RCF began worshipping in the 5,000 sq.-ft. sanctuary – “the Meeting House” — August 1, 2004. Five garage doors in the main room could be open during worship. Offices, apartment, nurseries, and Sunday School rooms fit perfectly in the upstairs. And the first bride walked down the building’s grand staircase on October 16, 2004. Then Jeanne and Jeff Rausch cut their cake with Covenant College rising above the trees in the background behind them.

By God’s Providence, the building at 2008 Durham Road is located just above the headwaters of Rock Creek.