CHURCH BUILT ON THE BACKS OF ITS MEMBERS

By Ashley Wiehe
Director of Communications

In a little town in northeast Indiana sits a church at the top of a hill — a church that found new life when others were struggling, a church that was built on the backs of its congregation, a church that stands as a rock today.

Faith Lutheran Church was founded in 1996 in Roanoke, Ind., a small town just outside of Fort Wayne. It started 30 years ago in a pole barn, but the dream was always to build a traditional church. That dream came true, beginning in 2011.

“It was always their goal,” said the Rev. Shayne Jonker, their pastor who was called to the church in 2009. He also serves as a pastor on “Worship Anew.”

The construction began on the backs of the congregation.

“Our general contractor was a member. We have crane operators. We have excavators; we have all kinds of tradesmen here,” Jonker said. “We did a lot of the work ourselves.”

They reused items from the old church building — the pews, the fixtures, and the altar. Other items, they made by hand. They hand carved the woodwork throughout the church from the doors to the molding to the pastor’s desk.

“That’s a neat thing — a lot of the wood came from members’ properties,” Jonker said.

Piece by piece, the church began to be shaped into their dream.

“We went and found all the ideas from other churches that we liked,” Jonker said. “We went to all the old churches in the Fort Wayne and Decatur areas — all these 175-year-old churches—and used the ideas that we liked.”

The church was then dedicated in 2014, but they weren’t done yet. Soon a member was calling for stained glass windows. She donated to make the first one happen.

By 2020, the white vinyl country church was showing its wear. And again, a member came forward to pay to have the entire church bricked.

“We always wanted to brick it. We put a brick ledge on it with the intention, generations down the road, that we would put up brick,” Jonker said. “I thought I’d never see it in my lifetime.”

This work was done during a time when a global pandemic was sweeping the world. And, while the building was seeing new life, the church body was growing.

“This place was just swamped. We grew during COVID,” Jonker said.

While neighboring counties were closed, their area never fully shut down. With social distancing and nine services each Sunday, the church safely provided the message to its growing population.

Now, years later, the congregation is still flourishing. They are now looking into maintenance for the building, including improvements to the original concept.

“We’re tweaking all the small stuff now,” he said. “We’re kind of redoing and doing it better for the things that we couldn’t afford to do in the past.”

Today, the church worships with about 100 people each week and has about twice that much in its baptized membership — a number that is rapidly growing with 25 new baptisms in the last five years. And as the town has grown and reshaped over the years, the church continues to see more growth in its congregation.

“We’re a very non-geographic congregation. I have people coming from everywhere,” Jonker said.

And they continue to come — each week, up the hill, to the little church. While only 30 years old, the church with its steeple has an old soul, one built on the rock of Jesus Christ.

“On this rock I will build my church.” Matthew 16:18b

Pictured Above: Faith Lutheran Church (the new building) stands as a shining beacon at the top of the hill in Roanoke, Ind.