Little church with a big heart
EMLENTON, Venango County — The leader of the Evangelical Congregational Church will help New Zion Evangelical Congregational Church, 1195 Airport Road, celebrate its 120th anniversary this weekend.
Bishop Bruce Hill, national head of the Evangelical Congregational Church which has 133 churches in New Jersey, Maryland, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio, will help New Zion pastor, the Rev. Gary Brown, mark the church's anniversary Sunday.
Hill, leader of the 13,000-member church, said, “I do know the pastor. They are celebrating from Dec. 31 to Jan. 7. They asked me to come out and kick off the week of celebration.
On Sunday, said the bishop, “Rev. Brown will run the service and I will preach on the topic of the need to press on in the ministry.”
Hill, who is in his sixth year as leader of the church, said he met Brown when Brown was a conference minister with the church.
“When his term ended he became pastor at New Zion,” said Hill.
Brown said, “It's the bishop's policy to preach at every church in the denomination. I thought the anniversary would be appropriate.”
“Actually, we are going to have a reception after the Sunday service on Jan. 7. I will probably preach about the history of the church,” said Brown. “We didn't feel it was appropriate to have an anniversary celebration on New Year's Eve.”
Hill said his visit to the New Zion Church will not be his first trip to Western Pennsylvania. There are Congregational Evangelical churches in Clarion County, he said.
Brown said New Zion's congregation numbers nearly 50.
“Our motto is, 'We are the little church with the big heart.' It is an open church, visitors are welcome,” said Brown.
Hill said of the national church, “We have been in existence since the 1920s. We consider ourselves to be an evangelical church that came out of the Wesleyan Methodist heritage of the 18th and 19th centuries.”
The national church, based in Myerstown, Pa., has as its mission transforming plateaued and declining churches into healthy, disciple-making churches that are committed to evangelizing the communities to which God has called them.Healthy churches will reproduce themselves by planting churches in least-reached communities.According to the church, interdependence will be the distinguishing mark of the Evangelical Congregational Church as local churches network with one another and ministries beyond the Evangelical Congregational family to proclaim the Gospel to the world.Brown said of the anniversary, “I'm seeing this as the fourth 40 years, the fourth generation of the church. The church orients to the future, not the nostalgia of the past.”
