Ohio Ministry Network Helps Launch 13-Year-Old Congregation as New Church Plant
“Being a multisite for 13 years, it’s better that we’re not planting from scratch,” says co-pastor Matt P. Reinhart, 40, who shares preaching duties with his wife, Mandie, 37. Going autonomous, we feel really excited. This is what the Lord is wanting us to do.”
“I feel incredible about it,” says Compelled Church’s pastor Nate L. Elarton, 59. “I’m a church planter at heart. I’m not looking to have a kingdom or a bunch of campuses.”
“Matt is like a spiritual son; he was on staff with us until he took over the Holland location in 2019. He’s just done a fantastic job. So we’re pretty excited about it.”
The history of Compelled Church goes back to 1996, when Elarton started Bedford Community Church with a handful of people.
After steady growth that saw it multiply into the hundreds, in 2010 the pastor decided to launch a second campus just across the border in Ohio.
With the original name geographically tied to its southern Michigan community, leaders adopted Compelled as their new name.
Elarton says the church started the second campus because of their burden for Toledo, a metropolitan area of 600,000 that he says lacks enough churches for the size of the population.
Despite its location about 18 miles southwest of Toledo, Westwinds had never been a member of the Ohio Ministry Network (OMN); that changed with the recent launch.
Superintendent Dan B. Lund, 58, says the Ohio Church Multiplication Network has provided start-up funds and assistance with tasks like incorporation and transferring the Reinharts’ ministerial credentials to Ohio.
A veteran of 30-plus years as a pastor, Lund says this is the first time he has been involved in a church plant that crosses state lines.
“Everything’s fresh and new,” Lund says of Westwinds’ name and location at Holloway Elementary School. “They’ve got a momentum that typically wouldn’t have been there. So we’re getting behind them and doing whatever we can to support them.”
The church plant has moved the network one step closer to the 300 mark, one of the 10-year goals set in 2020 as part of OMN’s “Ohio for Jesus” initiative.
There are 15 other congregations in the church planting process, one reason Lund is optimistic about the future.
“I’m excited for what God is doing in Ohio,” the superintendent says. “We have to get ourselves in a place where we can grow as God moves. He gives the increase, but we have to have systems in place to manage it.”
Elarton says the launch had been in discussion for two years and included strategic steps.
The pastor says Compelled’s leaders felt Westwinds would be better able to reach people for Christ as an autonomous church rather than as a second campus.
“This is very exciting,” says the Michigan native. “As a church planter, I have seen spiritual gifts in Pastors Matt and Mandie.
“They have proven themselves and worked so hard these past six years. They have a passion for God’s people and those who don’t know Christ yet. Their faith is daring and impressive.”
Reinhart acknowledges that he and his wife faced difficult questions, which required them to exercise faith. They prayed for three years to find a building, but none of five possibilities proved workable.
With their landlord planning to raise the rent significantly, he and Mandie finally decided to move the church to the elementary school.
Although they had been fearful of what Westwinds’ new reality might look like, Reinhart says they overcame their misgivings.
“With buildings and stuff falling through, it had us considering the possibilities for God’s will for our lives,” Reinhart says.
“We said, ‘Either we don’t do anything or the Lord is telling us to go portable.’ I said, ‘We’re ready.’ God flipped the switch and we decided it was time to move.”
The step includes Matt leaving his full-time pastorate with Compelled for a bivocational role with Westwinds. His new job as director of spiritual formation at a Christian high school in Michigan means a 40-minute commute each way.
During their time in Holland, the co-pastor says they have watched God stitch together a community of people from a variety of backgrounds and church experiences.
“God is putting together a family,” says Reinhart, whose church averages 100 in Sunday attendance. “I have seen people saved and baptized. I have also seen a lot of people who had ‘deconstructed’ find a safe place here. I am watching the Lord put a group like that together so we can grow together.”
Elarton hopes Westwinds sees the same kind of future growth that Compelled experienced. After so few they met in the pastor’s living room, today the Michigan church has three weekend services to accommodate its average 1,000 worshipers.
“I’m just so excited about planting this church, cutting the cord and letting them go,” Compelled’s pastor says. “The church campus model has to go back to a church planting model. We have to build the Kingdom, not campuses.”
