Rockland Community Church has deep roots in the Rockland community.  Rockland, once a distinct community made up primarily of farmers and the land they farmed, is now also home to several world class golf courses and an increasing number of homes.  A number of the people who now form Rockland Community Church are related to the original families who farmed the land around us.   Many others have moved into the area more recently, attracted by the golf courses, the high quality of life, and the possibility of commuting to jobs in the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area.

In 1948, there were two churches that called the Rockland area home.  Rockland Methodist, also referred to as Rockland Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was founded in 1891.  Rockland Baptist Church was founded in 1874.  Believing the same basic Christian doctrines and desiring to strengthen the Christian community, the members of both churches joined together to form an interdenominational community church.  Anyone who believed Jesus Christ was the Savior was welcomed as members regardless of their denominational background.  Today, our church is composed of people from a wide variety of denominations (Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Moravian, Roman Catholic, Non-Denominational, and others) making Rockland Community Church truly representative of the broader Christian community.

Over the years, our church has continued to be active with a choir, youth fellowship groups, Sunday night Bible studies, support of local and foreign missions, prayer groups, and fellowship groups for our men and women.   Nextdoor to the church is the Rockland Arts and Crafts Shop which now occupies the small, one room schoolhouse where many of the community children went to school until the 1950s.  The old church building (what was once the Methodist church) has been used as an activities center for the church.  We also enjoy using our picnic shelter and sports field (we have a hill that we use for our giant slip'n'slide!).  The Rockland Cemetery, no longer affiliated with the church, sits just a couple hundred yards from our church.  We participate in an annual Memorial Day Sunday service at the cemetery.

Rockland Community Church currently reaches out to the community by supporting the St. Luke's Free Medical Clinic, the Salvation Army, the Council on Domestic Violence, the Evan's Home for Children, C-CAP, Teens Opposing Poverty / Impact the Valley, and other organizations that assist with the needs of the community. On the world scene, the church supports a missionary family that worked for many years in Bolivia (now working in the US to train future generations of missionaries) and provides for the needs of children through Compassion International.

What will we look like in the future?  That's a great question!  The answer depends a lot on who God brings to our church in the coming years and the ways in which we together seek to live out our mission as a church.  We have begun to discuss starting an alternative worship service (which may be held in the evening to accomodate people who can't attend on Sunday mornings and which may look and feel quite different from our Sunday morning worship service).  We strongly desire to become a church for all generations and know that we have a lot of work to do to make this possible.  We are praying that God will bring us a number of people who will share this desire and who will help us do all that we can to make it happen!

For more information about our history, please click here.