Jack Riley, a retired Methodist pastor, looked around the Morgan's Point area and saw a need. He realized that there was no Methodist church in the area and wanted to do something about it. So, he and his wife, it took her to, decided to start a church in this area, one that would be different from the other churches. We would accept the people that mainline churches didn't appeal to. Jack would say, "When you think of a church, put away all your preconceptions of what church is, this place is different!"
So on October 6, 1996 Jack Riley and 12 families met at Morgan's Point Community center and had the first worship service. They sang hymns to a recording, read scripture, and had a sermon titled God Uses Ordinary People. They then went home wondering how God was going to use them. They didn't stay at the community center for very long, it cost 55 dollars to rent it, and that was all the offering they collected most Sundays, if that at all, and the chairs were metal and very cold.
They moved to Lakewood Elementary and stayed there for 6 years. In the mean time, Jack decided he wanted to retire again, the DS brought in a recent seminary graduate named Steve Buchele. During seminary God had given Steve a vision of a church that would accept people that mainline churches didn't appeal to (sound familiar) It would be different that any other church he had gone to, and it would use music that he had learned to play in seminary, contemporary praise and worship. He was also given guiding principles for this church, what we call today, the grid. To grow God's Kingdome, and become more Christ Like. We still use those principals when setting goals and making decisions in our comities. So in the summer of 1999 Steve Buchele became the pastor of what was now known as Foundation United Methodist Church at Lakewood.
After several years at Lakewood, it was becoming apparent that Foundation needed a building and so in 2000, the people began to raise the money for a building. On June 15 2001, the people broke ground on the building. Meanwhile, the services at Lakewood were growing. A praise band had been started, Sunday school for children, youth, and adults had been started, and there were two worship services. The building finally began construction and for a year the people at Foundation watched their building go from a foundation to a building with walls.
On November 17, 2002, we moved into the building in what we called Crossing the Jordan. We were the Israelites moving into the Promised Land. Jack led the way as we carried all of our stuff from the school to our new building, set up the sanctuary and had a worship service/ party! Our membership grew and grew over the years to what it is today, and to be honest, the building was already too small the day we moved in. We didn't have enough class rooms for all the Sunday school classes on Sunday, and had to get creative over the years in use of our space. At one point the youth were meeting in
the kitchen, we didn't have very many leftovers during that time. This is why in May of 2006 we had a charge conference to form a building committee to take care of our space problems for the short term and long term.
In April of 2006, Susanne, Steve's wife got word that she received a Fulbright Scholarship, and they would be allowed to go to Ghana, Africa where she would be teaching computer at Ashish University. They were very excited for this opportunity, and we were excited for them. Meanwhile, in Mississippi a pastor was looking for a way to be closer to his new grandson in Texas, in Round Rock to be exact and put the word out in the two conferences close to that city he would like to come on board. He had been trained as an interim pastor and thought he could be used as such. As usual, God provided a perfect match, and in July of 2006 Foundation helped send Steve and his family off to Africa, and said hello to Russell and Diane Fletcher for the next year. We knew that Russell and Diane would only be here for a year and in March of 2007 we received word that Steve was going to spend another year in Africa. So, Foundation was going to be appointed a new pastor. We once again began to pray for a pastor that would have our hearts, one for growing God's kingdom, and becoming more Christ like. In June of 2007, we said good by to the Fletchers and hello to Ryan and Diane Kiblinger. Once again, God, through his Sovereignty, provided a perfect match. And now we come to you, those wishing to join us in this faith journey. As we all discover how God uses ordinary people.
