Something Old. Something Real.
An invitation to Sunday evenings at Hillside Church
There's a passage near the beginning of Acts that describes the early church. We desire to recreate this type of authenticity and community:
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe... They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts. — Acts 2:42–46
Just people — gathered around food, around the Word, around each other. Learning. Eating. Praying. Doing it again next week.
We believe that model still works.
What we are
Hillside Church is a North Coast Church Gathering — it's an authentic fellowship of believers in the Southern Berkshires, affiliated with North Coast Church in San Diego, Ca and hosted at Hume New England in Monterey, Ma.
The teaching team is led by Senior Pastor Chris Brown and led online by Pastor Trent Jenkins. North Coast's teaching team prepares a message every week that reaches tens of thousands of people across their local campuses and remote/online gatherings worldwide. Sunday evenings here begin with that same message.
It's not a compromise. It's a feature. You get a teaching team with deep roots and wide reach, delivered into a room small enough that everyone knows your name.
Hillside is its own church — autonomous, locally rooted, and self-supported. North Coast provides teaching, resources, and encouragement freely. We carry their DNA without being under their thumb. Think of it the way Cape Christian Fellowship operates in Baja Mexico: the same Spirit, the same teaching, planted in different soil, growing on its own roots.
What to expect
5:00 pm — The table is set. A real dinner, served family-style. Eating together before worshipping together changes the texture of everything that follows. By the time the dishes are cleared, you're already in community.
6:00 pm — We worship and hear from the Word. A brief time of sung worship opens the service, followed by the North Coast message. The teaching is honest and grounded in Scripture. But the church is not just listening to a sermon. Church happens in circles, not rows. That's why we emphasize fellowship before and after the service.
~7:15 pm — We walk. A short walk to the fellowship hall clears the air, creates a natural exit for those who need one, and shifts everyone out of "audience" mode before the conversation begins.
7:30 pm — The table again. Dessert, open discussion about the message, and depending on the week — a conversation, a game night, Communion, or an extended prayer time. The message isn't filed away when the service ends. It's the beginning of what comes next.
We wrap up by 8:30 pm.
Who is this for?
Anyone looking for a church that doesn't feel like a performance. Anyone curious about Jesus but allergic to religious culture.
Anyone who has drifted from faith and isn't sure they're ready to walk back into a Sunday morning.
Anyone who already loves Jesus and just wants to do it around a table with real people.
You don't have to have all the answers. You just have to be willing to pull up a chair.
The table is long. There's room.
How it works
North Coast builds its model around three invitations:
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Attend on the weekend
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Get into a Life Group
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Find a place to serve
Hillside takes that same framework and adds one thing for our local context: the meal. The table belongs at the front of the evening — not as a formality but as a foundation.
Attend. Eat together. Hear the Word. Talk about it. Serve. That's the whole thing.