Pastor Tim Garmon leads a worship service at Vancrest of Ada. Every Sunday at 10 a.m., residents of the nursing home, along with their families, staff members and a few people from the community, gather for the nondenominational church service. (Provided photo)
By JEANNIE WILEY WOLF
Staff Writer
ADA — Every Sunday morning, people stream into a dining room at Vancrest of Ada for worship.
The 10 a.m. service includes music, prayer and a sermon delivered by Pastor Tim Garmon.
“This is the first time in years my wife and I both feel like we’re actually where God wants us,” said Garmon, who started the nondenominational church in November. “We’re doing what we’re supposed to do.”
And while a health care facility may seem like an unlikely place for a church to call home, the idea is becoming increasingly popular in Ada. The number of worshipers has grown from about 20 to 40 or 50 residents, family members, staff members and townspeople who now attend each week.
The response tells Garmon, who also works full-time as head of maintenance at the University of Findlay’s James L. Child Equestrian Complex, that there was a need in the community.
“It’s almost like we treat them (seniors) like second-class citizens. They deserve a worship service just like anybody else,” he said.
A vision
The rural Ada man previously served United Methodist churches in Dunkirk and Patterson, but left after several years and returned to worship at Walnut Grove United Methodist Church in Kenton, his home church and the place he and his family attended before he was called to the ministry. But there was something missing.
“We just weren’t happy,” Garmon said.
Then one night, God gave him a vision of the Israelites in the desert. “And He said ‘that’s what I want you to do’. So I took it that He wanted me to leave Walnut Grove and go out and just wander.”
Garmon admitted that it wasn’t easy leaving. He had been baptized there and his family still attended the church.
“It was pretty hard to do, but we did that. And it was a lot like the Israelites out in the desert. They tried to follow God, but then they’d start complaining, and that’s really what we did,” he said. “We wanted a church to call home and we weren’t real happy with anywhere we went, and just nothing was making sense.”
Garmon, 53, said an answer came out of a men’s share group he attends, which also provides a monthly service at Vancrest. Marty Clum, a member of the group and a longtime friend, works at the health care facility.
“One night after we had done that, God kind of laid on my heart that he wanted more, that wasn’t enough,” said Garmon. “So basically he laid on my heart, ‘I want you to start a church there. You need to worship with the folks at Vancrest.'”
“Actually I’d been told several times before this, ‘Why don’t you just start your own church?’ I told the guys in the share group, ‘I don’t want any part of that because there’s too much cliquishness. There’s too much politics. I just want a place to worship.'”
Garmon said God also told him to gather a team to help form the church. He asked Clum to collaborate with him on the effort. Clum spoke to the staff at Vancrest, who were excited about the idea.
“The whole concept really is just to have a place to worship and to have a place for the residents of Vancrest to have a place of real worship and a place where their families could come, anybody, the public could come in as well,” he said. “It’s not just we’ll go up on Tuesday night and we’ll give them a song or two, a little devotion and then leave. We want them to have a true worship setting.”
Starting out
Some of the residents have told Garmon how much they appreciate the new church.
“One of the ladies said, ‘You know what? I can go right down the street here if I want, but this is just as good. I like it here’. So that made me feel good,” he said. “And because it’s assisted living, there are some that still go to their home church. But the last few Sundays when it was so bitterly cold, they were so excited that they could have a place to worship.”
Now the team needs to come up with a name for the church.
“We’re still pretty new. When I started it, I didn’t know what it’d be like, whether it’d take off, whether people would like it or not. But it’s been a little overwhelming actually, because people are really liking it,” he said.
Garmon said he’s just trying to be dutiful.
“God did say, ‘I will bless this ministry if you’re obedient,’ so I’m just trying to be obedient,” he said.
Other decisions that need to be addressed include the matter of tithing.
“We don’t collect anything because with a lot of those residents, they can’t do anything. You certainly don’t want to make them feel put out, so that’s another issue,” he said. “Marty and I both, we want to stay away from church politics. We just want to worship. And you start dealing with finances and then you’ve got church politics involved. So that’s one of the issues that we have to work out and come up with creative ways, because God does call us to tithe.”
Garmon and his wife, Vickie, put the money they tithe into a bank account to use when a need arises at Vancrest. For now, they’re making do with a found sound system and songbooks owned by the center.
His brother has joined the team and takes care of the sound, while his sister-in-law leads the music. They’ve talked about subscribing to SongShow Plus, a song presentation program that provides a way to display song lyrics for the audience, but the yearly cost is about $500.
“So when you start something like this, you work through it. And they don’t care. That’s the best part about it,” he said. “We’ve had some technical problems with some things, and they could care less. They were just glad we were there to worship with them.”
Services last an hour or less, and communion is served the first Sunday of each month.
For now Garmon is pleased with the direction in which the church is moving.
“I don’t know where God’s going to take it. I have no idea,” he said. “I told Marty the other night, ‘If we stay just like this, that’s fine with me. But if He wants to do something amazing with it, I don’t know what, that’s fine with me, too.’ I’m in for the long haul. Just like I said, I’m here to be obedient and do whatever it is that I’m supposed to do.”
Wolf: 419-427-8419
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