Wheeling Community
Church (Mission)
Bill Barker told a group of us that in 1857 the
Southern Baptist came to Wheeling
to start a church and to minister to riverboat pilots and today there
are still no
Southern Baptist Convention churches in Wheeling.
That drew my attention to Wheeling. The demographics revealed the need.
A fellow pastor claimed the city as his own threatening hands off or else.
He was trying to establish a satellite church in Wheeling.
That delayed our attempts to start a church there.
Finally, there came the time to do something. Months were spent looking
for the right area.
Eagle Lake Baptist Church came up from Eagle Lake Florida to help us
do a block party on
Wheeling Island and a witnessing survey of Wheeling Island and North
Wheeling.
The first building to come available to start a church in was the old
Sacred Heart Catholic Church building in North Wheeling.
We rented it and began to meet on Sunday morning August 31, 20008, at
10:30 AM
with just 3 people Greg Bassett, Phyllis Watson and I.
We were the only 3 to attend the first two Sundays.
Then John Atkinson came on the third Sunday and a family of five came
the next Sunday.
On that fifth Sunday John prayed to receive Jesus as Lord.
He was the third member of the church to come from Wheeling:
Christina and Amy Amie had come to know Jesus as Lord at the block party
on Wheeling Island a few weeks earlier.
They started coming to church a few weeks after John joined.
A little over a year after he gave his life to Jesus, John Atkinson
died.
He in a years time had gone from fearing death to dying because he signed
a do not
resuscitate order after a short illness that reoccurred and caused his
death.
He told me after he had gotten sick and knew he would likely die soon
that he was ready to go and be with God.
This reflects our goal as a church to be a group of individuals called
out of the community to go
back into the community to impact the community for the community of
Jesus Christ.
We are now September 2010 running in Sunday morning attendance between
12 on the extremely low end to
42 on the extremely high end of attendance for Sunday morning worship
services,
an average Sunday to Sunday attendance is about 35.
Ray Carney has become the most regular visitor we have even more regular
than some of our members.
He has promised to give the church all the empty lots which he owns
between
Wilson playground and one of the properties we bought for the church.
Since buying this lot,
Vance Monroe of Middlebourne has torn down the old house that sat on
it.
He did this out of his own pocket for the church. There is now most
of a block that is empty.
We hope to buy 4 more properties and have two houses torn off the properties
and then
begin to level, plant and prepare for a church building to be built
hopefully in 2011.
The church plans to constitute as a church in the fall of 2010 and to
continue to impact the community for Jesus.