Cornerstone Community Church, Hagerstown, Md. (Dean Pryor, pastor), marked its first Sunday in it’s new facility — a renovated historic barn east of Hagerstown. The church was formerly the Hagerstown Grace Brethren Church and sold its building on Spruce Street in 2011 because the upkeep had become burdensom. A story in today’s Herald-Mail provides the details. A portion of the story appears below. Click here for the complete article, along with several video interviews.
Cornerstone Community Church holds first service in renovated Beaver Creek barn
BEAVER CREEK — Standing before a packed barn for Cornerstone Community Church’s first service in its new Beaver Creek home, it seemed appropriate that guest speaker Larry Weber referenced Jesus’ birth.
“And you know, Jesus was born in a stable, and here we are in this barn. How cool is that?” said Weber, a former pastor for Waynesboro Grace Brethren Church.
Bonnie Kuhn, 91, of Funkstown, said she was “real pleased” with the church’s new home. “It’s spacious.”
She and her husband, Fred, who will celebrate their 72nd wedding anniversary on Wednesday, have been members of the church since February 1953, when the congregation was on Spruce Street in Hagerstown’s South End, said their daughter, Suanne Kuhn Woodring, 70, of Fairplay.
Cornerstone, affiliated with Grace Brethren and formerly known as Hagerstown Grace Brethren Church, bought the barn in May 2011.
A retail store had used the barn for storage space and kept it in good structural shape, worship leader and elder Kurt Nigh said.
Renovations, estimated to cost about $600,000, began in August 2015, Nigh said. The church was able to use proceeds from the sale of the Spruce Street church for much of the work and has a loan of about $150,000 remaining, he said.
Click here for the complete article, along with several video interviews.