BUTLER TWP — In 50 years Christ Community Church, 205 N. Duffy Road, has grown from 50 people meeting in a fire hall to a 500-member congregation ready to face the next half century.

To mark its 50th anniversary, its pastor, the Rev. Bruce Gascoine, said, “The committee has put together a three-pronged celebration. It kicked off Sept. 13 with the church picnic at the Meridian Veterans Club picnic shelter.”

“On Oct. 11 there will be a joint service at 10:30 a.m. with a potluck dinner afterward at the church. They’ve collected different memorabilia, pictures, whatever we could get and then (congregant) Sharon Brewer is going to put it all together,” said Gascoine.

After lunch, he said, people will be able to walk along a hall and look through the pictures, books and other objects telling the history of the church.

Marilyn Stephenson, church organist and chairman of the 17-member anniversary committee, added on Nov. 8 there will be joint service and luncheon at the Vagabond Center in Lyndora.

“There will be a service at 10:30 a.m., and we will be honoring the charter members and any of the former pastors that want to speak that day,” Stephenson said.

She added the Rev. William Meekins Jr., assistant to Western Pennsylvania Conference Bishop Thomas Bickerton, will be the speaker at the worship service.

“Christ Community started as a mission church,” said Gascoine. “It was funded from First Methodist downtown to get it off the ground. They felt there was a need in this part of town for a satellite church.”

Charter member Don Loomis said beginning in 1965 the church had services in a Mercer Road fire hall with a part-time pastor.

A year later, the church bought four acres along North Duffy Road to build a sanctuary, and ground was broken in March 1970.

According to church history, the first service in the new sanctuary was Christmas Eve 1970.

“We were glad to get out of that fire hall,” said Loomis.

“We attracted people from out of the area and from every denomination you can think of,” Loomis said. “We were really ecumenical. Most became members of the church, some just passed through.”

In 1978 when a mortgage-burning ceremony was staged on Christmas Eve, the congregation numbered 383 members.

Christ Community began work on a new sanctuary in 1981. With its completion, Loomis said, the old sanctuary became a social hall that, in 1986, was formally named Oz Hall in honor of pastor Cloyd Osborne, who retired that year after 18 years with the church.

This year, Gascoine said, the church will begin a capital fund drive to raise money to put new roofs on the sanctuary and Oz Hall.

Some of the money could come from the church’s annual sausage sale, which takes place the Saturday before Thanksgiving, said Stephenson.

The sale began in 1980, Stephenson said, “Oz Hall becomes a butcher shop as congregation members prepare sausage orders.”

Last year the church sold 2,550 pounds of sausage for a profit of $3,354.76.

Stephenson said the church has processed and sold 54,840 pounds of sausage, which raised $45,302.22 for the church.

Gascoine said he attributed the church’s success to “some excellent pastors who kept it going. I think the theology has been open. People could be diverse in their theological thinking.”

He added, “Like all churches, we are declining in numbers. We are not unique. We are holding our own.”

Gascoine said Christ Community is trying to reach the millennial generation, the 18- to 35-year-old young adults.

“They’re not interested in organized religion for the most part,” he said. “It used to be you just opened the doors and people came. Now that has changed.”