A Brief History of Youngstown Metro Church - By Joshua Shank

Youngstown Metro Church began as a vision that God placed within us durring our last year of Seminary. Aimee (my wife) and I are originally from the area. We grew up going to a small church on the West side of Youngstown. In 1997, we moved away to go to college at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, FL. After graduating we planned on moving back to Youngstown, but took a detour when we moved to Wake Forest, NC to pursue our masters degrees. Durring my last year of Seminary, we knew that God was calling us back to Youngstown to start a church. For several months we met with friends and others in our apartment. This was where we began working through what it meant to be a church.

Smells like coffee...

We were looking for a place to meet as a church and eventually met a Christian that owned a local coffee house in Poland, OH. Since he was closed on Sudndays, we were able to have full run of the space.

A bit of promo...

After meeting there for several months, we outgrew the small room. And started looking for a new location. Durring this time we started getting the word out about the new church. Below is a sampling of our original promo and some of the places we connected with people to tell them about what was going on. (Just in case you were wondering, this picture is from the Metro Booth at the Canfield, Fair.

Off to the gym...

From there we ended up moving into the gym of Youngstown Christian School on Southern Blvd in Boardman. It was technically our first move into the city because, even though it was in Boardman, it had a Youngstown mailing address.

Having a good time.

During this time we had an incredible time hanging out and serving together.

Moving into Youngstown...

An opportunity came for us to move into the city. It was a big jump outside of our comfort zone, but we knew that God had called had us to the city, and by his help we would make it. So, we stepped out and moved downtown into the Oakland Theater in downtown, Youngstown.

Youngstown miracle...

After our contract with the theater came to an end, we were looking for a new location. Through a crazy set of circumstances we ended up purchasing a multi-million dollar cathedral in the city for $52,500. As the story goes, the owners of the building agreed to the amount above which made us overcome with joy. We were quickly brought down to earth when we realized that no one would loan the money to our fledgling church plant. After talking to several banks, we felt completely discouraged. We brought this issue back to our sponsoring church (The Summit Church), and they told us that they would approve a loan on one condition. We had to raise half the money in cash or pledges before we could proceed. This seemed quite crazy at the time because we only had three weeks to raise the money. To be honest, I questioned whether or not we could make it. For the next two weeks we talked with our people about the special offering and collected it on the third week. We took the offering at the beginning of the gathering and at the end the offering counters gave me the paper with the final number. I was completely shocked to see how generously and sacrificially our people gave. The total given was $107,000 and a little over $70,000 was cash. It was an amazing night.

Where the story picks up.

God is writing a story - one that has been going on a long time before we began and will end a long time after we are dead. We only have one life to wrap our tiny little story around the neverending story of God. We would love for you to join us in being a part of what God is doing here.