First Church Meeting
Christ Reformed Church began from meetings of a small group at the home of Dr. Kim Riddlebarger, before conducting worship in Mike Horton's living room.
As a home missions plant of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), our first official service took place on Reformation Sunday, October 29, 1995 in Placentia, CA.
It was "standing room only" as the small Lutheran church was filled beyond capacity. It was immediately apparent from those early services that there was a yearning on the part of many for sound teaching and reverent worship that had been lacking in so many of our Christian lives.
Dr. Kim Riddlebarger has been pastor of our congregation since its inception. Dr. Michael Horton shared pastoral duties from the church's founding until 1998, when he left to pursue post-doctoral studies at Yale and then took up his calling at Westminster Seminary California.
Along with a number of churches in our classis, in 1997 Christ Reformed left the CRC and joined a new federation of confessional Reformed Churches, the United Reformed Churches in North America (the URCNA). This is the federation of churches to which we belong.
Without gimmick or fanfare, the Lord has graciously added to our church. In 1998, we moved to our current (and much larger) facility at the Anaheim Seventh Day Adventist Church near Anaheim Stadium.
Over time, the demographics of the church have changed. We have gone from a church with many young singles, new to the Reformed faith, to still young but more established families. All along, the radio program The White Horse Inn has been instrumental in drawing newcomers to our church. There are visitors every Sunday who come because of the White Horse Inn.