Ohio River Valley District, United Methodist Church:: Branches

Please click on any of the branches to see more information

1. Strengthen Significantly Your Core Process
Radical Hospitality
Passionate Worship
Faith Forming Relationships
Risk-Taking Service and Mission

This core process is common to all healthy churches of our conference. To enhance these areas takes an incremental (step-by-step) approach that continues to be strengthened. The remained of the branches are seen as transformative (taking a big step that redefines the ministry). Sources of help to the core process might be the Natural Church Development process, the Church By Size approach, Deepening you Effectiveness (Discipleship Resources) or Seminars that focus on any one area.

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3. Develop or Hugely Support Hispanic Ministries

There are those that host churches for a Hispanic ministry, which allows the pastors to be appointed to that host church. There are also those who wish to be in partnership with the host church in developing this ministry.

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2. Start a New Partnership

Partnerships that have been developed thus far have been between United Methodist Churches who want to work together in some tangible way; for instance, a small church partnering with a larger one. The bridge of support between them is shared in a written document and can occur at levels of clergy mentoring, children and mission programs, etc.

There have also been partnerships between a local church and one of our organizations working to enhance missional outreach. An example might be a church, not just an individual(s) that wants to partner with Wesley Chapel After-School program.

We also have an example of a church that has a pastor appointed to the staff that then leads a Ghanaian worship service at that location and is supported/supervised by the lead pastor and included in the overall sense of ministry to the community.

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4. Intentionally Become a Multi-Racial Congregation

This would be a congregation that as a body decides to intentionally reach those of other racial and cultural backgrounds in the neighborhood where they reside. This can begin as having a staff of varied ethnic backgrounds or a congregational training that allows them to understand what is included in such a decision. We are hoping to use a consultant in this area like an Eric Law type leader.

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5. 5. Begin a Community Free Store Offering Worship

We have many social services offered without cost to our communities within the district churches. The emphasis here is to include a worship component unique to the setting, thus inviting those disenfranchised into the community of faith. We would also hope to network these services to better work together in this endeavor.

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6. Begin an Additional Worship Service to Reach Unchurched

We have many examples of those churches that have added a worship service that is unique to another group of people in their community. These may be around tables, gathering in an area of the church that is not the sanctuary, and/or include differing music/drama/computer generated experiences. These could also be in a different location from the church building. The emphasis here is unchurched persons not just offering present attenders another option from which to choose.

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7. Establish a Satellite Congregation

A satellite congregation literally is set in another location with a view to developing a congregation on that site. This might be ultimately separate from the parent church or it could continue under its umbrella. Usually you will see this used where there are over 400 persons in average worship attendance and precludes health. When this is chosen we will communicate with surrounding churches. The harvest is too plentiful to be caring about turf.

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8. Merge With Another Church or Relocate

Relocating to another location for missional purposes means to literally leave and most likely sell the old structure and to relocate elsewhere. Merging for missional purposes, not just to linger a bit longer, would be to merge with another congregation, thus creating the critical mass needed to do ministry. The merged congregation would make all decisions of property, name, etc. in this scenario.

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9. Use Emergent Worship Sites
This branch can fall under branch #6 “Begin an Additional Worship Service to Reach Unchurched”. The value of leaving this branch here is to state that we are open to going outside the commonly understood box and experimenting with a more radical style of expansion. Emergent Worship can be in all kinds of settings and can be defined in so many ways but we view it as a possible way to transform the congregation to be about our Lord’s work.

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10. Start House Churches/Studies

This is where the home is used as a setting to invite persons from the neighborhood into a safe setting where relationships and studies or worship can occur. Again this branch is very much beyond the boundaries of much of our present systems in the UMC but if anyone would want to experiment this branch could prove to be a rich resource for the Kingdom’s work. Methodism actually began using this branch but now it is seen as far beyond our common understandings.