By Steve Bertel
Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us there’s a time for everything, a season for everything … a time for one chapter to end and another to begin.
Such is the case for the historic Ten Mile Community Church.
In 1953, the little nondenominational church on a rural hilltop in south Meridian, near the intersection of Cloverdale and Columbia roads, held its first service. It had started some 40 years earlier as a Sunday School in a one-room schoolhouse. When it became a house of worship, parishioners chose the name Ten Mile Community Church. Why? Well, it depends on who you ask. Those whose relatives helped settle the church – and perhaps the most historically-accurate reports – say it was named for the nearby grange hall and wide-spot-in-the-road community of Ten Mile which, back in those days, was located at the intersection of what is now Eagle and Columbia roads, about one mile west of the church’s current location. Others say it was named for Ten Mile Creek, an irrigation waterway that runs through the church’s 10-acre property.
Regardless of how the name originated, November 30 of last year marked the end of one era and the start of a new one, when the little nondenominational church on a rural hilltop became officially known as – appropriately – Hilltop Community Church.
It’s one of the few churches in the Valley that still has deep roots in the community. “Several core families have been here since the beginning, when it was a Sunday School held at Ten Mile School in 1914,” Lead Pastor Ben Day pointed out.
The church has grown over the decades, particularly over the past thirty years or so, as ground is broken on more and more subdivisions and more and more shopping centers throughout Meridian and Kuna.
So why the name change? “Well, communities change as time passes – and what was once commonly known as the Ten Mile Community is no longer recognizable,” Pastor Day said. “Starting with Ten Mile Road being established five miles from [our church’s current] location and, more recently, the Ten Mile interchange on Interstate 84, becoming a core landmark in the Treasure Valley has made it confusing for our church to be called Ten Mile Community Church. People in the community don’t know our history. To deal with the confusion, the hard-but-necessary decision for us was to change our name. Many people naturally talk about us as the ‘church on the hill’ which led us to our new name: Hilltop Community Church.”
Then there was the added confusion between the longstanding Ten Mile Community Church in south Meridian and the recently-named Ten Mile Christian Church in north Meridian. People unfamiliar with the two churches would head out to attend a wedding, a funeral, a concert, or a retreat at “Ten Mile” and would invariably end up going to the wrong church. And would invariably end up being late for the event.
So, during the summer of last year, church leaders began seriously entertaining the idea of changing the name. Church members were asked to submit ideas, ideas for names which would reflect the church’s heritage and history, names that would reference the Bible, and names which would hopefully alleviate any further confusion in the community.
On October 12, the congregation voted on choices for the church’s new name – choices congregants had submitted – and, for legal purposes, to amend its by-laws to reflect the name change.
Once the choice was made – almost 90 percent of members voted for the “Hilltop Community Church” name – then the real work began.
Because changing a church’s name is not an easy job. In Ten Mile’s case, everything from Articles of Incorporation on file with the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office to letterhead to bank notes to legal deeds to signage to website and social media addresses to even contact information for vendors all had to be changed. Administrative Pastor Mike Jacobsen, who started at the church in August, 2024, coordinated that rather herculean task, which entailed a ton of work behind-the-scenes. And a task that took several months to complete. Separate teams were formed to a create a new logo, develop new branding, come up with a public relations plan to help spread word of the new name, and changing everything – even swapping out the church library’s return-book stamper.
But even though the name has changed, the church’s core beliefs – as Pastor Day pointed out – remain the same. “We still focus on biblical truth, we still believe the same things, and we are still here for the community,” he emphasized, “but now, with a name that we hope will gain clarity, so people know who we are and are able to find us.” The church’s leadership team underscored that in an October, 2025 email to the congregation: “Above all, we remain committed to the Gospel. That is our foundation, our mission, and our joy. … The Gospel is what matters most; it is the heartbeat of our church and the vision God has given us. … We are excited for what’s ahead and grateful for the unity God is building among us.”
And, even though its still, in many respects, “the little country church on the hill,” it passionately continues outreaching to the community, following the words of Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world – like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.”
You can learn more about Hilltop Community Church, its purpose, its life groups, its ministries (for all ages), the worldwide missions it supports, and its Sunday morning services by going to the church’s new website: hilltopcc.net.
