About Us
Haverhill Commons Church
The “common” is a traditional word for the central space in a community where natural resources were preserved and shared. Haverhill Commons Church is a refuge where people gather to embody God’s love and contribute to the common good with common grace.
In The Commons, all are welcome, everyone matters, and the resources of God are shared by all.
“And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had.” -Acts 2:44
Our Story
In Fall 2017, Matt and Megan Webel and their three boys moved back to New England to help start a new church plant from Highrock North Shore, now known as Anchor Bay Church in Beverly, MA. After months of prayer, conversation, and walking the towns around Greater Boston, we felt God calling us to Haverhill, MA.
We’re still a young church, which means we are flexible and responsive to new invitations from God. We believe God’s church can be a creative and imaginative force for good in our community. Church community can engage us holistically and empower us collectively. We put emphasis on gathering in smaller settings during the week that cultivate trust through vulnerability and help us discern God's call on our lives.
Haverhill Commons Covenant Church began in 2018 as a church plant through the Highrock Network of Churches. We are affiliated with a national denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church.
Our Vision
Transformation through loving Jesus, learning together, serving neighbors, and sharing life.
Our Mission
Creating a community in the commons spaces of the Merrimack Valley that lives and loves in such a compelling and Christ-like way that our neighbors are drawn to Jesus.
Our mission as a local church is to welcome all people, especially those far from God or who’ve experienced hurt from the church, into a community where together we can walk the way of Jesus. This posture of welcome calls us to be a community that graciously embraces diversity and difference. Our goal is to build bridges, not walls. To experience unity, not uniformity, rooted in a common experience of God’s grace and love in Christ. Our shared life in Christ allows us to recognize and transcend our theological differences, extending freedom to one another on controversial matters where we differ in biblical interpretation and the discernment of God’s will.
Trauma-Wise Church
We all enter into group settings with incredibly different experiences. We’ve each been shaped by diverse backgrounds, different personalities, and individual expectations. Many of us have experienced challenging experiences, potentially even traumatic events, that inform the way we engage with one another. Whether our trauma comes from our families of origin, childhood experiences, past church hurts, or society at large, we are learning more and more about the ways trauma manifests itself in our choices and behaviors.
We believe that the church should be one of the safest places in our community. As such , we strive to be a trauma-wise church, aware of the impact of complex-trauma and open to new strategies to care for each other. We want everyone, children and adults, to feel safe, be curious, and know they are loved by God.
For more information on our posture towards children, check out Kids Commons.
