East Hampton Church Moves From School Auditorium to New Building

For five years, members of the in East Hampton have conducted Sunday worship services in the local high school auditorium.

But hopefully very soon, this evangelical congregation — which was born out of the basement of a private home in the 1970s — will now have its own building along Route 66.

The church members have spent the past year constructing a new 12,000-square-foot building, and by next month the space will be usable.

Breaking Ground

The church members broke ground on the new construction project last October. Since then, a skeletal structure and foundation has been put into place, although there is still a ways to go with roof, walls and electrical work.

Jermaine Keller, senior pastor of Hope Church, said the church is on schedule to have an enclosed "box structure" up by the end of August, with the rest of the project completed thereafter.

The actual construction portion is heavily volunteer based, Keller said, although the church has hired private contractors for certain aspects of the job. Members of Hope Church who have construction backgrounds and experience in the trades are lending a hand, as are members of churches in other communities, Keller said.

When everything is in place, the building will contain a near 300-seat auditorium, a spacious gym, a meeting area and an entryway, said Tom Ingala, the church’s administrative pastor. The church will have a modern feel to it, and will also be a place for religious and non-religious events, Ingala said.

“We’re open to having a building that’s not just about us,” he said. “Certainly there will be church events, but we hope that the building will be a place for the community to utilize too.”

The Congregation

Members of Hope Church come from a variety of area towns: East Hampton, Portland, South Glastonbury, Middletown and even as far as Bristol. Ingala, a Waterbury native, noted that his parents also attend Sunday services, making the hour trek out from the Brass City.

The service style is non-traditional, he said. There’s no choir or organ, and the music is similar to that of contemporary songs heard on the radio rather than traditional church hymns, he said.

The crowd, Ingala noted, fluctuates each week. While many regulars attend, the congregation can go from 150 people to 200 people on any given Sunday.

“We do church every Sunday expecting there to be people there the first time,” Ingala said. “So we make our teachings very practical.”

From Bible to Hope Church

Prior to holding its church services at East Hampton High School, Hope Church was known as East Hampton Bible Church, and it operated out of a small building on Midwood Farm Road.

By 2007, the church began to grow out of the space it was originally utilizing, so the congregation began to look for a bigger space to expand, Ingala said. That’s when the church leaders decided to purchase a plot of land, just near the Marlborough border and about a mile down from the town center, for the purpose of a brand new building.

In the meantime, school officials in East Hampton have been generous and accommodating. Everyone from the administrators down to the janitors have worked to make the process of conducting services in the auditorium fluid and enjoyable, Jermaine noted.

But even though the church has endured some physical changes over the past few years, both Jermaine and Ingala noted that it’s the people that make the church, not just a facility.

“We don’t want to have the building dictate who we are,” Ingala said. “We want to be good stewards of our building space, but we don’t want to be selfish about it.”

For more information on Hope Church, visit www.cthope.com.