blue ridge community church, forest va

We believe in one church, many locations, that exist to help people move closer to God. Our New London Campus is in Forest, Va., and our Bedford Campus in Bedford, Va. In the mid-1970's, a small group of believers began meeting together in Concord, Virginia, for the purpose of learning how to study the Bible. In 1976 that Bible study formed into a small, non-denominational church, Concord Bible Fellowship. As we started getting organized, we attempted to make our church as much like the New Testament model as we could. Our format was informal and our emphasis was on helping Christians grow in their faith. We had no paid staff, our building was humble, and 70 percent of our budget went to support international missions. Over the next 15 years, our growth was slow and sporadic. We began to realize that there were things about our society's culture that were changing and, in order to be effective, we needed to change too. Our church was five miles from a main road and 20 miles from Lynchburg. We had grown to about 60 people (men, women and children) and didn't seem to be able to go further. Most of our new people were coming from other churches in Lynchburg. How could we be more accessible? How could we reach out to unchurched people? How could we make our church an exciting place? Blue Ridge Community Church was born on January 20, 1991, and our first meeting was at Brookville High School. We changed our name to reflect our new, more convenient location. We radically modified our format to be more attractive to unchurched people, and we changed the culture of our church to reflect a primary emphasis on outreach. Over the years as we have grown, we met in a school cafeteria, an auditorium, a gym, a renovated grocery store, and even a night club. In 2005, we moved into a newly constructed, permanent building on New London Road in Forest, Virginia.