Moorpark Presbyterian Church (MPC) will break ground on its new $1.8-million, 550-seat sanctuary on Sun., Jan. 30. It will be built on the church’s current site at 13950 Peach Hill Road in Moorpark.

The groundbreaking festivities include a 1 p.m. barbecue lunch and a potluck dessert at 6:30 p.m.

The new 12,000-square-foot sanctuary’s basement will dou-ble as a youth room. The building is expected to be completed by Easter 2006. Future plans call for a new fellowship hall that will seat up to 650 people for church and community events.

MPC was founded in 1985 by three local families in response to a call from the presbytery of Santa Barbara to establish a mission in Moor-park. Debi and Bob Ryono, Mickey and Jim Stueck, and Debbie and Tom Thompson had been attending other Presbyterian churches in the area while living in Moorpark, a town they moved to during its early "boom" years.

The three couples, in conjunction with the presbytery, hired Dave Wilkinson to be the pastor of the new MPC. There were 25 people in attendance at MPC’s first meeting in November 1986. The small congregation met at Chaparral Middle School and grew to 116 members by September 1992, when they completed and moved into their current sanctuary.

Today the church has more than 500 adult and youth members. MPC offers two Sunday services as well as a variety of midweek events for the community.

For more information please call the MPC church office at (805) 529-8422 or visit their Internet website at www.moorparkpres.org.