Hillside Christian Church

Hillside began life in the West Lawn Fire Department basement in 1972. Two families and a minister right out of Bible College began meeting that fall and within a few years the church had grown to about 40-50 on Sunday mornings. In 1975, the congregation bought 7 acres in the Fritztown community and soon began construction of a small building.

The location was beautiful, but not very accessible at the time and the church struggled in those early years. In 1982, the first minister, Bob Hale, moved to a church in Pittsburgh and Dewey Mulliken became the minister. He left at the end of 1984 to go to the mission field and the church found itself with less than 20 people (including children) regularly attending by the spring of 1986. The members decided that even though the situation was critical, they would not give up. With the help of some other Pennsylvania churches, they hired W. Sheldon (Shelley) Lee in the summer of 1986. Shelley, Sally and their three children moved here that July and the church has slowly, but steadily gotten stronger. It was entirely self-supporting by 1989 and the building has gone through a number of renovations, including major expansions in 1992 and 2007.

In the years that Shelley has been here, the congregation has been marked by three things: