Rooftop Church Leaving Affton for Frontenac

Affton has lost businesses, now it looks like a church is leaving to move to West County.

Rooftop Church, at 6915 Weber Road announced in May that it’s moving to 11411 N. 40 Drive, in Frontenac. The location is an empty synagogue near Highway 40 and Interstate 270.

Rooftop plans to sell their current building to a non-denominational Bible church called Bible Chapel, according to a document on the church's Facebook page.

The new location is 10 miles from the current location on Weber Road. The church knows that will be a reason that not everyone will move with the church.

The new building is costing the church $2.2 million, and will have to grow its income 25 percent in the next three to five years. The church moved from the Richmond Heights Community Center eight years ago.

Church members talk about the move on the church’s website. For some the new location will be closer to home, or are willing to drive farther, but others see the church as an Affton community church.

Pastor Matt Herndon said why the church is moving.

“We’re moving so we can grow, so we can start other Rooftops and send out other Rooftop missionaries. We could stay here in Affton and keep doing our Rooftop thing. It’d be great, and people would be blessed. Part of me prefers that. Michele and I live five miles up the street. But when we started Rooftop in 2000 with the original Truman State Crew, our goal was to reach as much of St. Louis as we could. That’s still our goal.”

The document on the church website recognizes the risk in the move.

“As mentioned, this is a classic high-risk, high-reward move. If the move doesn’t “take” and we start sliding, it will be very hard to stop sliding with gravity pulling us down. If we lose lots of people and run out of money we’ll have to lay off staff, which will make it even harder to attract people to make it work. If it all comes crashing down, nobody will die. But relationships will fracture, jobs will be lost, and a great church could be harmed beyond recovery.”