MISSION CLEVELAND STORY
During fall of 2016, a small community of Clevelanders attending Mission Chattanooga began to dream and pray about initiating a local parish closer to home. Under the leadership of Jake Stum, this core group began to meet quarterly for Eucharistic services, tithing toward a future church plant, and fellowshipping informally in each other's homes. In January of 2017, monthly services were initiated, then on the first Sunday of Advent 2017, weekly worship services began.
In our earliest days, our weekly services were held in an industrial event venue called the Old Woolen Mill. From there we quickly formed a partnership with First Cumberland Presbyterian Church, who graciously rented us their sanctuary space in the evenings from 2018-2021. In the spring of 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic, our founding pastor Jake Stum stepped down to work for the Anglican Relief and Development Fund, and Fr Luke Campbell assumed the lead pastor position. In discerning a call to be an incarnational church embedded in a developing neighborhood, we then moved our services to the Blythe Oldfield Community Development Building where we met in a gym. In the spring of 2023, we formed a relationship with a local Methodist Church and began to rent an unused church building in their possession just a mile away from our previous location.
Embedding ourselves in our current neighborhood has been something we long to do intentionally, creatively, and well. We desire to be a place of welcome, peace, and healing to the families that live to our left and our right. During the summer of 2023 we hosted monthly neighborhood cookouts, to which we invited residents by going door to door with cookies and smiles. Our current Design Team has also worked to transform our previously vacant church building into a peaceful and delightful gathering place, including improving our playground equipment and planting blueberry bushes and wildflowers in our outdoor spaces. We continue to seek out ways to be a blessing in our current space by keeping our eyes open to the needs around us and looking to serve our neighbors above ourselves.
MISSION CHATTANOOGA STORY
In September of 2009, seven missionaries and their four children moved from Connecticut/NYC to plant the Mission Chattanooga. They knew no one in Chattanooga, but they felt called here through a dream that God gave to Angie Sorensen. In February of 2010, the Mission launched its first worship service, Evensong. Over time, the Mission began to grow. The Mission Chattanooga now has hundreds of worshipers each week.
Stanwich Heritage - Evensong (the first worshiping community of the Mission) was originally born as a community within Stanwich Church, in Greenwich, CT, a historic New England church that is over 280 years old. In August of 2009, a team of seven adults, including the co-founder of Evensong, Chris Sorensen, felt led to move to Chattanooga to plant The Mission. Stanwich is a church that has long been dedicated to finding a balance between truth and grace. The Mission Chattanooga has been tremendously influenced by Stanwich Church and sees itself as its daughter.
The Brainerd Mission - In 1817, a Mission was formed in the Chattanooga area to reach out to the Cherokee people and African-American slave population in the region. This community, named the Brainerd Mission, soon became a vibrant and unusually healthy multi-ethnic congregation. Whites and Cherokee worshiped side by side with black slaves. The Brainerd Mission, founded by a group of Congregationalists from New England, was avidly opposed to the enslavement of blacks. In some cases these missionaries were even jailed for possessing anti-slavery literature and teaching black children to read and write. As the views of these missionaries became more broadly known, many slaves were drawn to the Brainerd Mission. These slaves would often travel up to 17 miles (a long distance in those days) to worship at the Brainerd Mission alongside the Cherokee and whites. The Cherokee and slaves also were educated side by side within the Brainerd Mission. At its peak, they even utilized both Cherokee and African-American slaves as educators and translators.
Although not without difficulties, controversies and imperfections, the work of the Brainerd Mission continued to prosper until the devastating Cherokee removal of 1838. The Missionaries opposed this policy, and many of the Missionaries journeyed with their Cherokee brethren on the trail of tears. Among those who went was Rev. Daniel Butrick, whose journal provides one of the most informative accounts of the horrific event. [see Ties That Bind, by Tiya Miles].
In the spirit of those Missionaries from long ago, the goal of The Mission Cleveland is to gather all types of people to live in a vibrant, socially engaged community of faith that is richly rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ.