An historic moment in the ministry of the Church of God in Ohio took place on Tuesday, November 9 as the South West Ohio Assembly of the Church of God voted to become South West Ohio Ministries. In doing so the district moved to align themselves directly with the vision and ministry of Ohio Ministries. Essentially this means the district will seek to do three things. The first is to emphasize leadership development through coaching clusters, pastoral leadership skills coaching and other ministries that will enable both laity and pastors to lead at a higher level.
The second emphasis will be congregational health. Hopefully a team from the south west district will be trained to conduct coaching weekends (church consultations) for those congregations that want to experience turnaround or to move to the next level in their ministry.
The final emphasis will be in Kingdom expansion through church planting and multi-site ministry (one church in multiple locations).
The new South West Ohio Ministries will be led by a team of elders led by Pastor Mitchell Burch, senior pastor of the Towne Boulevard Church of God in Middletown. To complete the change the district also wrote and approved new bylaws that reflect this new alignment with the state ministry.
The move towards this alignment with the state began well over a year ago when the district's leadership came to the conclusion that district ministry as it has been done in the past no longer works. To that end they invited the leadership of Ohio Ministries to begin a series of discussions with them exploring the possibility of this alignment. The meeting of the assembly on the 9th finalized the work of the leadership and the state in bringing the two organizations into alignment. We anticipate a new level of effective and expanded ministry in the years ahead.
Randy Spence, Director of Ministries
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