Our History

Crossroads-Connection was started about 2008-2009 by several area Presbyterian churches seeking to plant a new church in the Haymarket area. Joan and Dave Gifford were asked by the pastor of Vienna Presbyterian, Pete James, if we would be willing to serve on a discernment committee for this purpose. After some discussion, the committee decided to call ourselves the Haymarket Crossroads Mission, praying that ultimately we would be the seeds of a new Presbyterian church in the Haymarket area. When we thought we were ready to introduce the plan to a larger group of people in May 2010, we invited 60-80 people to a dinner served in our Heritage Hunt Mountain View Room. It was a wonderful event as Dave remembers. One of the members of our discernment committee, Dave believes it was Phil Taylor, spoke to those in attendance about the selection of Crossroads as our name.

The 2010 Annual Report to our sponsoring churches included the following information because it mentions our first mission work – a backpack ministry to Mt. View Elementary School

“This fall we began a bible study in a member’s home and initiated an outreach ministry to provide weekend food for local elementary school students who might otherwise not have meals at home (The Backpack Ministry). In September we began providing backpacks filled with food for the weekend to 4 students. The school has added 3 more students and now we are filling 7 backpacks weekly to meet this need.”

A couple years later we hired a part-time person to lead us further. It was his idea to add “-Connection” believing that the church would be connecting people in Christ’s name, hence “Crossroads-Connection”. The name stuck.

— Dave Gifford