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Our Story After years of prayerful consideration and planning, the session of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Muncie, Indiana began in the early 1990s to explore the possibility of establishing a daughter church. The Westminster session considered several possible locations and eventually settled on Yorktown, based in part of the demographic research performed by a pastoral intern named Mike Kelly.
In the early days, the prospective members of the new church met in the Westminster manse and in one another’s homes in order to pray, to know one another better, and to study God’s word. The daunting nature of the project they faced drove them to their knees in prayer, providing a guideline which became a keystone for the life of the church and its approach – reliance on divine providence and prayer in seeking God’s will for the church.
Mike Kelly and his wife Sandy responded to the call to serve as the first pastor of the new congregation. A native of Missouri, Mike had served as an intern at Westminster during his seminary training at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, and was familiar with the proposed work. A group gathered together and chose “New Life” as the name of the new church.
Finally, the big day came. On Sunday, September 27, 1992, 35 members of the core group, along with their children, met in the cafeteria of the Yorktown Elementary School for their first service. The day’s work began before the service, as people joined together to move lunch tables out of the way, haul chairs down the hall and unfold them in rows, set up the pulpit and small electric piano, move desks and chairs in a classroom for nursery space, and set up a Sunday school classroom in the school board meeting room. The congregation did not realize it, but this weekly process would be part of their Sunday routine for the next eight-and-a-half years.
By 1995, New Life had grown sufficiently to begin the process of becoming a “particular” church; that is, financially independent from Westminster and led by its own officers and pastor. On May 15, 1995, 44 members of New Life and 12 elders from Westminster signed a letter to the Great Lakes presbytery requesting that the church be considered particular, a request which was granted on June 4, 1995.
Mike Kelly maintained a view toward the future and a possible site for a sanctuary. One day, he and Sandy drove past the corner of County Road 500 West and River Road and noticed an empty field which they thought was ideally situated for a church. After the two of them prayed, Mike knocked on the door of the field’s owner to inquire as to its availability. Mike asked the owner for a minute of his time, and the somewhat acerbic man replied, “You now have 59 seconds.” Undeterred, Mike explained his intention, to which the man responded that he had always dreamed that the property would one day be used for a church. They then began the negotiations for the purchase of land on which New Life stands today.
In August 1995, Pastor Kelly announced that he believed God had called him to be the head pastor at Green Lake Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington. In the process of finding a new pastor, New Life learned a valuable lesson: that the local church belongs to God, not the people who lead or populate it, and that God will sustain and provide in ways we can never imagine.
After several months of work by the pulpit search committee and much prayer by the congregation, the church called Tim Stigers to serve as pastor of New Life. From Tim, the congregation learned the importance of sincerely caring in practical ways for those we seek to reach with the gospel. In addition to teaching the congregation about caring for the community from his scripturally based sermons and daily walk, Tim oversaw two major developments in the ongoing ministry of New Life to Yorktown: the implementation of the team concept as a means of administering the church, and the construction of our first building.
By God’s grace, funds for the new building were accumulated much more quickly than anticipated. The congregation broke ground on April 30, 2000. They gathered in a corn field at the intersection of County Road 500 West and River Road on a beautiful spring afternoon, prayed, sang hymns, and sank the first shovels into the dirt to begin construction. Today, many of those who were in attendance still cherish the jar of dirt they received to commemorate that day.
After two-and-a-half more years, Tim Stigers, feeling led by God that his ministry at New Life had been completed, resigned as pastor. Once again the congregation turned to prayer for direction in the process of selecting a new shepherd. In the spring of 2004, the committee and several session members visited Bob and Mary O’Bannon in St. Louis. Following a visit by Bob and Mary to Yorktown (a return home of sorts for Bob, who graduated from Ball State), the congregation called Bob to serve as its third pastor. Bob accepted the call and was ordained and installed by the presbytery on September 14, 2004.
Under Bob’s leadership, the church developed a vision statement – “To spread God’s kingdom throughout Muncie, Yorktown and beyond as ordinary people are empowered for extraordinary living by the power of the Gospel.” The session felt God’s leading to spend time in thought and prayer regarding the church’s long-term goals. Toward that end, they held a “retreat” in the home of the O’Bannons in April 2007 to begin a strategic plan. The key points of the final plan included:
The session also agreed to begin plans to plant its own daughter church within a seven to ten year period. It was agreed that the stated vision of spreading God’s kingdom throughout Muncie, Yorktown and beyond could be accomplished better through church planting than by seeking mega-church status.
During the last half of 2007, God blessed New Life with tremendous growth. Between January and December 2007, the average attendance in Sunday services increased from 112 people to 200. By February of 2008, weekly attendance had reached an average of 210 people.
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