Some Eastern Iowa churches find room to grow on outskirts of city

Two years ago, Cedar Hills Evangelical Free Church was landlocked on Midway Drive NW in Cedar Rapids.

Now, renamed Stonebridge Church and situated on 28 acres on the southwest edge of the city, the new facility has 44,000 square feet of worship, fellowship and classroom space, and the congregation has nearly doubled, increasing from about 500 in October 2008 to a little more than 800 now.

That kind of impact is also the hope of other pastors and congregations looking to suburbia for new homes.

Churches are finding room to grow on the edge or even outside city limits. In Cedar Rapids, New Covenant Bible Church and King of Kings Lutheran Church are building facilities north of Robins on Center Point Road. In Iowa City, St. Patrick's and St. Thomas More Catholic churches left their comfortable locations for larger space on the edge of town.

It's a new kind of urban flight.

Bob Stewart grew up attending a small church but said there's much to like about the new building at Stonebridge, where he's been a member for about six years.

“We weren't going to get any bigger where we were,” he said of the former Cedar Hills Evangelical Free Church. “We had to increase the size of the building, even our Sunday school classes were overcrowded.”

The new building has been a little overwhelming, he said, but the church has several small “community groups” that get together frequently to help make it seem not so big.

“We ran out of space for people, both adults and youth and children, and we're landlocked,” said the Rev. Bob Westfall, pastor of New Covenant Bible Church, 1800 46th St. NE in Cedar Rapids. “That was our driving force; we need to make room for those not yet here.”

New Covenant has four Sunday services for its 1,500-member congregation. Parking is tight, and there's little or no room for program growth and development, Westfall said.

He hopes that will change when the new $27 million facility opens. Located on 55 acres on Center Point Road, the building will be situated just off Interstate 380 and about eight miles north of Cedar Rapids.

“We have a large lobby, and we call it Main Street in our new facility,” Westfall said. “When people come, they're going to want to sit and talk. That's why you have a cafe and tables and chairs, so people can sit and connect.”

Moving to the edge of Iowa City helped St. Patrick's Catholic Church meet all its members' needs, said the Rev. Rudolph Juarez.

“We live in a highly mobile society; we think nothing of driving 15 to 20 miles to go shopping,” Juarez said.

In the past five months in the new location at 4330 St. Patrick Dr., Juarez said the parish has seen an average of 20 new families each month.

Not everyone is looking to move, however. Although the question of new construction has come up more than once, the congregation at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, 1340 Third Ave. SE in Cedar Rapids, continues to vote to stay downtown.

“We bring it up, and we think about it, and we pray about it and discern this is where we think God is leading us,” said the Rev. Carol Sundberg, associate pastor at St. Paul's. “There's never 100 percent agreement in any of it, but we keep coming back to this is where God planted us.”

The church serves neighborhood meals through the summer months and is home to a neighborhood preschool. It also provides smaller services, Sundberg said, like the availability of a phone for neighbors who don't have one.