People are the Top Priority at Metro
April, 26, 2019
Sitting in his office on Veterans Avenue in Vandalia, IL, Pastor Tim Weihrauch is dressed comfortably in a Cleveland Brown’s shirt and sneakers that match his easy-going demeanor.
“When Metro Community Church (MCC) first started 28 years ago in Edwardsville, IL there was no plan to add new worship sites,” Weihrauch confides.
As he tells the story of MCC’s expansion into Vandalia and the enthusiasm shown by the church’s earliest members, the fact that Metro Community Church is quite special becomes quickly apparent.
“There were forty people making the two-hour round trip back and forth to MCC in Edwardsville for church each Sunday,” Weihrauch recalls.
Those early members, confident that the church’s unique worship style would be welcomed by their friends and family locally, asked the MCC pastorate for help in organizing a new church that replicated the Metro experience closer to home.
MCC opted for a unique multi-site approach that leaned into available technologies to make their dream for a local church campus a reality. In 2007, the Vandalia MCC campus was started and experiences there today continue to closely mirror everything done at the main campus in Edwardsville.
Live, contemporary music opens each service with lyrics that are purposefully accessible to first-time church goers and regulars alike. Currently, the Sunday messages at 9:00 am and 10:45 am are delivered via video. There are plans to set up livestreaming between the two campuses in the near future as well.
The Vandalia campus’ members meet at Jefferson Elementary School, 1500 West Jefferson Street. It is one of the few places that can accommodate the church’s 270+ attendees; however, this location requires that the worship site must be set up and taken back down again each week by volunteers.
“I’ve never experienced a growth in membership before like we are seeing here,” shares Pastor Weihrauch, who credits the expansion to the church’s focus on seeing people through “the lens of the disconnected.”
Offering a myriad of opportunities for people to develop a sense of belonging and strong relationships with God and each other, MCC focuses not on what church is supposed to be, but on what it can be in the lives of its members.
“As a church’s membership gets older, it’s easy for them to begin feeling as though church should be a certain way,” explains Weihrauch. “The generation that comes next usually has different ideas though and shifts need to be made.”
A recent report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life supports this key insight. It reveals that 60 percent of people ages 18 to 29 with a Christian background stopped going to church, yet more than half of these respondents said they want to stay connected to their faith.
“There’s a statistic out there that shows millennials actually checkout a church multiple times before showing up at its door. The question becomes how do we let them see who we are, before they actually see who we are?” queries Weihrauch.
Technology plays an important role in this effort, so previous messages are posted online at MCC's website.
The church also offers highly-engaging message themes like “Movies at Metro” as well as numerous small groups aimed at relationship building and many options for newcomers to put their talents to use doing everything from maintenance to stage production and teaching.
There are also classes that allows newcomers to learn more about Metro, develop spiritually, and discover how to put their gifts, passion, and abilities to use within the church and world.
MCC’s focus on the next generation is clearly paying off: The local church’s attendance has grown 35% in the last 3 years, leading them to add a second worship service. With popular teen ministries like Fusion and a robust children’s ministry, the church is already embracing future churchgoers from both Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
“We have a youth trip to Panama Beach, FL coming up in July,” enthuses Worship Director Travis Bowan. “We've been going to Bigstuf for 10 years and this year we're taking over 30 kids.”
Three times as many youth are attending the Christian camp with MCC’s Vandalia campus this year than last, highlighting the attractiveness of the church to younger generations.
Another well liked MCC youth program is STRIVE: Students Turning Responsibility Into Valuable Experience. Designed for students in sixth through twelfth grades, the program invites young volunteers to perform community service. Each youth acquires sponsors for the day of volunteering whose contributions help pay for their youth ministry experiences.
Vandalia STRIVE participants have hosted a food drive and cleaned up an alley behind storefronts on Gallatin St. in the downtown area.
The church will also host a week-long Kids Bible Kamp this July. This year’s theme is “Explosion,” with the fun reaching a total of five locations throughout Illinois, including Vandalia’s Rogier Park. Children ages four through sixth grade are invited to join the fun July 15-18, 2019 from 9 am to noon.
When asked how the community can support and pray for the church, a number of ideas spring to the minds of the Pastor and Worship Director:
Continued prayer for the upcoming youth trip, for their multi-site vision and the mobile nature of the church, and in support of the ultimate goal of effectively reaching people for Jesus.
“Things have been going incredibly,” beams Pastor Weihrauch. “But it’s given me the understanding that I need to be more reliant on God during this growth season.”
Pastor Weihrauch has led the Vandalia campus since 2016.