Attendees at Minooka church hope new building will bring more people to Christ

MINOOKA – On June 12, The Village Christian Church held two dedication services in its new building.

For 11 years, attendees – just 20 when the church opened – had gathered at Minooka Junior High School. On May 29, The Village held an open day service where 628 people attended, said the Rev. Nate Ferguson, lead pastor.

And yet, the overall message from staff and attendees alike is this: The excitement is not about the 20,000-square-foot building on 10 acres. It’s about the increased amount of community outreach the building will facilitate.

“We’re about changing lives,” said Tim Juskiewicz, The Village attendee and the civil engineer who led the building committee.

The Village’s motto, Juskiewicz said, is “Life Change, Life Growth, Life Purpose.” Chris Balkema, who began attending The Village four years ago with his wife, Jill, and their sons, Luke, 14, and Max, 11, said the church provides a venue for them to find their strengths and grow in the Lord with the support of the other attendees.

“It shares the gift of salvation in Christ,” Balkema said. “You don’t have to be perfect to come to church.”

Juskiewicz said he and the members of the committee visited different churches, studied their features and then incorporated the elements that best suited The Village’s identity and culture into the building’s design.

“We like to socialize and share food a lot, so to have a gathering space where we could hang out before and after services was important to us,” Juskiewicz said. “It was also important to have a really great kids’ area so the kids could have fun and learn about God at the same time.”

According to a news release from the church, Kid Village is available during Sunday services for infants through fourth-graders. Murals depict village storefronts based on Bible stories: “Jonah’s Fish Market,” “Delilah’s Cut & Style” and “Noah’s Pet Shop.” Young children meet in classrooms; older kids gather in a large open space.

Juskiewicz’s wife, Susan Juskiewicz, said she and Tim began attending The Village shortly after it opened because its contemporary worship service, young demographics and “fresh take on things” appealed to them.

Susan said she appreciates The Village’s strong sense of community, volunteer spirit and lack of emphasis on membership requirements. In fact, attendees are not called members. They are people who attend, serve as the spirit moves them and grow. She is eager to see how the new building will foster even more growth.

“It’s been an exciting long process that took over a year,” Susan said. “We’ve done a lot of planning before seeing it to fruition. It’s rewarding to us.”

The fruit of the vision

Ferguson said The Village is the daughter church of First Christian Church of Morris. He said a former pastor at the Morris church had a vision of growing First Christian to 300 people and then planting daughter churches in neighboring communities.

But that vision never materialized until Ferguson became involved with the youth and young adult ministries at First Christian, a decade before The Village was established.

By his seventh and eighth years at the Morris church, Ferguson noticed First Christian was not reaching young families. In response, he and his wife, Rachelle Ferguson, decided to offer a Saturday night service to attract that age group, which quickly grew to 100 attendees, Nate said.

So when First Christian decided to launch a church in Minooka, it turned to Nate to lead it. First Christian even offered to help support The Village during its first three years. There were just two stipulations: Reach as many people as possible, and donate 10 percent of offerings to missions.

Nate said he and Rachelle prayed for direction and then dove in.

“The average age was 32, married and with two kids,” Nate said of the Minooka area at the time of the plant. “That’s exactly what my wife and I were on the day we started.”

Nate said The Village has been faithful to those two conditions.

According to the news release, The Village gave away $121,000 to missions in 2015 and has given $500,000 since the church started in 2004. The church also partners with the Northern Illinois Food Bank to provide food trucks to feed those in need. The next food truck will be at 5 p.m. June 29.

Also with The Village since the beginning is worship pastor the Rev. Jared Baker, who had worked with Nate at First Christian’s Saturday night services. He was finishing up a degree in youth ministry when he decided to forgo the last few classes and dedicate his time and gifts to The Village.

Baker said his worship style is very contemporary, but lately he’s seen an interest in the “beautiful language and strong words” of traditional hymns as well. Baker likes that attendees are “on fire” for Christ, and that fire attracts more of them to The Village.

“I think we’re going to grow like crazy,” he said.