One Church Aims To Preserve The Legacy of Bethel Pentecostal Church
Pastors Jathan and Veverly Austin are announcing that One Church Empowerment Center, located at 3075 30th St. S.W. Grandville, Michigan, will now be known to this community as Bethel Empowerment Church.
In this interview with the GR Times, Pastor Jathan Austin, discusses the reason for the name change, what people can expect when they visit the church, preserving Bishop Abney's legacy and more.
GRT: What led to the changing of the name of One Church Empowerment Center?
Pastor Austin: It was around May of 2019, when my wife and I went on a sabbatical in the Bahamas when we were engaged in this moment with God and a certain Prophet who really began to deal with our future and the future of the church and began to share some heavy things with my wife and me.
It was concerning where we were in life and some major decisions had to be made an d that made us start going into a lot of soul searching, praying, consecrating and really seeking what was the will or vision in our personal lives and in ministry. So from that point, we began enquiring from stakeholders in our ministry, people we trusted and really started to put an advisory committee around us who really began to share, their hearts about where we were in ministry, where we had succeeded and areas where we felt as though we didn't do as well as we would have like to have done.
GRT: Did the late Bishop Abney have anything to do with the name change decision?
Pastor Austin: After hearing the hearts and voices of those that were around us, the Lord really began dealing with me personally about going back and resurrecting the legacy of Bethel. I had no clue that we would be going back to the name, to be honest. It was more like let's look at what things made Bethel the foundation of One Church strong and see where we are not doing those things and where we can resurrect those things.
The more that we started to have conversation around that, it really became apparent to us who we were as a ministry and as a church. What One Church did was allow us to create a progressive uniqueness, but our foundation was Bethel and when we embraced that moment is when we made a conscious decision to have conversations over three months. A few committees began having difficult conversations about who we were and we all came to the conclusion that we are Bethel.
What does that look like? You have two legacies that now really need to become one church and our church doesn't need to be split in this foundation of Bethel, but this progressive ministry called One Church but we needed to position ourselves in a different manner and marry the two.
It was a humbling experience to change the name but we really felt as though it was necessary that we make it clear to those who didn't know Bethel that this history goes back so much farther than what they see at One Church in Grandville. Bishop Abney's legacy in this city needs to stay in tact and I feel that we have a responsibility to make sure that it happens.
We think that it is important for people coming into the church to see the narrative.
One of the things that you they will also notice is a wall showing the different buildings that Bethel Pentecostal Church was in and a story being told so that those who don't know can really grab the history of who this church is.
The new vision includes a choir, a community intergeneration choir, ages 10 and up, that does not require church membership to participate.
Our services will be an integration of all ages and the youth will be separate from the main church experience.
Our tag is: One church, One family, One vision; we are Bethel.
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