Trinity, Warsaw First United Methodist Church To Merge

Trinity United Methodist Church and Warsaw First United Methodist Church will be merging congregations starting in July.
Pastor Andrea Kennedy, of Trinity UMC, said at this point it’s about uniting the two congregations and “I think it’s fair to say that we’re excited. We’re excited about the possibilities of bringing our two congregations together.”
The two congregations will be merged and meet at Warsaw First UMC and the name Warsaw First United Methodist Church will be maintained. Kennedy said the Trinity UMC property will be sold. A couple groups have already looked at the property and Trinity has engaged a realtor. Lee Harman, lay leader for Trinity, said it’s Trinity’s intent to sell the property to another church or mission.
The merger will be official July 1 and the first service together will be July 5, said Pastor Brian Smith, of Warsaw First UMC. Kennedy and Smith will both continue on as pastors after the merger.
Harman said Trinity is an aging congregation like many congregations across the nation and “we’re essentially getting to the point where it’s more difficult to maintain the church, keep the doors open if you will. And so we wanted, we did not want to get to the point where we had to close the church because that is, that’s the end of the church. By merging, our church does not cease to exist. It just becomes a part of a larger church, so Trinity will live on (at Warsaw First).”
Smith said the two churches have a very common mission, so it was a good pairing and it made sense to bring the two churches together for the sake of mission. Another part of it was Warsaw First has had some experience in walking through some merger activity as they merged with Walnut Creek UMC a couple years ago.
Courtney Sale, lay leader for Warsaw First UMC, said she thinks Warsaw First has “been very intentional in trying to collaborate with other churches and organizations in the community so that we can serve our community in the best way we can, and there was an obvious opportunity with Trinity partnering with us to do that more effectively.”
Harman said the timing was right for the merger. One of the positive outcomes of the merger was Kennedy was able to be retained and the Trinity family was concerned what happened to her if the church closed.
Talks with the congregation were started in the early fall at Trinity about a merger being a possibility, Harman said. There is a merge committee at each church and those committees have been meeting since December. Sale said the merge committees have been talking about the congregations’ compatibility and joint focus alignment. Smith said the two churches have kind of walked alongside each other, even in years past, because they have that same mission focus of reaching out to the community and being engaged in the community.
Kennedy said as far as programming and activities outside of worship services, they will be working with the space at Warsaw First and finding rooms and times in the schedule.
“In the intervening time, we created this massive list of the combined activities and everything that happened between the two churches: Sunday school, worship, the outside meetings, just to help us wrap all of our heads around all those things,” Kennedy said. “We’ve made all the leaders of those different groups aware of what’s happening and so we’re all making that mental shift to find space and time.”
That master list has helped the churches to think where those activities can continue to happen, Smith said.
Sale said she hopes the merger helps maintain their stewardship of resources “in a way that we all are partnering together to be loving our community and utilizing our God-given giftings in the best capacity that we can.”
Kennedy said after they’ve wrapped their heads around this whole thing, she’s seen a renewed energy for mission. Smith said he’s also seeing an excitement about the merger on Warsaw First’s end.