CLEARFIELD TWP — It’s only been a year, but the seed the Rev. Paul Rihel planted appears to have taken root.

Now he hopes to help Christ Community Chapel blossom with a new building before he moves on to another empty patch.

Rihel, a church planter, started Christ Community Chapel, which meets for a 10 a.m. Sunday service in the Clearfield Township Elementary School, 621 S. Clearfield Road, nearly a year ago.

“June 15, Father’s Day, will be the church’s one-year anniversary,” Rihel said.

“We average about 50 people,” said Rihel. “But we’ve had as many as 85. For a new church we are real happy how it’s going.”

He said the congregation contains Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists and other denominations.

This congregation is made up of “believers and seekers,” he said. “We’re not worried about backgrounds. God’s not interested in the past.”

“Unlike other denominations where they have a hierarchy of authority that each congregation would answer to, we answer to God’s word. We don’t have an authoritative office above us,” said Rihel.

“One goal is get people into a personal relationship with God,” he said.

Rihel said Christ Community plans to construct its own building in the near future and has started a building fund.

“People of the church have obviously been tithing and giving. We hope to approach a bank soon,” said Rihel.

“When we get 80 to 90 people on a regular basis we can swing a mortgage,” he said.

Rihel also hopes to raise money by selling a CD of country gospel music called “Come On In. It was recorded by local musicians and Rihel.

A listening party and chance to meet those who played on the album will be at 7 p.m. Saturday at the elementary school.

“I grew up in Summit Township,” Rihel said. “I’ve gone full circle with my life. I am back home again trying to serve my local community.”

Rihel graduated from Butler High School in 1976 and Butler County Community College in 1979. He said he moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to pursue a career in music, playing bass, guitar and drums.

He retired from touring in 1983 and after getting a calling to ministry was ordained through the Church of God in Anderson, Ind.

“The Church of God is an evangelical group, neither Protestant nor Catholic, that evangelizes the Gospel of Christ,” said Rihel.

“We don’t like to use the D word (denomination) about ourselves because we are a movement,” said Mary Baker, communications leader for the church in Anderson.

“We call ourselves a movement because we are united by salvation, unity and holiness,” she said.

“We reach our hand to every blood-washed hand. If you profess to be a follower of Christ, you are part of the church he wanted to see built,” Baker said.

After serving two years with the North Main Street Church of God in Butler, Rihel came to the First Church of God, Kittanning, in 2000 and served there until 2005.

He said he and his wife, Sherry, decided to continue their Christian education by graduating from the Church Multiplication Training Center in Indianapolis, to become nondenominational church planters.

Bob Ransom, the director of the center, said it holds several seminars every year across the nation to train church seeders.

“We don’t get so much into the financial setup of the church,” said Ransom. “We emphasize the Biblical principles. We’re looking at how Jesus made and multiplied disciples. If you are multiplying disciples you will always effectively start a church.”

Ransom said the center offers either a three-day training program or two, two-day programs. The center conducts five to six programs annually, reaching at least 260 people, both clergymen and would-be church members.

He claims a 90 percent success rate in church startups.

“We do know this: the organization needs to assess, train and provide church starters with a coach and support network” said Ransom. “With these, there is a 90 percent success rate.”

Rihel said his calling is to be a church seeder, going out to start churches in locales that lacked one.

“There is no financial support, no mother church, we are self-reliant on God,” said Rihel.

“Christ Community Chapel is not a Church of God congregation. We are independent of them,” he said.

“Christ Community might become a Church of God congregation, but not until it can stand freely on its own,” he added.

He said, according to U.S. Census figures, Clearfield Township was ripe for a new church.

“There’s about 18,000 unchurched people in a radius,” said Rihel. “People there, we just need to get to them. We have to go out and do the work. Jesus walked the streets and healed the sick.”

“It’s important to minister to the area rather than build a megachurch,” said Rihel said. “Better 100 people in 20 churches, it’s smaller but more effective.”

Rihel said his goal is to eventually replace himself in the pulpit of Christ Community Chapel and go on to start another church.

“We see God’s work as one big wheel with many teeth in it. What we are doing is one cog in the wheel,” Rihel said.