FRANKLIN TWP — The chapel on the grounds of the Mount Chestnut Nazarene Retreat Center, 177 North Road, is the birthplace of the Berean Bible Chapel.

Pastored by Andy Pepe, the 35-member congregation has been meeting in the leased space for the past two years.

Pepe, who graduated from the Heritage Baptist Institute in Cleveland, works at VA Butler Healthcare.

“I run the volunteer services. I started in July. Before that I was part of the registration department,” Pepe said, who has been working at the VA for five years.

He grew up in Zelienople and, after graduating from Seneca Valley High School in 1980, joined the Coast Guard.

After a 25-year military career, he retired in 2005 and moved back to Butler County.

Assigned to Cleveland, he said “I attended Bible College the last four years I was on active duty.”

His first post-military job was helping to open the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies in Bridgeville.

“When I started there, we literally had a trailer and a field,” said Pepe. “Now it's 292 acres of beautifully maintained cemetery.”

A six-year stint as pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Ellwood City followed.

Pepe said he was approached to fill in as interim pastor of St. John's Reformed Church, 494 Evans City Road, for the Rev. Bob Peterson, who had been diagnosed with cancer.

“They approached me to be interim pastor when he couldn't preach because of his chemotherapy,” said Pepe. Three weeks later Peterson died.

He was there from September 2014 to spring 2015.

While there, he said, he made friends with some St. John's members, and with some other friends, formed a Bible study group.

His wife, Amy Pepe, said there were about 15 people in the original study group.

“It was a small group study just among ourselves for something extra,” Amy Pepe said. “After two or three studies, someone said, 'This is how church should be. We should start our own church.'”

The idea took hold among the study group, Andy Pepe said, and they decided “Let's just pray about it and see what it produces.'”

Pepe said he couldn't sleep one night, wrestling with the issue, and finally got up at 2 a.m. and turned to the Bible.

It opened on Isiah 66:1: “Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?”

“That was the real sign for me,” he said, “I woke my wife up at stupid o'clock in the morning.”

The deal was sealed when Amy Pepe while in line at a store by chance happened to meet one of the maintenance men at the retreat center, who told them the chapel there was available for lease.

Asked if the church would want to own its own building, Amy Pepe said, “It's hard to say right now. We want to start a Sunday school, but this is one room, so it's hard to do that.”

“Whether someone gives us land or we found an old church building, whatever the Lord provides,” Amy Pepe said.

“We've been here for about two years,” said Andy Pepe. The 35-member congregation meets for a 10 a.m. Sunday service.

Berean Bible Chapel is a nondenominational church.

“My background is Baptist. But the Baptist name is thrown into so many things that people don't understand it,” he said.

He mentioned one man when he found out Pepe was a Baptist minister equated him with infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., which pickets military funerals.

Pepe said, “Man made religions. God made relationships.”

Pepe said, “We are an independent Bible church named after the Bereans in the Bible who searched the Scriptures to prove that which is true.”

“I want to share the Gospel. That's relevant whether its 35 or 3,500 (people),” he said.

“We are a small family-style church. It's friendly. It's way relaxed,” he said.

Amy Pepe said, “It's a blended service. We have contemporary music and traditional hymns.”

He credits the St. Peter's Reformed Church of Zelienople and its pastor, the Rev. Jim Bertoti, with acting as a mother church to Berean Bible Chapel.

Bertoti said, “Andy was a member of the church. He really had the desire to start his own church. We pray about them and we bless them. We offer prayer support and financial support only if they need it. ”

Bertoti said, “We are the sending church, meaning we are sending them out.”

Berean Bible Chapel hopes to join the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference.

Pepe described it as is a theologically conservative denomination believing strongly in the autonomy of each local church.

“They give us support and advice,” said Amy Pepe.

“But they give us our own autonomy,” he said. “We do what we want, when we want, but they support us.”

That philosophy is summed up, he said by the saying, “People don't care what you know until they know you care.”

Summing up, Pepe said, “I really want to stress salvation and sharing the Gospel. This building could blow over, but Berean Bible Chapel will still be here.

“That is the Great Commission, Matthew 28:19-20: 'Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'”