Photo by Frank Couch.
Brian Erickson Jack Hinnen Trinity UMC
Trinity UMC Head Pastor Brian Erickson and Oakmont UMC Pastor Jack Hinnen stand inside Trinity's sanctuary.
Two Homewood United Methodist churches will soon become one.
Both church councils have voted unanimously in favor of the merger, or as Trinity’s Rev. Brian Erickson defines it, “leveraging two congregations’ resources to further the mission of the overall body of Christ.”
As a result of the merger, there will be one formal church leadership structure and two campuses. The current Oakmont campus will host a congregation in West Homewood under the direction of Trinity, and Oakmont minister Jack Hinnen will 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According to Hinnen, Oakmont’s membership has been dwindling and no longer represents the community around it.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.”
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. 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.
“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.”
Once 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. The goal is that 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.”
While the Oakmont building is closed for renovations, its current congregation would be encouraged to attend services at Trinity’s Edgewood campus.
Erickson said he believes that in some ways both churches will change, a new church would emerge. At the same time, 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.”
For a full version of this story, see the October issue of The Homewood Star, which will be available the week of Sept. 21.
