Congratulations to The Point Church in chartering as our newest United Methodist Church in the Great Miami River District!

It was a joy as my first official act as Superintendent of the Great Miami River District to lead the chartering service for The Point. This is a new season in the UMC and I can’t wait to charter the next new church and many more after that! 

Congratulations to Pastor Sam Holmes and the leadership of The Point.  This church in Centerville has trusted God wholeheartedly in their journey to chartering. They began as a campus of Christ Kettering UMC, celebrated growth, faced disappointments, embraced challenges, and focused clearly on the mission of reaching and serving their community for Jesus.

In Sam’s message he shared a part of their story about the time after they relaunched as The Point:

“And in those first six months to 18 months, we really began to see only the ground being tilled up. I felt like a lot of uprooting, it felt like a lot of pruning, it felt like a lot of tilling and mess and not much growth.

And I could not tell you the exact moment, but it just seemed like one day we woke up and out in the field that we have been working so hard on was just a little bit of green coming up from the dirt. It was the first fruits of our labor.

I can still remember when people would show up as visitors and then come back the next week. I can still remember watching kids begin to get excited about coming to church and my own son feeling jealous that he now had to “share the room”.

And what began so small, so hidden, so much faith in what could be, and we were not yet seeing, we began to experience. And it began to grow, so slow but so beautifully. We watched what felt like so much death before, now there is so much life. Where there was so much fear and anxiety for the future before, there is now so much joy and excitement for what’s to come.”

Whether we are in a new church start, a small congregation, or a large congregation, we often find ourselves in places that feel like uprooting and pruning and tilling. They are not where we would choose to be but over and over again we find that when we trust God, when we stay focused on the mission and vision that God has placed in our hearts, when we are able to understand the challenges as growing pains and persevere in faith, God is faithful and the community is blessed.

Bishop Jung is encouraging us to think and pray about how we can continue to grow our congregations and to also plant new faith communities. I encourage you to think and pray about how God is leading you in your context to till the soil, prune, and trust that new growth.

Blessings!
Suzanne