Our Story
Wyoming Park Church is a United Methodist Congregation serving the urban/edge-city area of SW Grand Rapids and the City of Wyoming, Michigan.
Where we ended up is nothing short of a miracle! Family Promise purchased the building and transformed half of it become the Wyoming Park Family Shelter with 12 rooms for unhoused families. We became tenants and rented back the east side of the building where the sanctuary is along with some meeting and office space downstairs. We call this a match made in heaven! It also allowed us to continue to sublease our sanctuary to Casa De Mi Padre, a Spanish speaking faith community that has worshiped in the sanctuary Sunday afternoons since December 2017?
So, one can see it was time after this long life, a dying of building ownership, and resurrection in partnership with Family Promise for this faith community to redo our Mission and Vision Statement. This website is also new.
Our new Mission is, “Building a safe and loving community of faith for all.” Our communities need safe and inclusive space for all. We do live that out. We are a resilient faith community!
Our Vision Statement is now, “Centered in spiritual practices, we will be as engaged in the community as we are in the building.” This is the one that challenges and haunts me. And that is a “good trouble.” We aspire to do better in our community to share our story and build safe spaces and teach healthy spiritual practices! Easier said than done.
So, I have to trust that if you are here and reading this, somehow someone or some encounter got you to our website. Maybe you meet one of our volunteers at the Feed America Food Truck, or through Kids Hope USA at Parkview Elementary School, or our 4 F’s (Friendship, Fun, Food, and?) home improvement service projects. Perhaps you went to a Women, Wine, and Word group at Two Guys brewery. Or to Bible, Brews and Bros group at a community microbrewery. Or one of our Youth Ministry events. All those above possible encounters happen outside the building where we are tenants. We are challenged to build within our communities, not just brick and mortar. By the way, I voted against the word building being in our Mission and Vision Statement. So glad I failed again, yet our faith community lives, and is doing church very differently!
We are building safe, loving spaces for encounters in the community where you are WELCOME, no matter…….
On Spiritual Practices
From Karla VerHage, Lay Member to Annual Conference
As a community of faith, we have intentionally set our sights on building our Spiritual Practices in order to help us live out our vision of “Building a safe and welcoming community of faith for all.” Not unlike the disciplines we adhere to in keeping our body and minds strong, Spiritual Practices help to keep our spirits strong in times that can be chaotic and feel hopeless.
It is our spiritual practices, both individually and relationally, that inspires new insight into our most important values including compassion, acceptance, kindness, and justice. Spiritual Practices help us to develop a deeper understanding of what is important in the world around us and they help us to enter into this world with a deeper connection and understanding of how we relate to the world.
Simply put, intentionally living into the discipline of Spiritual Practices helps us to live in harmony with our selves, with others, with the earth and with our God. Whether it be prayer, fasting, meditation, study, or a “walk in the woods”, we will go steadfast on this journey together to build the Kindom of God.
Our New Chapter
In May of 2023 Wyoming Park United Methodist Church sold its property to Family Promise. Selling our building allows us to use our resources for ministry and provide desperately needed transitional housing for the people of Wyoming.
Our church continues our legacy of seeking God, sharing love and bringing hope by continuing to worship in the sanctuary and sharing that space with Casa de Mi Padre Church. We join Family Promise in their mission as the need arises and we are able.
We look forward to “doing church differently” by meeting critical needs and strengthening the Wyoming community through this partnership. We believe this has been “a match made in heaven.” Every step of the way, the Holy Spirit has shown us how we can continue to be a worshiping and learning community as well as being in ministry with the neighborhood around us.
If you’re looking for a church that is interested in being the church, we’re the place for you to worship God in Jesus and be the hands and feet of Christ in the world.
Our Why, Our Mission, Our Vision
Our Why: The love of God flowing through us.
Our Mission: Building a safe and loving community of faith for all.
Our Vision: Centered in spiritual practices, we will be as engaged in the community as we are in the building.
Reflections
From Joe Kohley, Chair of the Governance Board
I’ve been avoiding writing this, with the internal excuse of waiting for our Mission and Vision Statement to be actualized. Now I’m hesitant to write this because our Vision Statement is here which challenges and haunts me.
My adult children have called me a “church killer.” I’m not kidding. I was the Council Chair at Hudsonville United Methodist Church (UMC) when our Council made the painful decision to close the church due to (like many Protestant churches lately) dwindling membership, ageing population, and lack of resources.
So, when I became Chair of Wyoming Park UMC’s (WPUMC) Governance Board, they asked if was going to kill this church too. And the truth was, WPUMC was also trending towards not being sustainable. Yet this faith community had two strengths that emerged: communal resilience and our building.
We graciously faced the need to let go of the building, a dying to the attachment of this 100+ year old building that had gone through improvements 25 years ago with addition of modern restrooms (showers in the downstair restrooms), an elevator for accessibility, and vamped up commercial kitchen. Yet we could not sustain it, and with approval from our Church’s hierarchy, put the building up for sale. We did not know if we would survive as a faith community or where we would end up, but a core group of members trusted God had a plan for us. And all of this happened during COVID where it stayed unbought on the market for over a year. It was daunting.
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