North Hills Church began as a mission of Westminster Presbyterian Church, PCA in Huntsville, Alabama, in February, 1996.  A small group of believers from Westminster and from the Meridianville Cumberland Presbyterian Church felt called by God to establish a new PCA congregation in northeast Madison county. God first provided the Lion’s Club building in Meridianville where this young congregation held Bible studies.

Although we were very thankful to the Lion’s Club for their generosity in allowing us to use their building, it was not an area particularly conducive to worship. We started praying for a place of our own to hold our meetings.   In a very short time, one half of a store building near the Lion’s Club became available, and we moved our small but growing congregation to this better location in May, 1996. As we began to grow toward morning services, we knew our area was too small, and we began praying that if God wanted us to be a church, He would again provide us with the space needed at a price we could afford. Two weeks later, we moved into the other half of the building. The landlord was most gracious in his willingness to work with us in making arrangements for rent that we could manage.

The steering committee met regularly. At one particular meeting, they stated goals for our church. One of the goals was for us to build a church building somewhere on Highway 231/431 in the Meridianville-Hazel Green area. Our problem was that there was no property for sale that would meet our needs and no suitable real estate that anyone could think of in this vicinity. We began to pray that if this was God’s will for us, He would yet again provide.

One of the members of our congregation awoke one morning with the idea for a certain piece of property that might possibly be purchased. He went to the elders and asked permission to talk with the landowner’s sister-in-law, a member of our congregation, to see if she would contact her brother-in-law about selling us a part of his property at a reasonable price. The elders agreed to speak with her.

Later, this sister in Christ told the congregation that after she was approached by the elders, she went to the phone to call her brother-in-law, the owner. When she picked up the phone, a thought came to her that said, “Don’t call. Write a letter.” She questioned this thought and wondered if it was from the Lord. Another thought came immediately to her mind, “If you call, he will be taken by surprise but if you write a letter, he will have time to think before he gives you an answer.”

She wrote the letter and waited for his reply. His answer was, “No, I won’t sell the property to the church, I’ll giveit to them.”  He believed that God would use the land to build His church.  Praise the Lord!

Before the final papers were signed, owner was advised that there was quite a bit of marketable timber on the property that he might want to have cut and sold before he turned the land over to the church.  His reply was, “No, you sell the timber and use the money to build the church.”

North Hills Presbyterian Church now sits on those approximately 82 acres so generously given. The worship center, Melson Chapel, is named after that donor.  The Lord led us to become a particularized church in  2000  shortly before we moved into our new building.

Our session began meeting with members of Westminster Christian Academy’s school board, and they agreed to open a satellite campus in our new building. The first classes of pre-kindergarteners and kindergarteners began attending school in our building in August, 2000.  We continued to host WCA until they closed the North Hills campus in May of 2007.

After WCA decided to close its campus in our building, we realized that God had blessed us with wonderful facilities that needed to be used more than one day a week.  Our session appointed an exploratory committee to do research on what kinds of educational and daycare facilities were in our area, what our community needed most, and what would be most financially suitable for our church to begin.  After several months of research, the committee recommended that we consider starting a daycare and preschool.  The exploratory committee became an implementation committee which established the North Hills Early Childhood Center (NHECC).  NHECC opened on August 6, 2008, with full classes of 2, 3, and 4 year-olds. God has blessed this endeavor over and over again, confirming to us his approval of this ministry.

When our congregation began meeting, God used a variety of godly men to lead us, most especially Rev. David Hammond who was one of the founders of our church and who also taught at WCA.  When his duties at the school increased, we called Rev. Jason Strong who was our pastor from 1997 to 2000.

After Rev. Strong resigned, David Hammond again stepped in and pastored our congregation until we called Dr. Bernie Kuiper who came in April, 2001.   While Dr. Kuiper was our pastor, a young Bible teacher at WCA became a member of our church, and Dr. Kuiper saw pastoral gifts in him.  Stephen St. John and his family had been missionaries to Madagascar, but had returned to the States, sensing God’s call elsewhere.  Dr. Kuiper began to mentor Stephen, and eventually Stephen became an assistant pastor for our church.  Dr. Kuiper resigned in order to allow our congregation to call Stephen as our pastor, and he was ordained in 2004.

God gave Rev. St. John, several fruitful years of service at our church, but he and his family continued to feel called to the mission field and over-seas ministry.  In God’s providence, a church in Jakarta, Indonesia, called Stephen to be their pastor, and he accepted the call in February, 2008.  In early 2009, our current Pastor, Rev. Adam Tisdale, was called.  He began his ministry in June of 2009. Rev. David Hammond served as our Associate Pastor until the end of 2014 and still remains an active part of our congregation.  

We now look forward to the future that God has ordained for us, knowing that He will continue to lead us to glorify and enjoy Him in his purposes for our church.

To Him be the glory forever!