When the pandemic hit in Mar. 2020, White Lake, N.Y., RPC stopped having in-person services for a while. So, David Klussman planned on having family worship. “We’re having home church outside tomorrow,” he said to his neighbor. “You can join us if you like.”

Out of the Shutdown, Something Good

The neighbor did, along with his kids. And another neighbor, with his kids. Soon five families were coming to the fire pit in the front yard for a modified outdoor service that included prayer, psalms, Scripture, explanation, and discussion. Then food. David used the same Scripture that Pastor David Coon used for White Lake’s online service.

When the pandemic eased, some of the new families decided to drive a half hour to check out White Lake RPC. Some of them joined. When the weather got too cold, the outdoor meetings ended; but when 2021 began to warm up, the neighborhood children began asking for a resumption of “home church.” So, they began to meet again, monthly this time. Occasionally now, the meeting moves to another family’s yard or goes under a big tent.

David was ordained as an elder at White Lake RPC on Oct. 24, 2021. In addition to traveling to White Lake for corporate worship, he occasionally still holds an informal meeting in his front yard. Four families, in addition to his own, continue to meet together, plus the occasional visitor. The cold winter will require some kind of change, whether a pause or moving inside.

The pandemic brought a variety of challenges and griefs to many. But in Mountaindale, N.Y., it also brought an opportunity. Please pray for God to guide them about what they should do next.

A Hope Long Deferred, Now Bearing Fruit

One hour northwest of White Lake sits a rural church in the village of Walton, N.Y. For more than 20 years, the saints in Walton have wanted to start a church in the university town of Oneonta, which lies over 30 minutes to the north. A group met for a month in the 1990s, but nothing further happened. John Cripps, now an elder, continued to live there and pray for a church plant.

In 2019, then-Pastor Steven McCarthy began evening services in Oneonta; and when he took a call elsewhere, interim moderator Bill Chellis kept the services going. For two years now, the Walton evening worship service has been held in Oneonta as they seek to start a new church there. Other churches seeking to daughter new congregations might want to consider moving their evening worship to the prospective location, as it provides the new group with loyal faithful people who provide stability and help pull in new families and faces.

Many small congregations have watched families visit only to leave, saying, “We want some children for our children.” And then the next week a different family comes through and says the same. But if the mother church provides a starting core holding its evening service in the new location, these families may stay and find each other.

Meanwhile, a local pastor named Ryan Alsheimer was completing online seminary through Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. To its credit, this Baptist seminary provided a fair reading of both Baptist and Presbyterian church government, and, to Ryan’s mind, the Presbyterian form sounded more biblical. Not only that, his son was about to be born, and the matter of infant baptism was impressing itself upon him.

As he graduated, he and his wife, Kimberly, felt called to church planting, called to a Reformed denomination, and called to remain near her family in Oneonta, N.Y. But how would these things come together?

Ryan had been a part of the preaching rotation at the Oneonta RP church plant. As he approached graduation, Pastor Bill Chellis asked him to consider entering the RPCNA and spearheading the group at Oneonta. He accepted, was taken under care of Atlantic Presbytery as a student of theology, and is now the pastoral intern at Walton, with his special focus being the church plant in Oneonta. He preaches there three Sunday evenings each month, with Elder John Cripps preaching the fourth. He continues to work a full 40-hour week at the Friends of Recovery of Delaware and Otsego Counties.

The group in Oneonta now consists of about four new families, plus the Crippses and Alsheimers, a few members of Walton who live in that direction, and the intrepid Walton members who continue to drive from Walton to Oneonta for evening worship. So far, their only advertising has been word of mouth.

Please pray for Ryan, Kimberly, and their little son Jude. Ryan has a job to do, a family to care for, a church to nurture, and presbytery exams to pass. Pray for Ryan as he plans for outreach and publicity. Pray also for the Bible studies led by John Cripps. And pray that this long-deferred hope of a new church in Oneonta, N.Y., may now come to a glorious fruition.