Damascus Road Community Church Sells Land, Relocating Northwest

Frederick, MD—February 14, 2005

Damascus Road Community Church, known as “DRCC” located in Damascus, Maryland, recently sold 225 acres of prime land in Laytonsville, Maryland to Derwood Bible Church of Gaithersburg, Maryland for 1.65 million dollars. The land sale transaction is expected to close in April, 2005 and Derwood hopes to complete construction of their new facility by late 2006.

Through the combination of a 56 acre purchase and 169 acre gift, DRCC acquired the Laytonsville land seven years ago from Mt. Airy resident, Mr. Richard White, based on the church’s vision to create a church campus that would include a 1500 seat worship center, a Christian school, baseball and soccer fields, and many other features. Then DRCC’s membership growth shifted from areas south of Damascus to the Mt Airy/Frederick area causing DRCC to rethink their development plans. In the meantime, Derwood’s membership was expanding into the northern Montgomery County area around Laytonsville. When Derwood became aware of DRCC’s plans to sell the land about a year ago, serious discussions began immediately. The sales contract was signed last November.

“We felt like this was truly a gift from God”, says Steve Petit, Senior Pastor from Derwood. “We were bursting at the seams in our existing location, had funding to build a new church, but nowhere to build. Damascus Road Community Church’s land was God’s gift for us at the perfect time.”

While DRCC had no legal obligation to sell the land to another church, Derwood had almost the same vision for their future as DRCC; to create a community-centered campus. DRCC’s congregation voted to sell the land at well below market value to Derwood and to build the their church campus nearer to the Frederick area. DRCC will use the profit on the land sale along with other significant financial gifts to build the new campus.

“I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it was for us to sell that land”, said DRCC’s Senior Pastor, Dr Richard Fredericks. “We had members sell motorcycles, work second jobs, kids bringing in their piggybanks to help us buy that land seven years ago. But we felt God was calling us to serve seekers nearer to the Frederick area since that’s where most of our new members and visitors were coming from. We’re thrilled that Derwood will fulfill the vision we had for the Laytonsville land”.

But the search for DRCC’s new location has proved difficult. DRCC has been looking for land in an area that arcs from I-270 north of Clarksburg up to Frederick and down the I-70 corridor to Mt Airy, north and west of Damascus. The church’s master plan calls for about 38 acres (with municipal water and sewer) for the campus which would be large enough for up to 2000 worshippers, along with athletic fields. DRCC would make the facilities available to the community when not in use by the church. More than double this amount of land would be required in agricultural or R1 zoning (well and septic). The church has evaluated over 50 tracts of land so far, none of which are zoned correctly or are large enough. If they are large enough, they’re either too expensive or already under contract by a developer.

The church’s phase one plan is more modest, calling for only 45,000 square feet of space to house up to 700 worshippers.

Complicating and adding urgency to DRCC’s search is that their current meeting place, a 20,000 square foot retail space in the Damascus Center mall, will be demolished and rebuilt, beginning in 2006. Even if land for DRCC’s permanent location was found immediately, the church still must find a temporary location to meet for several years.

The church is looking for any 20,000 to 30,000 square foot location to meet in. Locations under consideration have been other churches, retail locations, or any other “big box” with heat and air conditioning. “We thought we had a perfect location in a light industrial area a few months ago”, said Bryan Chaney, chairman of the church’s Development Committee. “As we seriously considered the lease agreement, we discovered that houses of worship were not allowed in Light Industrial zoning, and thus, ruled out that option.”

DRCC is exploring all options for land and temporary space at this point for it’s 500 member congregation. “We’ve contacted developers to possibly partner with them in a PUD, asked developers and land owners to consider a sale/gift arrangement, even gone door-to-door asking farmers if we can buy their land,” says Bryan Chaney, whose full-time job is Vice President of Sales at a Frederick software company.

Chaney suggests anyone who might have land or temporary space that DRCC could use to contact him at bryan@chaneygang.com or 301-591-1643.

About Damascus Road Community Church
DRCC is a community church centered in God’s transforming power in Jesus Christ, teaching that full devotion is normative for followers of Jesus Christ and that all people have infinite value to God. Its worship services are contemporary, Bible-focused, using upbeat music and creative arts. The church’s mission statement is: To help religiously discouraged or unchurched people, (the burned, the bored, the bypassed) become fully devoted followers of Christ. DRCC has active missions in Honduras, South Africa and Calcutta, India that extend and proclaim God’s love through medical teams, building and sustaining orphanages, establishing micro-businesses and resourcing families to escape poverty.

About Derwood Bible Church
The vision of Derwood Bible Church is to reach out to all people with the love of Jesus Christ and the gospel of our Lord. Based on the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, our vision is summarized in our Purpose Statement: Derwood Bible Church exists to REACH people with the love of Jesus Christ, to
CONNECT them with other Christians, to help them GROW in their faith, DISCOVER their ministry and HONOR God with their lives.

All of the programs and ministries at DBC are designed to fulfill our purpose and to be obedient to these 2 commands given by Our Lord.

For more information, please contact Debbie Lawrence, at damascus@damascus.com or 301-253-5276, or Bryan Chaney at bryan@chaneygang.com, 301-591-1643.

###