Photo by Sarah Finnegan
Double Oak Community Church Senior Pastor Adam Robinson at Chelsea Park Elementary School, which will play host to the church’s services and gatherings until it can build a new location.
Double Oak Community Church has known for a while that a new campus was necessary.
The Mt Laurel-based church has grown significantly in its 12 years, said Senior Pastor Adam Robinson, with more than 1,200 individuals coming to worship during the church’s three Sunday services.
“We’re continuing to grow, and the area is continuing to grow. … Just driving all over here, there’s so much building going on over here, as well as in Chelsea proper,” Robinson said.
The church increased its number of Sunday services to three in order to accommodate larger crowds, but continued growth meant that was still not enough, Robinson said.
As the need for an expansion of some sort grew closer, Robinson and other leaders looked at all of the options Double Oak would have — a church plant, a new campus, virtual services — and determined which best fit their congregation.
“Sadly, we’ve seen a lot of church plants fail in Chelsea over the last 10 years,” Robinson said. “We want all churches to succeed, but sadly a lot of them haven’t really thrived. We just noticed that model is not as effective in our community.”
A virtual campus or a campus without a live pastor were also not good fits, he said. Double Oak has a strong community based on everyone knowing the people they are worshiping with, and feeling connected to that group. The same goes with the pastor.
“We don’t want to go and build a massive room somewhere,” Robinson said. “…We’re going to build a church around this size because we want to have people have the feel of, ‘I know the people I’m worshiping with.’”
Leaders decided opening a new campus with a full staff and bringing in a pastor for that campus was the best bet. By the campus having its own pastor, Robinson said, individuals worshiping at that campus can feel that they can be heard and have someone to speak with directly.
“You can talk to him after a service. You can actually feel like you’re going to get pastored by the people that you’re sitting under, but also worshiping with,” he said.
The church purchased land at the front of the Chelsea Park subdivision on U.S. 280, initially with plans to build a new location and open a campus led by Double Oak Community Church’s founding pastor Randy Overstreet in late 2018. Those plans were stalled, however, when Overstreet pursued other plans.
“That made us just kind of take a step back and reevaluate, see where we’re going,” Robinson said. “But in the meantime, we’ve really solidified our vision and just in this past week [in early June] voted to bring on a teaching pastor, Kevin Johnson.”
Johnson will join Double Oak Community Church’s staff, along with six other staff members who will work on the new campus. Robinson will also be at the new campus once a month, in addition to Johnson.
While the new location will not be built right away, the Chelsea campus will host its first service Aug. 12 at Chelsea Park Elementary School.
“We ultimately have plans to build there in front of the subdivision, but we will start in the elementary school,” Robinson said. The timeline for building a new campus, he added, would depend on how things go with the campus. “We’re going to wait and see what the lord does before we make any construction plans. But we do plan on building there as soon as we can.”
Chelsea Park was an ideal spot for a new location due to the growth Chelsea is seeing, as well as the fact that many congregation members already drive past Chelsea to get to Mt Laurel on Sunday, Robinson said. They expect to be able to accommodate up to 500 people while at Chelsea Park Elementary, and while a new building might be able to hold more, they do not plan to build a “massive building” on the land, Robinson said.
“We want to build community churches, just like the one here. It might be a little bit larger than Mt Laurel, but I would not expect a massive, megaplex going in anytime in the future,” he said.
Both Double Oak campuses will retain the same model, with a mix of contemporary and classical music and community groups.
“If you’ve ever been at Double Oak, that’s what you can expect,” Robinson said. “We didn’t want to do different styles of worship because then you end up being different churches at that point.”
The campuses will stay connected through events, and Robinson said he doesn’t want people to see going to the Chelsea campus as “leaving their church forever.” Instead, he said, it will be an extension of their church.
“They’re just worshiping somewhere else on a Sunday morning,” he said.
Throughout the process, Robinson said they have sought out members’ opinions and feedback. And overall, the reaction has been positive.
“Which is shocking,” he said. “Most people hate change, so we did a lot of asking our people and having Q&As and making ourselves available, and we got fairly universal acceptance right off the bat.”
That positive attitude did not change even with the delay in plans, Robinson said, and the church had even launched community groups in Chelsea starting earlier this year.
“Everybody has seen the reports about Chelsea growing, being the fastest growing community in the state. I think having a new opportunity for a lot of these new folks moving in, another opportunity for Chelsea to be able to worship and have an opportunity, we’re very excited about that,” Robinson said.
There will be a 9 a.m. service and one hour for community groups at the Chelsea campus while at Chelsea Park Elementary. For more information, go to doubleoakcc.org/chelsea.
