See the Summer Offering in Onward

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A few years back, Cross of Hope Church in Parma Heights, Ohio, was at a crossroads, of sorts. Back then, they were still known as Parma Heights Baptist, a name they had held since they were planted in 1954. For decades, they were the church everyone in the community already knew about due to the large cross on their steeple and their big events – Easter Sunday, Christmas services, and summer VBS programs.

Senior Pastor Dr. Shane Prewitt described this visibility in the community as the “plus and minus of our church;” people were familiar with the church, but what they knew was mostly about their events, not who they were as people or their Gospel testimony. When Shane became senior pastor in 2019, he knew they needed to become more than a come-and-see church that put on big events.

“We can do those type of things,” Pastor Shane said. “But we have really got to teach our people to be missional in their lives. We have to recognize God has placed us strategically where we’re at in this generation for a reason.”

The kind of missional imagination Pastor Shane and the people of Cross of Hope share is at the heart of the NAB. Because God is a missionary God at work in the world, our joy-filled task is to discern that work and receive his invitation to join with him. When you give to the Ministry Resource Fund, you are, in part, creating space for NAB leaders and churches to expand their own missional imaginations through trainings like Blue Ocean, Year of Equipping, Discovery Project, and Bonfire. In essence, each gift plays a small part in training churches and their leaders to bring the hope found only in Jesus to the world around us.

Shortly after Shane took on his role as senior pastor, the world shut down from the COVID-19 pandemic. While this was certainly a rough patch for Cross of Hope, as it was for many churches, this time allowed them to reexamine the things that needed to be reexamined.

“We really want to think of ministry in a different way,” said Pastor Shane. “Instead of looking at our church property as the place where God works, how do we train our people here to go out into the harvest fields and do ministry where they’re at?” This struggle is what missiologists have long defined as the end of Christendom, and Cross of Hope’s response is on the frontlines of where God is working in the North American church to recapture a fervor for the Gospel.

Around this same time, there were a handful of young adults at the church who were, as Pastor Shane put it, “interested in being part of the narrative of changing the story” at Cross of Hope. They started by meeting weekly, just to deepen the relationships amongst all the young adults. Steadily, their Monday night group grew, with some former members of the church returning, but new people started coming as well, including those who didn’t have a church or weren’t really interested in church. This burgeoning group of young adults wasn’t content with simply connecting relationally, though. They wanted to make an impact in their community, both inside and outside the walls of the church. They started getting involved in other ministries at Cross of Hope, including the monthly community food drive.

Five years ago, Pastor Shane said, he would have been bemoaning the lack of young adults at the church. Now? “They are at the frontlines of everything we’re doing as a church, and they’re wanting to be involved in the greater scope of the church,” he said. In many ways, Cross of Hope is following their lead as these emerging leaders discover what it means to be on mission with the God of hope.

“They’re just craving to be a part of changing the world,” he said. “So we want to learn and figure out how can we mobilize them in ministry.”

Around this same time, as they started planning their 70th anniversary in 2024, they decided the church was due for a name change to better reflect their heart for the 250,000 people who live within five miles of the church. When talking about changing from Parma Heights Baptist, Pastor Shane said, “We’re proud Baptists; we will always be proud Baptists.” But they wanted a name that conveyed more than their theological roots and organizational structure; instead, they wanted something that would convey their desire to be disciples who make disciples. “And the name was already there for us,” he said.

A decade ago, they built a large pavilion on their church property, a space that took on new significance during the pandemic when they began meeting there during the summer months, a practice they continue to this day. When it was first constructed, the church named it Cross of Hope, so when they were deciding on a new name for the church, it was an easy choice.

“We weren’t looking for the most edgy name; we weren’t looking for the most modern name,” Pastor Shane stated. “We were looking for the most missional name. How could we, even by our name, start the conversation with people regarding what our mission is?”

Another part of that mission is even now in the beginning stages. They are beginning to examine what it might look like to once more be a church that multiplies. To that end, this year Pastor Shane took two members of his church to Exponential – an annual conference for church multipliers – and he plans to take at least five people next year. “We’re in the infancy stages of what mobilization looks like,” Pastor Shane said. “We just know we’ve got to do it.”

All across the NAB, churches like Cross of Hope are embracing God’s missional identity as they pursue multiplication and discover where God is already at work in their neighborhoods and communities. Whether it was due to trainings provided through Blue Ocean, Ethos, or even Year of Equipping, or through sending individuals to Fit Assessment or Bonfire, churches across the NAB are growing in these efforts. Your gift today of $50, $100, $500, or more will greatly assist us in supporting local NAB churches as they share the hope found only in Jesus Christ.

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