KAY DeMOSS
Senior Editor-Writer, Michigan Area
We have all sung these words… The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people!
The lyrics — I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together! — are easy to sing but not so easy to live. But live them, they do, in the southeast corner of the Lansing District.
In 2011 Pastor Jeremy Wicks went to his first appointment, the Dansville United Methodist Church. That’s when he began, in his words, “to reinvent the church.” Soon collaboration began with District Superintendent Robert Hundley to put together a cooperative parish. The M-52 Cooperative Ministry was born in 2014. By January of this year the effort was formally renamed the Connections Cooperative Parish involving three healthy congregations: Millville, Webberville and Williamston Crossroads.
Steps toward reinvention
New Superintendent, Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, became a partner with Jeremy in the ongoing process of “reinvention.” During that progression of restructure and changing relationships, the Dansville United Methodist Church, deemed no longer viable, agreed to merge with Millville.
With one condition … Dansville asked that their building, on the site since 1865, would be maintained for use in the community. “Millville wrestled with that,” Jeremy confesses. “Then they seriously considered their context in the middle of the cornfields in a sparsely populated rural area dotted with villages.” The Dansville-Millville merger was unanimously approved by both congregations.
Meanwhile, the Cooperative Parish birthed the idea of “creating ministry centers in several village communities where there were United Methodist congregations but where communities were being under-served.” Where to start? The offer by Dansville seemed to be “God’s providential nudging,” and Dansville would be the first center established in that eventual string of ministry centers.
So Jeremy, now a full time local pastor, put on three “hats” … Lead Pastor of Millville UMC; Director of the Connections Cooperative Parish; and Executive Director of the Dansville Community Center. Richard Foster, another full time local pastor, serves Webberville and Crossroads.
The vision grows
Once the Dansville site was identified the demographic work began. It became clear that the needs of children and families were the target. Ground work was laid as partnerships formed with schools and other churches.
The final worship service took place in the full-house Dansville sanctuary on Dec. 28, 2014. “It was a big celebration,” Jeremy says. Work began on the Community Center in February 2015. “The sign came down. Pews came out. The worship space was de-constructed. The church no longer existed,” Jeremy recalls.
Regular meetings were held with people in the community and in the churches to pray and envision how space may be used. Informal research also took place. “The bar was the only place to gather in Dansville,” Jeremy remarks, “so I started having dinner and lunch at the bar. My family and I went to the Wooden Nickel because I wanted to know these people and I wanted them to know me.” Great connections and friendships were made; “…not as pastor but as someone trying to make a difference in the village.”
Events were held in the summer of 2015 to help make people aware of the project and to invite all to the launch set for October 20. There were 250 people at the Block Party who, “got to see that the church was no longer a church,” Jeremy explains.
Possibilities are endless but as Jeremy states, “We can’t be all things, we can only be what we can be, stretching and growing with everyone’s gifts and skill sets engaged.
The “what we can be” settled into a strategy of “creating places to serve and places to gather.” It was discovered that the culture of Dansville had a strong orientation toward citizenship. “People understand that to be an effective citizen, they needed to be serving others. It was a Christ-like attitude coming from a citizenship perspective,” Jeremy notes.
The Center opens
October 20 came and the Open House was held. In the next month (and one year after the decision had been made for Dansville and Millville to merge) these activities have been made available:
- “Morning Rush” is a coffee lounge open on Wednesday mornings starting at 7 am. It not only serves students, teachers, seniors and others but “church people are also hanging out there.”
- A Computer Lab with three state of the art stations is open to facilitate the writing of resumes, research, and homework.
- One day a week a three hour small group activity is open for children and youth.
- A Video Game Group welcomes high schoolers and young adults. The fellowship is invaluable. And Pastor Jeremy is “proud to be a part of this group, affectionately and lovingly referred to as the ‘nerd herd”.'”
- LEGO Building Day occurs once a month with elementary age children.
- The Dansville Preschool and Child Development Center, serving families with children infant through fifth grade, operates out of the Center Monday through Friday from 7 am – 6pm.
- Weekend Food Kit are packed at the Center then delivered to elementary school students by members and friends of Millville United Methodist Church. The Lansing Area Elks and Dansville Community Schools also provide food and other materials.
- DCC is home to “Charlie’s Closet,” a resource for those who serve as foster care givers for children in Ingham County.
- Girls Scouts, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4H, and Dansville Community Schools are using the DCC for regular and occasional activities.
Looking ahead to future uses, a partnership with the village library is under consideration. A program started in the Millville UMC, “Music and More,” will be taken into the community once a month at DCC. Next week Toinette Wicks will begin art classes and there’s a plan to host a High School Art Show in 2016.
Concepts and challenges
All of this requires intentionality in both planning and practice. Jeremy reflects on some key aspects of this reinvention process.
“The church needs to think of those around them as ‘indigenous people.’ We saw ourselves as missionaries to the indigenous population of the village of Dansville, both those who had lived there for generations and those recently moved in.” He emphasizes that the church does not indoctrinate those they meet with church culture and customs. Instead “our job is to assimilate into who they are in order to better serve alongside them.”
Jeremy sums the goal up this way: “We want to do life with them.” He confesses, “We may not even say ‘Jesus’ most days and that drives some people crazy because they don’t see that as ministry.”
So a cultural adjustment is necessary within the Cooperative Parish itself. Jeremy says that breaking down the barriers in the congregations has been a critical part of the process. “Not everyone understands that we don’t have to preach to somebody in order for them to recognize Jesus in what we do,” he notes. That kind of authenticity and openness has built credibility and reinvigorated the love the country folks have for the village. “We are connecting with them in a different way,” Jeremy says.
What’s ahead?
Coming into focus for “next season” … Millville UMC is changing its outreach focus to include “re-engaging the community in which God has planted us.” Jeremy notes that their mission field has always been “everywhere else but the villages around them.” While Millville will maintain a global perspective, local needs will also be addressed.
The hope is to launch a worshipping congregation in the Dansville Community Center by fall 2016, thus making Millville a multi-site church. “In doing so we want to meet the needs and styles of the village,” Jeremy adds.
The Millville-Dansville effort hopes to replicate in Webberville and Williamston with the eventual launch of community centers and worshipping congregations in those villages.
Jeremy calls the intended future outcome “multiplication.” Dansville is just a beginning. “Dansville was a gift from God,” he states, “but it’s the just the first outpost.” Similar developments may happen in Webberville and Williamston. “Moving from concept to reality is difficult,” Jeremy explains. “The concept of doing ministry together as three different churches in three different communities, making a difference across a wide area, will take time to unfold.”
And that unfolding happens in some surprising ways. Jeremy recently joined Kiwanis. “The very day I joined I got a phone call from another Kiwanis member who wants to do something in Williamston! God is working in this!” Jeremy says with enthusiasm.
Connection at work
“This is not coming out of a seminary degree,” Jeremy says. “I am not an ordained elder. This is coming from the willingness of all the people involved, dreaming and partnering together.” He adds, “I am just at the right place at the right time for God to use my gifts in the trenches with others.”
The Connections Cooperative Parish is bearing fruit. Jeremy gives lots of credit to the Lansing District and the West Michigan Conference. “The Millville Church has a history of tension with the Conference,” Jeremy admits. “No rural church wants to be told what do with their money and their time.” That attitude has changed as Gary Step, West Michigan’s Director of New Church Development and Congregational Transformation, and others have walked alongside the congregation these past months. “They have been an essential part of the life-giving process going on here,” Jeremy says with gratitude.
The West Michigan Conference supports Jeremy’s compensation and a $10,000 grant from the Lansing District got the DCC Computer Lab and Coffee Lounge operating. DeWitt Redeemer UMC’s Thanksgiving Offering was also committed to DCC. “Millville doesn’t have a giant, fat bank account at year-end,” says Jeremy, “but we are willing to risk and invest with this kind of support from others.”
This man with three hats remains hopeful. “This may fall apart in three years but we have tried everything short of sin to get the gospel out there for this season,” Jeremy concludes. “We have given it everything we have and the community has been blessed.”
I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together! As the Michigan Area enters into this season of Advent, we can rejoice that Jesus has been born again into a community where a church no longer stands. Such is the mysterious way of the God who sent Christ into this world.
Last Updated on December 16, 2022