Calaveras Enterprise

New church on the way in Copperopolis




A new 18,250-square-foot church will be built in Copperopolis, the Calaveras County Planning Commission decided Thursday.

For the past 10 years, the congregation of Crossroads Church has been leasing space and meeting at the downtown Copperopolis Historical Church.

The new church will sit on 12 acres at the northeast corner of Black Creek Road and Copper Cove Drive.

Building will be done in three phases over three years, Pastor Gregg Bernheisel said.

The first stage will produce an amphitheatre.

“It will be an outdoor grassy kind of place for us to do some of our special events and services when it’s warm,” Bernheisel said.

Phase two will be the children’s wing, which will be used for youth ministry classes on Sundays and youth group meetings during the week.

Phase three is the actual church, which will seat 500 people.

“That’s a stretch since we only have a church of 100 people,” Bernheisel said. “We want to build it big enough. With this community rapidly growing, within the next five years we see ourselves growing to 400 or 500 people.”

The church building won’t look like a typical church, he said. Instead it will resemble a large multipurpose room and will be used as a church, gym, dining hall and stage.

“We’d like to do a lot of things for the community, like have sports leagues. There’s really not a place for leagues to happen for volleyball or basketball,” he said.

“We want it be the kind of church that someone who maybe doesn’t like the traditional kind of church would feel very comfortable going to,” he said. “There won’t be religious symbols.”

The church would be for everyone in the community, Bernheisel said.

“Anyone off the street who hasn’t gone to church in 20 years would be very comfortable and understand the sermon,” he said.

Crossroads Church is a non-denominational, bible believing, evangelical-free, Christian church, he said.

“We are free to govern ourselves. There’s no hierarchy,” Bernheisel said.

Even though the main church building won’t be complete, a year from now Bernheisel hopes to be holding service at the new site.

The entire project will cost between $2 million to $3 million. The property has been purchased, and phase one is fully funded, but Bernheisel still needs to raise the money for phases two and three.

He hopes to solicit money from active church members during the church’s weekly collection.

“When people see lives changing it becomes exciting for the community to get on board with what’s happening,” Bernheisel said.

Contact Vanessa Turner at vturner@calaverasenterprise.com.

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