Pastors Peter and Trisha Roselle founded King of Kings in 1999 when they started a Tuesday night bible study at the Basking Ridge Fire House. They had served together in local church ministry since before their marriage 1985 and accepted the call to birth a new church in a place neither had previously visited, the small town of Bernardsville.
One weekend, on their way back from Pennsylvania to their home in Essex County, they decided to ride through Bernardsville to take a look. Pastor Trisha was asking the Lord for a sign as they stopped on Route 202 for gas. As she was praying she looked across the street from the gas station and saw the Roselle Savings Bank on Church Street – one of many confirmations she has received over the years.
After ten months of Tuesday night meetings the bible study grew large enough to launch out and begin meeting on Sunday mornings in the cafeteria at Bernards High School in Bernardsville. Pastor Peter likes to joke that he had one band member, a drummer named Roland, to accompany him on the “worship team”. The problem was that Roland was an electronic drum machine made by a company called Roland.
The church grew steadily as God blessed the work through answered prayers and changed lives. The church rented office space on Claremont Avenue and also used a Blue house on Mine Brook Road for ministry sessions. Soon, as needs were recognized in people’s lives, they were told they needed a “blue house appointment” for prayer ministry (good thing the owner didn’t paint it a different color).
Pastor Peter’s marketplace focus led him to join the Bernardsville Chamber of Commerce and serve the community as one officers of the Chamber. As time went on he had the vision to start a café across from the train station and use a franchise called Port City Java. The store served the best coffee in town and combined a book store and recording studio under one room. It was a hub of activity from morning to night, six days a week. It became a great expression of God’s love in the community by reaching people who would not set foot in a church.
In 2009 the church began meeting at the current location at 219 Mount Airy Road and had to close the café in order to focus all the resources on the new facility. It is not unusual for people in Bernardsville to still mention the store in passing because of the wonderful atmosphere they entered.
The church has been privileged to host over 100 conferences and guest speakers over the years with a strong emphasis on training and equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry.