Congregation: North Lima Mennonite Church
District: North Lima, OH
Location: 90 Mennonite Drive
Date of founding: 1948
Average Sunday worship attendance: 86
Time of Sunday worship service(s): 9:30 AM
Pastor(s): Robert Wengerd pictured with wife Dianne.
North Lima Mennonite Church envisions itself as a community of believers offering healing and hope to the world. The early months of 2019 presented a very difficult time in the life of our church as sickness, death, surgeries, and people otherwise going through hard times besieged us. One situation involved the sudden decline and death of an older man.
Another situation involved a lady going into a diabetic coma, being in ICU, needing surgery, and having an extensive time of rehabilitation.
A third situation involved the sudden, tragic death of a 20-year-old. In each case, people from the church served as the hands and feet of Jesus in their prayers, visitation, meal ministry, and other practical needs. As situations required, financial resources became available and were supplied to others in unexpected ways.
We feel blessed that God has identified and called a number of pastors from within our church fellowship, and then asked us to give them away. Several years ago, we had two young men and their families accept the call to pastor in other churches. One of the men had gone through the STEP program and now serves another LMC church. We are also blessed to have an individual who is serving full-time with a Wycliffe Associates group, working with Bible translation efforts. And we are blessed to have three men in our congregation who are involved with the area Gideons.
The broader community knows our congregation as the church with the concerts. Over the past 20 years we have hosted many gospel groups and artists. A number of these musicians were nationally-known, Southern gospel groups such as the Toney Brothers, the Blackwood Quartet, The Inspirations, Squire Parsons, Down East Boys, Soul’d Out Quartet, The Anchormen, and Dixie Melody Boys.
The community also knows us as the church with the breakfasts. We serve a monthly breakfast buffet in our fellowship hall, which is available to anyone on a donation basis. This attracts many people from outside our church. In turn, the donations for the breakfast help us to support a number of missionaries and ministries.
Our church building is located close to motels by the Ohio Turnpike exit/entrance. Some of these motels provide lodging to people who are in transition, who have experienced loss or broken relationships, or are otherwise are struggling for survival. We receive requests for assistance, which has provided opportunities to not only meet practical needs, but to provide a gospel witness. Some of these individuals then attended our worship service for a time. Several joined our fellowship of believers.
As pastor, I periodically ask the Lord to both surprise and amaze us. We continue to be fascinated by the ways God acts in response to this kind of prayer. Since we are located just two miles off the turnpike, it’s a convenient place to stop for worship for those that are traveling east or west. You are welcome!