To be a community of Jesus' disciples… to equip others to follow Him

Dillon Community Church

Our History

“...beautiful on the mountains…”

Dillon in the early 20th Century
Dillon in the early 20th Century

The town of Dillon was established in 1883 as a mining community and railroad stop. In 1910, the town built a new stone school house which left vacant the white, one-room, clapboard school house. In 1912, the Dillon Ladies Aid Society decided that the town needed a church for such public functions as weddings, funerals, community gatherings and to accommodate the occasional traveling preachers who came through the area. Thus, they bought the building from the town for $1.00.

For the next forty years or so, church life was sporadic in this rural, mountainous, wintry town of mining, trains, skiers and hunters. Communities such as Dillon and Frisco were small (30-75 people), and the people were generally disinterested in religion. For almost twenty years from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, in addition to the occasional itinerants already mentioned, some highly dedicated women used the building to house part of the children’s Sunday School Movement in this region. These woman were not allowed to lead worship services or to preach, but they could gather up children from miles around and teach them Bible lessons.

During the Sunday School Movement the consistent use of the building changed to teaching the gospel rather than just for occasional community events. But there was still no pastor and no congregation. Just about anybody who wanted to use the building for a religious or social purpose was welcome to do so if they were reasonably respectable.

Dillon in the 1950's
Dillon in the 1950’s

In the late 1950’s, an organization called Village Missions targeted Dillon as one of its mission fields. Village Missions provides full-time pastors to rural communities which do not have a strong gospel witness and are not big enough to support financially a pastoral family. A Village Missions pastor is a Bible school or seminary graduate who has a heart for rural, unreached areas and who brings 50% of his financial support with him. In these years, such pastors often ministered alone in a community that viewed him as an outsider. The duty was difficult, and the lengths of stay were short; sometimes less than a year.

Dillon Community Church received a Village Missions pastor in 1958, and that was the first full-time minister the town had ever seen. He lasted six months. After he left, the church actually shut its doors. For six months there were no ministries; not even worship or Sunday School. The next pastor was Wiley Hoyle, and on his first Sunday the attendance was 11 people, 9 of whom were from out of town, and the offering was $2.11.

Pastor Hoyle stayed for an unheard-of five years, incorporated the church in 1961, oversaw the moving of the building to the new town site when Dillon Reservoir covered the old one (giving the town of Dillon its fourth location!), had the parsonage built, initiated youth programs and thus grew the church to nearly 100 people where previously the ministry had all but disappeared.

The 1960’s and the 1970’s were a time of enormous change for Dillon and for Summit County as a whole. The growth of the ski industry, the building of the Reservoir and the interstate highways and the booming of Denver turned the county into a destination resort, recreation center and a place for second homes.

During this time the church continued to be led by a variety of Village Missions pastors who stayed two to four years each and who usually maintained just the basic ministries of worship, preaching and Sunday School. For a while attendance vacillated between 50 and 80 people, but, as the county grew, so did the church community, and the current building was built in 1970 with the capacity to seat an enormous 125 people.

The old one-room school house was sold back to the county for $10.00, and it has become an historical museum which is still located two lots away from the current building with the parsonage in-between. One of the chief realities of ministering in the county was that many of the residents were temporary; either construction workers who moved on when the job was done, seasonal residents or young people who worked the ski areas for a season or two.

The new buidling being built
The new buidling being built

The 1980’s saw a continuation of economic development as Summit County became the recreational center of the state. More guests meant more stores, restaurants and other services. More services meant more jobs, more homes and more construction. More permanent residents meant more services which the permanent residents wanted to enjoy. And so Summit County ceased being the slightly out of the way rural area and became somewhat like a suburb in a beautiful mountain setting.

The church grew in vision for the gospel as the county grew in numbers. During the pastorate primarily of Jess Mahon, who stayed 6 1/2 years, still a record at Dillon Community Church, a more specific and planned vision for reaching the lost began to bubble.

The outdoor amphitheater near Lake Dillon became the scene each year for eight or nine Sunday morning worship services in July and August in order to attract people who might not otherwise come to a church service. Those summer, outdoor services continue today. The increase of permanent residents with families meant taking children’s and youth ministries more seriously.

The increase of restaurants and bars meant an increase of the party culture which made Christians even more aware of the need to reach the lost for Christ. During this time the church grew to about 180 people and experimented with extra services, possible staff increases and the increase of its missions program.

Dillon Community Church today
Dillon Community Church today

By the 1990’s, the church had become a self-supporting congregation which no longer fit the profile of or needed support from Village Missions, and in 1994 the church called a pastor from the suburbs of Denver rather than one who was mountain bred. At this point the church became a truly independent, nondenominational congregation, but it has always maintained its commitment to proclaiming Christ in a community that is now a fascinating mixture of rural mountain, resort and suburb.

The congregation averages about 350 people on Sunday mornings, and the people have strongly embraced a ministry vision which emphasizes using the professional ministry staff to equip the laity to discover and use their God-given spiritual gifts in order to build up the Body of Christ and to proclaim the gospel to the unsaved.

It is a remarkable work that God has done at Dillon Community Church. He took an unused school house in 1912, in a community with no concern for Christ, and He nurtured the work of the gospel here along with the ups and the downs of economic development in the mountains of Colorado until there is now a well-established, forward looking congregation which seeks to fulfill its unique, God-given role of being a nondenominational, essentials-oriented, community church trying to provide services which build up Christians and ministry training which sends those Christians out in the community to reach people for Christ.

Buffalo Mtn.
Buffalo Mtn.

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidingd, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’ - Isaiah 52:7