West Point Community Covenant Church is Christ centered, and mission minded. We are
called to serve in love. We follow the great commission to love God with all your heart, soul, body,
mind, and strength, and to love your neighbors as yourself and to go into the entire world and make
disciples.
Our History
In July of 1926 Joseph and Penninah Kirk, newly married home
missionaries, graduates of "Training School For Christian Workers" (now Azusa Pacific) arrived in West
Point. Mrs. Kirk wrote, "...we saw the church - poor old building, so dilapidated and deserted,
door sagging open, grass overgrowing between the decayed boards that made up the floor, yet still so
treasured with tender memoried by the older generation." It had been tenty years since there had
been a regular pastor in this little mountain church. We think it had been a Methodist church
built in the Gold Rush Days.
The Kirks, with Mrs. Kirk's mother, "Mother
Kunkle", a beloved Quaker, began a selfless work in the community, rebuilding the church physically and
spiritually. John Kunkle, the younger brother of Mrs. Kirk, became the first pastor before he and
wife, Mable, left to establish a pioneer ministry in the jungle of Bolivia.
John was a Boy Scout leader, and the first camp
out in 1946 with his group of boys evolved into an annual, week long event for the town youth.
PipiCamp, named after the valley where it was held for thirty years, is a source of sacred memoried for
hundreds of young people.
" The Women's Improvement Club" of the 1920's
became "The Ladies' Missionary Society". Active and efficient, this group is indispensable in the
life of the church.
In 1949, under Pastor William "Bill" Mays, the
church affilated with the Evangelical Covenant Church of America. Later pastors included Selmer
Jacobson, Paul Swanson, Leroy Train, Eric Norman, Gerald "Gerry" Meyers, and John Rush. In 1962 Pastor
Meyers, who had grown up in the church and gone away to the Kirk's alma mater, returned to pastor until
his retirement in 1998. However, there was a two year interval (1967-1968) when Roger Mollet, a
Fuller Seminary graduate held the position. Pastor John Rush was welcome as pastor as the new
millinnium, 2000, arrived.
Described by local newspapaers as "warm,
friendly, and family-oriented," the church's purpose is to recieve the light and love of God through
Christ and express then in the community.
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