3 Florida United Methodist Review Online

Merged church is greater than the sum of its parts

Photo by Bob McBride

Diversity between the two congregations that formed Ocoee Oaks United Methodist Church could have been a problem, but was instead a strength, according to the church's pastors. "The congregations really seem to need each other," the Rev. Lew Arnold said. "There are some interesting relationships between 24-year-old go-getters and a 70-year-old who's been doing this forever."

By Michael Wacht

OCOEE — The Orlando District’s Ocoee United Methodist Church averaged 60 people at its worship service each Sunday, while neighboring West Oaks United Methodist Church had about 145 between its two weekly services. The two churches merged June 10 to form Ocoee Oaks United Methodist Church, and worship attendance is now averaging more than 250 people.

The Revs. Lew Arnold and Ernie Post, the church’s pastors, aren’t sure why attendance is up at a time of year when participation is typically lowest. They believe it is one more sign that God is blessing the union of the churches.

Several years ago the Orlando District Board of Mission and Church Extension invited five churches in the west Orlando community to merge into a regional church, according to Arnold. “They invited five churches to participate, and all five churches turned them down,” he said.

Despite the lack of interest the district was committed to expanding ministry in the rapidly-growing Ocoee area and to planting a new church, West Oaks United Methodist Church. The new church joined 150-year-old Ocoee United Methodist Church in ministering to 25,000 Ocoee residents.

Arnold said there was some “unsettledness and…some bruised egos” when the new church began, but when the Ocoee and West Oaks congregations started sharing worship and ministry experiences the pastors saw “no animosity between the people.”

Plans to merge the two churches began last year at a Tuesday night “Ask the Pastor” session at the Ocoee church. “One woman said it was dumb to have two United Methodist churches in town,” Arnold said. “She had talked to some of the West Oaks people, and they had the same idea.”

The churches formed a leadership team of three lay people from each church that met for several hours once a week for eight weeks. The team developed a statement of the vision, key values and leadership structure of the new church, then took that statement to the leadership and congregations of both churches, according to Post.

“There were no closed-door meetings,” Post said. “We wanted an open conversation and questions. People asked about what will happen to the building, the location, the money West Oaks had raised for its building…what will we do with the organ, am I going to have a Sunday school teacher.”

Arnold and Post said they made an intentional effort to encourage the laity to take ownership of the process. “We took a ‘What do you want to do?’ approach,” Post said. “We wanted strong lay leadership and not a focus on pastoral leadership. They developed the whole thing.”

Post said many of the people he talked to about the merger warned him it was a bad idea and would fail. Arnold said the list of reasons was long. Ocoee was an old, small church, with an entirely Anglo congregation made up of mostly older people and a few young families. It had one traditional worship service. West Oaks was a new church plant and a larger church with a young, multi-cultural congregation and two worship services. The contemporary service was the more popular of the two.

“All the things we thought could derail this, all of the issues and emotional things, people brought them up, and we talked about them,” Arnold said.

In those conversations, the churches’ leaders “found surprising commonality” in terms of their discipleship and church government structure, Arnold said.

At a combined worship service June 10, The Rev. Dean Witten, superintendent of the Orlando District, called two separate charge conferences so each congregation could vote on the merger. “Once the votes were taken and successful, Dean called to order the new church,” Arnold said.

Ocoee Oaks is a new church, not one congregation absorbing the other, Arnold said. The church has a new name, officers and structure.

Its official opening will be in September to coordinate with the kickoff of the denomination-wide Igniting Ministry media campaign. Until then, the new church is in “spring training,” Arnold said. “We need to practice together before we go play.”

Although everyone has sacrificed to make the new church work, Arnold and Post believe it was worth the effort.

“At our first meeting, someone said ‘If we do this, everyone one of us is going to have to give up something,’ ” Post said. “That’s been a very poignant statement since then.”

“I firmly believe, in this case, one plus one equals three,” Arnold said. “We now have a stronger entity. The platform for the gospel has been strengthened.”