The Brethren Church

The Center is our current Growth Partners Club call, which is drawing to a close on February 28. This ministry began as a small group meeting in a Starbucks coffee shop in North Canton, Ohio. They stumbled onto a new way of doing church and ministry and, though it may be new to the Brethren, this “organic” style is slowly beginning to sweep through the United States and the World.

For more information on The Center, check out their website.
To contribute to this Growth Partners Club call, click here.

The process by which we are doing church is different than many other congregations. A popular online encyclopedia defines the emerging church by:

Missional Living: Our cell groups have grown from two to four since I last updated you and we have since baptized two more individuals. We are trying to live our life on a mission, to reach as many people as we can with the gospel.

Narrative Theology: We preach through sermons, but also we preach through the story that is our lives. I am happy to report that nobody remembers sermons in a month, but they remember when we hugged them as their life lay in shambles.

Christ-likeness: We meet regularly with mentors one on one to walk our faith together. It has been greatly successful in not only growing our faith and becoming more like Christ but also in coming closer together as a Christian family.

Authenticity: This is something that can only be lived and I believe we are living it. Whether we meet someone at our local Gay coffee shop or in the smoking section of our favorite hole in the wall, we are reaching people by taking Christ to them. We go to them because Christ told us to, and we don’t have ulterior motives, we are simply “there.â€? That is our definition of authenticity.

There is so much more to us.

We are a growing group of individuals in Northeast Ohio who have decided to live our lives together in this journey of our Christian faith.

The growth in our numbers is there, but what is most important to us is reaching those who are tired of the idea of church. We have groups ranging from Alliance to Stow and a few in between, yet we all are on the same journey together. Since I last updated you things have certainly changed and are continuing to develop in our midst. There are exciting things happening in the Brethren Church and I pray that this emerging church concept challenges your church to be more outwardly focused, and begin to reach out to those who aren’t sitting next to you on Sunday. May you be Missional, Story Driven, Like Christ and Authentic wherever you go, but most importantly may you love others as Christ has loved you.

God Bless you,
Tom Asbury