Trinity, Oakmont move toward merger

Two Homewood United Methodist churches could soon become one. 

Oakmont UMC and Trinity UMC have been in the process of merging. As Trinity’s Senior Pastor Brian Erickson defines it, that means “leveraging two congregations’ resources to further the mission of the overall body of Christ.” 

As a result of a merger, there would be one formal church leadership structure and two campuses. The current Oakmont campus would host a congregation in West Homewood under the direction of Trinity, and Oakmont minister Jack Hinnen would serve as the Oakmont campus pastor.

According to Hinnen, Oakmont’s membership has been dwindling and no longer represents the community around it. 

 “We knew we needed do something drastic,” Hinnen said. “For Oakmont this is a very audacious attempt to do this in a new way. Truthfully, this is the biggest ask I have ever proposed to a church I have served. It’s asking people to give up a measure of control so they cannot just survive, but thrive.”

At the same time, Hinnen said Oakmont, which was started 60 years ago by a Birmingham-Southern College student, is still alive “because of community members who have said they are not going to give up.”

Trinity sees itself at a crossroads just as Oakmont does.

In its 120 years, Trinity has grown from a church serving Edgewood to having members who live as far as Chelsea or north of Gardendale. It’s what Erickson calls a “metro church… with its heart here in Homewood.” The church has recently reached its capacity for parking at its services and is close to capacity for seating inside.

“The question became do we want to squeeze more out of our space we have here, or do we want to think of ourselves as more of a mission than an institution?” Erickson said. “…We looked for ways to express ministry to reach people we can’t reach at 1400 Oxmoor Road.”

Looking at numbers, Trinity has about 3,500 members and 1,500 average attendance on Sundays, whereas Oakmont has about 200 members and 100 in attendance. At Trinity, the average age is about 36; at Oakmont it’s around 60.

Oakmont’s story is one of many churches. Locally, 96 of the 144 churches in the United Methodist Church’s two Birmingham districts have reached a plateau or declined. Every year, six or seven churches in the UMC’s North Alabama Conference close. National statistics show that many churches are declining as well, but churches that are merging and working together or creating satellite campuses are growing at 85 percent success rate.

 “There seems to be the wave of renewal in the American church doing things together rather than separately,” Erickson said.

If the merger is finalized, Oakmont UMC will continue to hold its services through around November. At that point the building will close for renovations as a team made of members of both congregations begins to plan for the future. In January 2016, church would begin happening at the Oakmont building again.

“Our goal is that something brand new would happen, and people in that community would see something that was happening,” Erickson said. “It would be something radically new and different. Trinity is not the church for everybody, and so I get excited about Trinity helping rebirth a church that doesn’t look exactly like us.”

Erickson said they would also think about ministries they could start at the new Oakmont campus that wouldn’t necessarily work at either campus now.

Trinity’s church council has already voted unanimously in favor of the merger, and Oakmont’s council was scheduled to vote on Sept. 20. A simple majority is required by the Methodist church, but a 2/3 majority is required by Alabama corporate merger laws, which also must be followed. Following the votes, legal documents must be filed to finalize the change. But Erickson believes that the merger would happen “spiritually in that moment” of the Oakmont vote.

While the Oakmont building is closed for renovations, its current congregation would be encouraged to attend services at Trinity’s Edgewood campus.

Erickson said several Trinity members have already approached him about ways to be hospitable to Oakmont members during that time, suggesting reserving a row of parking spots for them on Sunday morning and creating a Christmas ornament with Oakmont’s name on it.

Erickson believes that in some ways both churches would change and a new church would emerge. At the same time, both pastors said the unification would help strengthen the Oakmont campus.

“This is Oakmont’s 60th year, and this whole merger is an attempt at making sure Oakmont is around another 60 years,” Hinnen said. “In a lot of ways the formality of it can sound kind of scary, but in truth we are all on the same team, so I feel like this is going to produce healthier results than if we were trying to operate separately.”

Erickson thinks the change is “a tremendously bold thing” for Oakmont to consider. 

“They will go down as just as brave as the people who started the church,” he said. “They would be willing to say, ‘I am willing to change and let go of the reins of this if it reaches someone new.’ If every church thought like that, the American church wouldn’t be in decline… In some ways it would mean letting a chapter of Oakmont dissolve, and in some ways resurrection of what it’s always been about.”