We offer those unfamiliar or disillusioned with church a sincere, simple, personal experience of Christian fellowship through worship, small groups and spiritual mentoring.
Our goal is to help each believer draw closer to God and to discover and develop his or her gifts to serve others in Jesus' name.

Hillside began life in the West Lawn Fire Department basement (where the library is now) 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 a major expansion in 1992.

I In the 22 years that Shelley has been here, the congregation has been marked by three things: sincere, informal worship, home Bible studies, and missions. About 25% of the church's income is given away in Christ's name through community benevolence and worldwide missions. At this time, the church is involved with the Campus Ministry at Penn State (Berks Campus), with Freedom Gate Halfway House and Mercy Community Crisis Pregnancy Center (both in Reading), with a Christian children's camp in Maryland, a school and church in Russia, a college in Myanmar, a church in Cambodia, and a medical mission in Ethiopia. We are also involved in short-term mission work. For instance, we have sent four teams from the church to the Gulf since Katrina to work on reconstructing homes after the hurricane.

We realized a few years ago that the church had been at it's practical capacity since the late 1990's and that we could not grow further without expanding again. Because of that, we built a new worship area that seats 225 and has a much improved guest welcome area and foyer. It is completely handicap accessible and has really opened up our ministry in many ways. We also doubled our parking and added office space. The new facility was dedicated in the fall of 2007 and new features are being added every few months.

We do not know what the future holds, but we do believe that God is going to continue to work through our congregation. We invite you to check us out and see if Hillside is a place where you can grow and serve.