Welcome to...
Chippewa Valley Bible Church
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531 E. South Ave. (behind Kmart) ;
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729 |
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531 E. South Ave. (behind Kmart) ;
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin 54729 |
We are glad you have an interest in our Church! Chippewa Valley Bible Church (also known as "CVBC") is a Christ-centered, non-denominational elder-led Bible Church.
Our central purposes for existing are:
We are a self-governing body of believers and are not part of any larger denomination. We seek to pattern our local church government after Biblical patterns found throughout the New Testament; therefore, our leadership is by a council of elders.
We have excellent programs for youth at CVBC. On Wednesday nights during the school year we feature AWANA, a program for children five years old to sixth grade. Over the past five years, we have averaged 150-180 kids in this program each week. AWANA's main purpose is to promote Scripture memory for children, but also features games, songs, and council time.
We also have very active youth groups for both Junior High and Senior High students (grades 7-8 and 9-12, respectively).
There are many exciting ministry opportunities at CVBC for you and your whole family. We encourage anyone who is interested to give us your address, so we can send our monthly newsletter to your home. We also keep in touch with each other through a central email address, so if you have access to email, please send a note to "email@cvbc.net". Also, we have a home page on the World Wide Web at "www.cvbc.net" where you can find much more information about our church, related ministries, leadership structure, etc.
Please let us know if we can be of any help to you.
Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions:
Rather, every member is a part of the Body of Christ with his own unique gift and contribution (1 Corinthians 12). The head of the local church is Jesus Christ, the Chief Shepherd. We do need some kind of leadership structure, and that is the shared leadership in the plurality of elders. Some of the elders at CVBC may be part of the paid staff, but ministry decisions are made only by mutual consensus of the Council of Elders.
A good analogy to an elder's function is that of a sheepdog -- a sheepdog doesn't try to get sheep to follow him and his direction, he tries to get the sheep to follow the direction of the Shepherd!
There is an excellent book (and accompanying summary pamphlet) called "Biblical Eldership: Restoring Biblical Church Leadership" that is available from the CVBC library to anyone who is further interested in this topic. (See also the pamphlet summary available online.) There are also many links to information on the Internet on our web site at "cvbc.net/leadership".
Of course, we depend on the generous giving of God's people to operate our church, and we realize the benefits to the believer of honoring God with our offerings: "Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine." (Proverbs 3:9-10). Similarly, 2nd Corinthians 9:6 says "Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously."
Therefore, we provide a box in the narthex of the church where people are welcome to leave their tithes and offerings at any time, but we don't want to appear to pressure people to "give under compulsion" by passing the basket.
Accordingly, we have a communion service on the first Sunday of each month. It is an open communion, which means you don't have to be a CVBC member to participate. All that is needed is to trust in Christ as your personal Savior, and to confess your sins to God before partaking.
For example, if you are reading a book of the Bible for the overall picture, a thought-for-thought translation may be fine. If you are preparing a sermon on a few verses, however, you may want to use a more accurate word-for-word translation such as the NAS because of its word-for-word accuracy. Our pew Bibles are New International Version. Members of CVBC regularly use NIV, NAS, KJV, NKJV, NRSV, NLT, and many other translations. As Warren Wiersbe says, the best translation for YOU is one that you'll read!
Our church is defined by our people, not by what happens in the building. We do sometimes have prayer and praise services on Sunday evenings, but we feel it's important usually to leave those nights free for the meeting of small group Bible studies in homes, or for family time, as the Lord leads you.
You don't have to be an official member to be able to participate in any of our ministries, but church membership is a requirement for certain leadership positions within the church -- elders, deacons, small group leaders, Sunday school teachers, Awana directors, etc.
Anyone who is a regular attender and who has placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ can become a member of CVBC. First, you have to go to a Discovery Class, where we discuss our core beliefs, along with an overview of how our church functions. After that, the only steps remaining are filling out an application and meeting with a few elders.
If you have any interest in church membership, please contact any elder or send email to membership@cvbc.net. (Discovery classes are scheduled as needed.)
We currently have two full-time ministerial positions -- Jim Woldhuis has been our "teaching elder" since August 2002, and Brian Webb joined as our Director of Youth Ministries in July 2007. In June 2003 we hired our first part-time Director of Music Ministries, and since August 2006 that position has been split between three people: Bev Woldhuis, Terri Tompkins, and Dora Wood. In March 2007 we hired our first part-time Children's Ministry Director, Linda Balsiger. In 2007, we had our first Church Administrator, Marty Schultz, who came on staff as a volunteer to help define the position. The position is now open. (You can see our current and previous openings in our job descriptions.)
We also employ two part-time administrative assistants, Libby Krause and Chris Kriehn, and a part-time position for repair, maintenance, and cleaning, held by Mary Jorstad. We also have someone responsible for creating slides and running the computer and projector at worship services and teen nights, Monique Woods, who became part-time paid staff in 2008.
In 2006, we started construction on another big expansion to the west, including new bathrooms, kitchen, storage rooms, and a huge fellowship area. We decided to get a loan of about $225K in 2007 to finish the $575K project, rather than leaving it half done for too long. Future plans include more office space to the east, more Sunday School rooms to the south, and a larger sanctuary to the north. But we will not begin any of those until we are 100% debt-free again.