Senior Pastor Arlie Whitlow, Jr. is not about to “play church.”
Whitlow has a design plan and the land for a 240,000-square-foot building that will house a church, school and family life center.
“I said, ‘Oh God, is it possible we could buy this land?’” Whitlow said to a crowd of about 1,500 people on the hot Sunday morning of June 23. “We did not come out here to play church. … We came out here to do the business of God.”
Whitlow was preaching from a temporary pulpit set up on a 55-acre site along Route 7. The event was Friends Day when more than 1,000 church members were asked to bring their friends to the future home of the Community Church, which will be in Ashburn.
“This is a dream. Dreams come true if you believe in them, and if they help people,” Whitlow said. “This ministry is built on dreams bigger than us.”
THE COMMUNITY CHURCH started out small with 35 members showing up at the first service in October 1982. Whitlow had just moved with his wife of 38 years Jerrie Whitlow and their four children from South Carolina, where Whitlow was raised, to Sterling Park. Whitlow and Jerrie had been preaching in South Carolina and overseas since 1964.
With the help of friends, the Whitlows knocked on doors and distributed 10,000 flyers about the first service, which took place at Rolling Ridge Elementary School. Shortly thereafter, a businessman gave the church three acres of land located on Route 7 in Fairfax County. “I thought, ‘Wow. Why not put up a tent so everyone can see us?’” Whitlow said about the summer services held there from 1984-87. The services during the rest of the year were moved from building to building to as many as five buildings in one week. “We became known as the church in the tent, because we didn’t have a church building.”
In 1989, Whitlow planned to build a church across the street on the Community Church’s newly purchased land until he encountered difficulties. Instead, the church relocated to the current site on Shepard Drive, purchased after the Fairfax property was sold.
“The church started growing because we had a home,” Whitlow said.
But an addition in 1992, including a 900-seat sanctuary, proved to be not enough space. “Now, we’re stymieing,” Whitlow said. “We have no room to grow here.”
IN 1997, the Community Church purchased the Ashburn property, adding a third campus to the main church and the 18-acre Sterling campus housing the senior citizen ministry. Once the money for a building is raised, Whitlow plans to relocate the church into a 90,000-square-foot church building sandwiched by a 100,000-square-foot school and a 60,000-square-foot family life center. Whitlow hopes to break ground for the church building in 2003. “We need to raise more funds,” he said, adding, “We do things as the Lord provides the income.”
According to church plans, the family life center will have sporting areas, pool tables and a youth center. The youth center would replace or become an addition to the current teen center, called the Fire Escape and housed in a building next to the church. The teen center is open after school and on Friday nights for middle and high school students.
“We’re a fun church. We certainly have a worship that is alive,” said Pastor Fred Vann, pastor of pastoral care. “It’s contemporary worship. … We’re not stuffed in some religious dogma.”
The services at the Evangelical church blend the traditional and the contemporary. “Our music is louder,” Whitlow said. “People will raise their hands. It’s more spontaneous.”
ABOUT 850 to 950 people show up at the Sunday services.
“These kind of churches grow because they connect with people,” said Whitlow, whose grandparents and parents were pastors, along with two of his sons. “I’m not going to be glued behind a pulpit. I’m going to be looking into your eyes and looking into your heart.”
“When he’s talking from the pulpit, he’s very open,” said Steve Ford of Lowes Island, an usher and greeter at the church. “He talks about his family. He’s very humble. He doesn’t put on false airs and pretend he’s holier than though.”
Whitlow’s son Charlie Whitlow said he never wanted to be a pastor and planned on a career in law. “But the Lord turned my heart, and I came full circle. I’m glad I made that decision. I’m so rewarded and blessed,” said Charlie, youth pastor for the church.
Whitlow said he worked 20 years for what the Community Church has. “The question has to be asked, ‘What happens to this?’ There’s no success without a successor. My son Charlie will take over.”
By then, maybe Charlie will be taking over a reality, not the dream.
“When I dreamed about buying that [55] acres, people said, ‘Why?’ I don’t know, but we need it,” Whitlow said. “So here we are this little church with nobody in it, no money, nothing. Twenty years later, that vision doesn’t intimidate me.”
The church sits on Route 7 and Lansdowne in what will become the middle of corporate America, Whitlow said. “Churches will not be able to afford the land. This one will be there because we owned this land, and God gave us a miracle to buy it,” he said.