God Is Up To Something!
On August 9th, two churches did something rarely seen—they unified and became a single faith-family. Pastor Mike Pless and Pastor Bryan Catherman signed the Unification Agreement, a plan that was overwhelmingly approved by the vote of both churches. Moving forward as one church named Redeeming Life Church, they will meet for worship at 696 North 400 East in Bountiful, Utah.
But a church plant and a seasoned church merging isn’t the amazing part of this story. That happens from time to time. In the case of Redeeming Life, a man who has served as the Pastor of Good Shepherd Fellowship (formerly FSBC of Bountiful) since 1995 has humbled himself to minister under the leadership of a younger man—Pastor Bryan, who is the Lead Pastor of the unified church. Pastor Mike will help transition the church into newly merged ministries and out of COVID. Then, he’ll retire from paid ministry. Yet, his relationship with Pastor Bryan is one of friendship and mentorship. After his retirement in December, he will remain a pastor at Redeeming Life, serving us as our Pastor Emeritus and serving as a pastor to Bryan and his family.
“In 64 years, I’ve never seen anything like this” said one man after the the service. Another man, Perry Nelson, wrote a blog about what he saw on Sunday. It’s titled “Schism and Anti-Schism” and may also be found on the Good Shepherd Fellowship website. Others commented about the spirit and joy felt in-person and on Zoom. On Sunday evening, we celebrated with a socially-distanced, individually wrapped ice-cream social. The atmosphere was jovial and already felt like one big family party.
God has been putting the steps in place for this unification for years. Pastor Mike spoke about in during our unification service. You can also see it between the lines when you read our story. However, we are well aware of the road ahead. Now, the work really begins.
Many of our friends and partners have asked what they can do to help. We’re thankful for everyone who has been a part of getting us here and will continue partnering with us as we move forward. We still need lots of prayer. (Sign up for our Prayer Update Letter here.) We’ll also need your friendship, ideas, and wisdom. We’re updating a number of physical things in the building (mainly, sound, video, and internet gear) to move the ministry and outreach forward. We’re got all the necessary changes with the name (especially the sign and outreach print materials). Some of these things require funds. And we’ll still need help reaching this lost place. We hope you might still continue to send mission teams, interns, and even sending people to live in Utah as missionaries. There’s still lots of Kingdom work to do!
If you missed our unification service, you can watch the entire service. If you’d prefer you can watch just the sermon here, or listen to the sermon here.
If you’d like to listen to the sermon through your podcast app, subscribe to our sermon feeds on iTunes, Google Music, Spotify, TuneIn, or on the RSS feed and never miss a sermon! Do you prefer watching the sermon on YouTube? Consider subscribing to our channel here and find all of Redeeming Life's videos here.