Our Story
We've been around as a congregation for more than a century. Believers in the Coburg-area of the lower Willamette Valley began gathering in homes in the late 1800s. This was the beginning of what today is Countryside. We officially gathered as a church in 1901; over the years we've been called Church of Christ, Christian Church, Christian Fellowship, and since 1997 we have been known as Countryside.
We lived, we worked, we celebrated, we grieved, we succeeded, we failed, we honored the Lord... we lived life together for 100 years. We had times of great influence in our community, we had years when we didn't hold services in the summer because we had so few people. We built buildings to worship in, we created festivals to celebrate community in, and we took great faith in our God. Time has passed, some that were born here have long since both lived and died here and God has been faithful to all of the generations that have called themselves this congregation. Over the years we saw many of our tastes, priorities and even some of our beliefs change from our earliest days. One thing that always remained constant was our love for Jesus.
In the early 1990's the Lord continued his maturing of us and began to change us in some very specific ways — we began to use a new name, our ministry style began to reflect God's changes in us, our beliefs about the Bible and our faith took on new meaning and our previous denominational ties were left behind. Ultimately, we sensed the Lord wanted us to start afresh and began to seek Him for the pastor who would lead us forward.
After more than a year of prayer and seeking guidance from the Lord, the body invited Terry Dawson to serve as pastor. Terry and his family began ministering to the Countryside Fellowship of believers in 1996.
Since that time the Lord has born fruit in the many years of changes in us that He had begun, including the changing of our name to Countryside. After more than 100 years of faithfully serving the Lord, Countryside Christian Fellowship was born-again, so to speak, in 1997, as we again committed ourselves to Him in undivided devotion and reaffirmed our direction and leading as coming from the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures.