Church History

North Hills Church of God (now New Heights Church of God) held their first church service in October 1987. Since then, God has taken NHCHOG through many different settings and situations before allowing us to finally build a more permanent home for the church.

For the first several years the church services were held at the Sheraton Inn in Cranberry Twp. In December of 1988, Pastor Ken Church became the first full-time pastor of North Hills Church of God. By 1992 the search was on to purchase property to give us a permanent home.

In 1993 the property on Wexford Bayne Road in Franklin Park, PA, was purchased. Remodeling and property improvements began right away. The first worship service was held at the new property on Wexford Bayne Road on September 24, 1995. Big plans were made for the use of the property and for the construction of the church building.

The church was renamed New Heights Church of God in 2001. The meeting place had become too crowded at the Wexford Bayne Road property, so the services were moved to Franklin Elementary School. In 2002 the congregation again moved the worship services. This time NHCHOG began worshiping at the Franklin Park Activity Center in Blueberry Hill Park. We were still making plans to build a church building on the Wexford Bayne Road property, but God seemed to have other ideas. Every door to construction that we tried to go through was slammed shut.

A neighboring church made a proposal to purchase our property. In 2004, after much prayer, the congregation at New Heights voted to accept the proposal, and the two churches began to work together. Through all of this, we were able to get new property on Wharrey Drive in Franklin Park Borough and  begin the construction of a building to use as a base to do the ministries God has planned for New Heights. The new church  was finally complete and now ready for use and we had our first service in the building January 28, 2007.

This joint effort of New Heights and the neighboring church is a miracle of God. He has taken care of NHCOG all along the way. Many times we thought we were at the final place God had for us, but He has continued to move us on. The property on Wexford Bayne Road was a gift from God, but not for the reason we thought. God used that property to enable us to buy the property on Wharrey Drive and to build the church building there. During all of this cooperative effort, God has been building up the New Heights congregation spiritually. We've learned that it isn't about the building and it sure isn't about what we can accomplish on our own. It is about what God can do. " 'Not by might, nor by power, but by thy spirit says the Lord'....Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of 'God bless it! God bless it!' " Zechariah 4:6-7, NIV.

We've learned that we need to keep our eyes focused on God. He has a plan for New Heights. We had to have faith that God would take care of the property and the building. But we were not to concentrate on the building. We were supposed to concentrate on building the congregation spiritually. We learned that our purpose was to change lives through the power of the Holy Spirit working through each of us.

God has performed a miracle throughout the whole history of New Heights. This building is His. It is our job to complete the work in this building and to continue to move Forward by Faith by reaching out to our community.