Friendship Parish
SLIPPERY ROCK TWP — When the congregation of the Friendship Presbyterian Church gathers for its dedication celebration next month, members will be commemorating more than just a renovated church building.
The congregation will be marking the end of a long process to merge three Slippery Rock area churches, creating one unified congregation at 870 Franklin Road.
The Oct. 16 celebration will begin with a 10:30 a.m. worship service followed by a luncheon and an open house and concert that will begin at 1 p.m.
“People are very excited and proud for what has happened,” said the Rev. Donna Yanosy, pastor of the church. “God was in it, it wouldn’t have happened if God wasn’t in it.”
The merger combines three churches, Bethel Presbyterian, Wolf Creek Presbyterian and West Liberty Presbyterian.
The unification was prompted by dwindling congregations at each of the three churches, which shared a pastor under the name Friendship Parish, said Ruth Keith, an elder of the church.
The Friendship Parish was formed in 1962 and originally encompassed four congregations, Bethel, Wolf Creek, West Liberty and Harrisville Presbyterian. Harrisville and Bethel merged in 1967, Keith said.
West Liberty Church closed last year. The diminishing population in the remaining two churches — each had only about 25 worshipping each Sunday — couldn’t sustain the parish model, Yanosy said.
Yanosy was appointed the interim pastor in 2011, after the departure of the previous minister, and she was charged with leading the churches through the process of choosing how to move the parish forward.
“We give her a lot of credit for what she did,” said Roy Peffer, a longtime member of the Bethel church, who was involved in the process. “She’s done a wonderful job.”
Yanosy said the discernment process involved a series of prayer meetings for the leadership teams of the three churches.
“We didn’t have a particular outcome in mind,” she said. “We weren’t sure what God would say.”
Peffer said a large part of the merger discussion centered on which building would serve as the church. Ultimately the Bethel church was chosen due, in part, to the preschool it housed.
Once it was decided which building would be the church, renovations began on Bethel’s Franklin Road facility. The overhaul included an additional parking lot, new sidewalks, windows and entrance door and renovations to the bathrooms, as well as installing a new sound and projection system, Keith said.
The Wolf Creek building will become the Friendship Presbyterian Community Center.
“We’re hoping it can not only serve as a social center for our church, but also can be used by different groups within the community,” she said.
The two congregations began to worship together in November and were officially recognized by the Beaver-Butler Presbytery as Friendship Presbyterian Church in July.
Yanosy said there was an adjustment period, but now it seems like “things are falling into place” and the congregants are seeing themselves as a community worshipping together.
“I think we’re going to make it,” Peffer said. “I think it’s going to be good.”
