Daybreak Community Church

Church Planter Puts Down Roots

Burlington Free Press, 09/17/2004

COLCHESTER -- The Rev. Robby Pitt stood on a low stage in front of about 160 people Sunday morning and recalled the first time he saw the space where they now sat.

"The first thing I saw was seven shades of purple," Pitt said of the color scheme in the spacious storefront at the south end of Colchester's Creek Farm Plaza.

There were walls everywhere, Pitt said, a low ceiling and a single toilet. Still, he saw possibilities.

"I just thought, 'Man, this could work,'" Pitt told the congregation.

Sunday morning marked the grand opening of Daybreak Community Church's new, permanent home. Begun in early 2000 by Pitt, the nomadic church has worshipped solely in such borrowed spaces as a college auditorium, a movie theater and a school cafeteria.

Pitt looked around Daybreak's new home just before the start of Sunday's service. The 47-year-old pastor admired the pale, lighter paints that covered the purple and the intricate job done to raise the dropped ceiling 2 feet and remove it in other places.

"I like it," Pitt said, dressed in his trademark casual button-up shirt and khakis. "It has a nice feel.

"And we'll leave today and just turn the lights off."

Borrowed spaces

Pitt came to Vermont in the summer of 1999 as a church planter, a pastor without a congregation but with the mission to build one.

He left a first Daybreak Community Church that he had started in Ashburn, Va. That church had grown in the middle of suburbs exploding with young families.

Vermont challenged Pitt and his nontraditional, Southern Baptist-backed, church. He envisioned reaching out to non-practicing Christians -- as well as to those seeking spirituality in their lives -- with contemporary music and messages. Only 80 people answered Pitt's call to attend Daybreak's first service in January 2000 in a ballroom at South Burlington's Clarion Hotel.

Momentum built during Daybreak's monthly services at the Clarion, but in the spring of 2000 Pitt had trouble finding a place for his growing congregation to meet each week.

Storefronts were too expensive. Schools from the University of Vermont down to the elementary level said "no" at least once. The now-defunct Trinity College hosted the church's Easter service but no others. Daybreak spent that summer holding services at a fellow Baptist church and at a movie theater.

"We had to grab our equipment and just about run, and we ran through the lobby," Pitt said of the quick turnover from house of worship to movie house. "People are buying popcorn, and we're grabbing our speakers."

The congregation finally found a home at the Colchester Middle School in October 2000, staying there for close to four years. The upheaval had cost the congregation members: 40 people attended the first service at the middle school.

Those who stayed became experts in packing and unpacking the gear Daybreak used for weekly services. Pitt was on a first-name basis with employees at local rent-a-truck businesses. The school eventually allowed the church to store some of its musical gear under the cafeteria stage where Daybreak met.

Pitt never stopped looking for a home for Daybreak. When the Colchester location came up for rent this spring, he talked it over with assistant pastor Brent Devenney, and they talked it over with the congregation, now a solid 80 people.

"We just needed to have some idea that they wanted to do this and it wasn't just me and Brent," Pitt said. "Are we willing as a church to take the next step where we can accomplish this mission?"

Home at last

Taking that next step translated into thousands of hours of painting, putting up drywall, plumbing and countless other tasks.

Daybreakers, as congregation members have come to be called, put in 40-hour weeks on top of their day jobs to prepare the site. A visiting church group helped as did many others from kids to grandparents. They created children's playrooms and a kitchen, bathrooms, and a sound and light control podium opposite the stage.

Their hard work was rewarded Sunday when the church's grand opening drew 160 people who each saw something different in the day.

Jim Wideman, the executive director of the Baptist Convention of New England, came after holding services at a church in central Vermont.

"This is just phenomenal," said Wideman, the man who brought Pitt to Vermont more than five years ago. "I always believed that it could grow to this size, but I never anticipated all of the challenges we were going to have."

Bob and Sandra Reinecke flew up from their home in Reston, Va., to attend the grand opening. The couple first met Pitt and his wife, Kim, when the Pitts were launching their church in Virginia.

"We've always gone to Robby's first services, and we wanted to share," Bob Reinecke said. "This is the best."

For longtime Daybreak member Al Fournier, everything still seemed so new. He marveled at being able to leave things in place at the end of the service.

"My biggest thing is I don't have to carry equipment," the 31-year-old South Burlington man said.

What Pitt saw was a space not only for Sunday mornings. He talked of hosting musical events, community suppers, children's movies and block parties in the parking lot.

"From this day on, there will be lives that will be changed here because of the good done in this church," Pitt told the congregation. "That's what I live for."