Our Story
How We Started
Jonathon and Meghan moved to Huntington in summer 2019 so that Jonathon could begin serving as a humanities and theology teacher at Covenant School. For the next two and half years, Jonathon and Meghan drove to Charleston every Sunday to worship with the saints at Hope Church. Although Jonathon knew that he was called to pastoral ministry, and while he longed to see a flourishing Anglican church in Huntington, it was not clear to him that he was equipped for church planting. Beginning in 2020 and 2021, however, the Lord began to lay the groundwork for a new Anglican ministry in Huntington.
First, Jonathon’s love for the city of Huntington deepened. He longed to see it prosper, and he perceived that the local church should play a major role in bringing Goodness, Truth, and Beauty to the city. Next, Meghan also saw the need for an Anglican church in Huntington, and the Holy Spirit spoke through her to encourage Jonathon toward church planting. Finally, several people came out of the woodwork asking for an Anglican church. By the fall of 2021, it was becoming increasingly apparent that a new work was beginning.
The key moment came in mid-December 2021 when a group of friends were together for a Christmas party. At that event, one of them pulled out his calendar and approached Jonathon with the pointed question: When are we starting a church? We put January 5, 2022 on the calendar as our first meeting. Some twenty-five people met that evening in the home of one of our founding families. We offered Evening Prayer and began to dream about planting an Anglican church in Huntington.
Throughout the winter, spring, and summer of 2022, we continued to dream and discuss what it would entail to bring an Anglican church to Huntington. Our first service of Holy Communion was on Ash Wednesday, 2022 at Christ Community Church. Our first baptisms were at the Great Easter Vigil six weeks later. We continued to meet for Evening Prayer every Wednesday until June, normally at Missio Dei church. Starting in the summer of 2022, we began to meet on Sunday afternoons, either for Evening Prayer or Holy Communion.
Our church formally launched on October 2, 2022. Bishop Julian Dobbs and his wife Brenda were with us as we baptized three children and welcomed a crowed of 67 people. In May 2023, the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word formally received Church of the Resurrection as a congregation of the diocese.
We presently meet at the B’nai Sholom synagogue on Sunday mornings at 9:30. We continue to pray fervently that the Lord would bless our church and cause it to bear good fruit for his Kingdom.