Ginghamsburg Church

Ginghamsburg Church is located in Tipp City, Ohio, 13 miles north of Dayton, Ohio. It hosts 4500 people of all ages on its campuses each week and is one of the 10 largest United Methodist Churches in the United States.

Worship and Ministries

Ginghamsburg offers 8 worship celebrations weekly on two campuses as well as multiple house church and worshipping cell communities. Worship times on the Main Campus at 6759 S. County Rd. in Tipp City are Saturdays at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Sundays at 9, 10:15 and 11:30 a.m. Three worship celebrations are hosted at Ginghamsburg’s Fort McKinley Campus, 3721 W. Siebenthaler in Dayton, on Sundays at 9, 10:15 and 11:30 a.m.

More than 100 weekend and weeknight learning opportunities are offered weekly for all ages across all campuses. The church features forty-plus ministries that provide both spiritual growth opportunities and mission outreach opportunities locally, nationally and globally. 2800 adults, students and children participate in cell group (small group) communities annually. (See ginghamsburg.orgfor more information.)

History

Ginghamsburg Church was founded by a Methodist circuit rider, B.W. Day, in 1863 in the village of Ginghamsburg, Ohio. As a small church, until the 1920’s it was part of a four-church circuit for a part-time preacher. From the 1920’s on, students from a Dayton-based seminary served as part-time pastors for the congregation. Senior Pastor Michael (Mike) B. Slaughter was appointed to Ginghamsburg in 1979 as the first full-time pastor. At the time, the church averaged approximately 90 people in attendance. Since Mike Slaughter’s arrival, the mission of the church has been to “win the lost and set the oppressed free,” leading to the church’s exponential growth. Today, approximately 4500 people are on Ginghamsburg’s campus each week.

In the late 1980’s leading into the 1990’s, Ginghamsburg gained national recognition as an innovator in small group ministry. It was also an early frontrunner of cyberministry, or ministry via the Internet, and in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s became known as a leader of the Church “media reformation,” or movement to incorporate video and onscreen graphics into worship services as the new “stained glass window” for the late 20th century and early 21st century church.

Since 2005, Ginghamsburg Church has invested $4.4 million into sustainable relief projects into Darfur, Sudan, named by the U.N. as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, through The Sudan Project. Ginghamsburg’s strategic partner in Darfur, is the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which has used the funds to implement sustainable agriculture, child development and protection, and safe water and sanitation projects in Darfur, now serving more than 100,000 Darfuri people.

Campuses

The Main Campus at 6759 S. County Rd. 25A has two buildings. The Main Campus building hosts the Main Worship Area, the Ginghamsburg Preschool and Childcare Center (ACSI accredited) and the church administrative offices. The Avenue youth center is also located at the Main Campus and includes a coffee shop, stage area, basketball court, fitness center and game loft. Hundreds of teens from the Dayton area visit the Avenue weekly for spiritual classes as well as teen outreach events.

The South Campus is located one mile south of the Main Campus at 7695 S. County Rd. 25A. The ARK building on the South Campus is a practicum center for training events and is also the original Ginghamsburg Church building. The Discipleship Center, which served as the primary church building after the congregation had outgrown the ARK in the mid-1980’s and until the move to the Main Campus in 1994, now houses Ginghamsburg’s New Path Outreach ministries, a 501c3 non-profit that provides food pantry, car, furniture, clothing, medical equipment, pet care and other assistance ministries to those in need in surrounding communities. The New Path car and furniture ministry barn is also located at the South Campus.

The Fort McKinley Campus became part of Ginghamsburg Church in July of 2008. Prior to July 2008, Fort McKinley was a separate United Methodist congregation, located in an economically challenged urban part of Dayton, and it had dwindled to approximately 40 people in attendance weekly before voting to merge with Ginghamsburg. The church now averages 350 in weekly attendance and has an active community revitalization project known as Project Neighborhood.

Senior Pastor

Mike Slaughter, lead pastor at Ginghamsburg Church, has served at Ginghamsburg for 31 years and has become known across mainline denominations as a “spiritual entrepreneur” of ministry innovations in small group, web-based, media and missional church ministries. Since 2004 he has been a leading Christian advocate for the people of Darfur, Sudan, traveling to Darfur to visit Ginghamsburg’s projects via The Sudan Project in August 2005, June 2007 and November 2009. In 2005 and 2006, Ginghamsburg was named as one of the top 50 churches in the U.S. by The Church Report magazine. In 2007, The Church Report listed Mike as one of the top 50 most influential Christians in America. As a mentor, Mike travels globally to speak and to equip ministry leaders to maximize mission by taking the church into the world instead of simply coaxing the world into the church. He has authored multiple books with the most recent being Upside Living in a Downside Economy (Abingdon Press) and Change the World: Recovering the Message and Mission of Jesus (Abingdon Press). His book Change the World served as the basis for the April 2010 global United Methodist “Change the World” event, part of the Rethink Church initiative for the United Methodist denomination.

Mike is an ordained Elder within the United Methodist Church (UMC) and holds a Doctorate of Ministry. He was named the Foundation for Evangelism’s “Distinguished Evangelist” in 2003 and has twice received the Denman Evangelism Award from the Foundation in recognition of demonstrated leadership in promoting the United Methodist Church’s historic commitment to evangelism. In 2007, Olivet Nazarene University granted Mike the Reed Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, given in recognition of outstanding leadership.

Mike lives in Tipp City, Ohio, with his wife Carolyn, and they have two adult children, Kristen (Slaughter) Leavitt and Jonathan. (For more information or to read Mike’s blog, go to www.mikeslaughter.com.)

501c3 Non-Profits

Ginghamsburg Church houses three 501c3 non-profit organizations founded by Ginghamsburg members.

New Path Outreach provides 17 separate community services within the Dayton area, including food pantry, car, furniture, clothing, medical equipment, pet care, rent/utility assistance and other assistance ministries. (See www.ginghamsburg.org/newpath.)

New Creation Counseling Center provides affordable and professional Christian Counseling to community members, regardless of ability to pay. (See www.newcreationcounselingcenter.org.)

Clubhouse (Dreambuilders) After-School Ministry has seven Dayton-area locations where more than 400 trained teenagers each year tutor, mentor and play with children, providing safe and educational alternatives to children being home alone after school or during summer break. The Clubhouse program was awarded a Point of Light award from U.S. President George H. W. Bush and the Presidential Voluntary Action Award from U.S. President Bill Clinton. (See www.dreambuildersgroup.org.)

References

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