Pastor says Broad Theater services possible

It’s the stuff of movies.

Ridgeline Community Church started under a tree in Souderton Community Park in 2012.

At the time, the church had a contract with the Broad Entertainment Group, which was planning to renovate and reopen the Broad Theater, Pastor Gibson Largent said.

“I was anticipating moving our church into that theater on Sunday mornings,” said Largent, who took part in Broad Entertainment’s weekly construction meetings at the time.

Those plans were never accomplished.

But that doesn’t mean it still won’t happen.

Kyle Hoff, one of the partners in the new plans to reopen the theater, is a Ridgeline member, and there’s a good possibility the church could be holding weekly services there when the theater is back in operation, Largent said.

Ridgeline’s merger with Rockhill Mennonite Church and move to the West Rockhill church building in April doesn’t change the desire for holding services at the theater, he said. The theater services would just be in addition to those held at the church.

“We recognize that there are people who won’t readily step into a brick and mortar traditional church building, but they’ll step into a theater environment,” Largent said.

Ridgeline, itself, was a church plant by Riverside Church in Horsham, which met for about 15 years at the Regal Cinema before moving in recent years into a traditional church building, he said.

“They reached an entire new generation of people who had never been to church and wouldn’t step foot into a traditional church,” Largent said.

Although no longer located in Souderton, the church still has a bond with the borough, he said.

“We’ve loved being in the borough of Souderton. It was a good place to incubate,” he said.

“It allowed us to grow, and we were nurtured. We were welcomed,” Largent said. “It was a great place to start as a church.”

During its time in Souderton, the congregation met at several different places; for the past two years, it was meeting at the Indian Valley Boys & Girls Club, he said.

“I want to say a huge thank you to Souderton,” Largent said.

“For five years, we were able to build a church there and were welcomed and we loved being able to serve there, and so even though we moved out of the borough, we still have a heart to make a positive impact in Souderton, as well as Perkasie and Telford and Sellersville and the other places where our church members live,” he said. “We brought 750 short-term missionaries into Souderton over a five-year period, and they served in every single park. They spread mulch. They cleaned up graffiti. They removed heroin needles. They cleaned up drug stashes in West [Street] Park. They pulled out 35 pounds of broken beer bottles, glass in the picnic grove.”

The volunteers also helped with pulling weeds from borough sidewalks, cemetery cleanup and cleaning up in the park after the annual fireworks, he said.

“We were just able to do a lot in Souderton,” he said.

“Ten times a year, we prayer walked every single neighborhood in Souderton for five years,” Largent said. “Almost every single house in Souderton had a Ridgeline volunteer praying for their residents in that house.”