History

Faith Presbyterian Church was born out of the vision of several leaders of the Presbyterian Church of the Atonement in Wheaton, MD. In 1986, the Church of the Atonement celebrated its 40th anniversary. As part of the planning for the celebration, someone suggested that the best way to celebrate that anniversary would be to help start another church, just as Wallace Memorial Presbyterian had started Atonement. An early leader in that vision was Atonement elder Maurice Hauschildt. Maurice had been part of the team who helped plant Atonement back in the 1940's. He was a young Christian at the time, in his 20's. The challenge of helping plant a new church was one of the most important factors in his own spiritual growth. Since church planting was such an important influence in his own life, Maurice wanted to see others have that opportunity as well. He also was convinced that church planting was one key to reaching suburban D.C. for Christ.

His vision survived a false start in Germantown.

Part of the founding vision of Faith is perseverance. The vision survived this initial failure. In the winter of 1988, elder Hauschildt suggested to Rev. Alan J. Avera, who at that time was the Associate Pastor at Atonement, that maybe God was calling him to be the church planter. Pastor Avera felt a call to shift the focus to Olney. And so the vision continued, and it began to grow.

A group of nine families from Atonement agreed to leave behind the security and all the programs of a larger church, to accept God's call to a new ministry.

From that initial core group of pioneers, Faith was born on September 25, 1988. A church born of a vision, a vision that wouldn't quit. From that beginning we grew from being a mission congregation to being a fully organized church, with our service of organization on March 20, 1994. We have met for worship in four different locations: Olney Elementary School, Sandy Spring Friends School, Belmont Elementary School, and Sherwood High School. On January 7, 1995, we purchased our first parcel of land at 17309 Old Baltimore Road. On October 2, 1998, we had a "Building With Living Stones" banquet to kick-off our building fund raising campaign. We purchased a second parcel, next to our original parcel, on May 7, 1999. We began construction of our first building in 2002. We had our first service in our new building in June 2003.

In July of 2004, Pastor Avera was called to be the director of Outreach North America, the church planting arm of the ARP denomination. In 2005 Faith entered an exciting era as we welcomed Rev. William Sutherland as our new Senior Pastor.