Anchorage Northside
The Anchorage Northside Seventh-day Adventist Church is a loving, multicultural family with a membership of over 300.
The church started from a branch Sabbath School in 1981 as part of community outreach efforts. After several months, the group began to grow and decided to move to a church for services. Arrangements were made to rent the First Christian Church on LaTouche and soon after, a children's Sabbath School program was added.
In January 1982, the group organized as a company and just several months later, on October 16, 1982, a church charter was signed by 74 members known as the LaTouche SDA Church. On November 13 of that same year, the church was renamed the Anchorage Northside SDA Church.
The newly formed church did not have a permanent home so Sabbath services were held at the Anchor Park Methodist Church with prayer and board meetings held at the DeBarr Dental Clinic. Pastoral duties were shared by Rollin Hixson, Stephen McPherson and Marvin Humbert who also pastored the Hillside O'Malley church.
The church officers approached conference administration, requesting a pastor, and in 1983 from Ketchikan came Steve Cromwell and family. Now that the church had a pastor, we needed a home! In 1987, the committee was shown a church on 10th Avenue; the asking price was $1,100,000. Through divine intervention, the church became available in 1988 at approximately one third of its asking price from the previous year.
"Northside" has been blessed to have planted many churches throughout Anchorage: Anchorage Community in June 1987, Anchorage Korean Church in November 1991, Anchorage Spanish church in February 1994, and Anchorage Samoan church in July 2001, all of which continue to worship today.