THE CHURCH
Port Clinton Bible Methodist Church in Port Clinton, Ohio
THE CHALLENGE
An outreach-focused church began to outgrow their building.
ONE BIG IDEA
Transform an empty grocery store into church facilities and an outreach center.
Church growth is hard to anticipate. Port Clinton Bible Methodist Church knows this all too well. After starting in 1996 as a Bible study in someone’s basement, it grew as invites increased. More people came, some of whom drove over an hour to get there. As numbers ballooned, it became clear that God was calling them to start a church.
In 1998, the burgeoning church rented a small storefront and launched Pilgrim Chapel. For the next two years, different ministers took turns preaching until June 2000 when the church called Senior Pastor Deron Fourman to lead them.
Located in Port Clinton, Ohio, which is at the mouth of the Portage River on Lake Erie, the church changed its name to Port Clinton Bible Methodist and focused on community outreach. The church is part of the Bible Methodist Connection of Churches (biblemethodist.org.) They added a Kids Club, which serves more than 80 children each week during the school year. The church purchased a 15-passenger van, and every Wednesday evening they continue to pick up students ages grade school through high school and bus them back to church for a hot meal, a lesson and an opportunity for mentoring.
Every spring the church holds a giant 5,000-egg Easter egg hunt at a city park, and last winter they hosted a Christmas supper outreach, feeding families and distributing gifts to underresourced children. They also sent a ham home with each family.
According to Fourman, this summer they plan to host a community-wide yard sale, inviting anyone in the city who wants to have a yard sale to set up shop in the church’s parking lot, free of charge.
“Instead of people driving down every street [looking for garage sales], we will provide a venue as well as hot dogs, hamburgers and bottles of water,” he explains.
Though its focus on meeting the community’s needs was growing exponentially, Port Clinton Bible still didn’t have the space to have a community center. In fact, between 2000 and 2024, the church continued to outgrow their worship spaces, which included rented buildings, union halls and a double-wide office building. At one point, they became so packed that about 30 attendees stopped coming.
“We did nothing to correct that [overcrowding], and that was a mistake,” admits Fourman. “We learned that you either have to have a vision to move forward or you will go back.”
They wanted to be sure that didn’t ever happen again, so in 2024 when the vacant, 32,000-square-foot grocery store across the street from their location went up for sale, the church decided to buy and renovate it.
“It was a huge step for us,” says Fourman, noting that Port Clinton Bible is far from a megachurch, averaging a weekly attendance of 120 people.
This move, however, would not only give them room to grow, but also would enable them to do a lot more to fulfill their mission of being a church focused on “building the kingdom, one life at a time.”
So far, the church has completed one phase of a four-phase plan. They have created a fellowship hall, new bathrooms and a kitchen, but they also want to have an outreach center, a gymnasium to host 3-on-3 basketball tournaments, offices and Sunday school space. Fourman envisions a youth center where kids can shoot pool and play ping-pong. Outdoor basketball courts and pickleball courts may also be in the cards.
Over the past 25 years, Fourman, who also acts as Sheriff’s chaplain for the city, has become entrenched in the community.
“I can’t go anywhere in town without seeing someone I know,” he says.
The church—which has the goal of being a place where everyone can find God’s grace and grow in their relationship with him—is full of people from every denomination, every walk of life and every stage of spiritual growth, according to Fourman. “We are here to serve the people of this community,” he adds, “not for them to come in and serve us.”
In the summer, Port Clinton swells to more than double its size, going from 15,000 residents during the winter to up to 30,000 thanks to all the boaters and campers who vacation on Lake Erie.
“We have more people walking in now since we went to a newer building,” says Fourman. “It’s rare not to have a new person every Sunday, which we love.”