VILONIA, Ark. – Located just off of US-64 in Faulkner County, The Summit Church Vilonia kicked off its first official Sunday services on October 4 after having to reschedule a couple of times due to COVID-19.
Dave McClung, the pastor of Summit Church Vilonia, said they initially held preview services with their core group leading up to the launch date and determined, based on those numbers, that they would probably need to provide two services, one at 9 a.m. and another at 10:45 a.m.
On Sunday they saw a total of 292 people in the two services. There were 111 in the first service with about 30 in the children’s service, and 181 in the second service. They also were able to baptize two students who had accepted Christ recently.
“I’d kinda been praying for 200, and I thought we’d get close,” McClung said. “But the Lord just kind of blew that out of the water.”
Summit Vilonia had been planning to launch at the end of August to early September following some preview services until COVID-19 hit in March. They then opted to try to launch the Sunday following Labor Day weekend, but with another uptick in cases predicted, they decided to wait until the first weekend in October.
McClung said they settled on that date because schools would be in session by then, so if cases did rise again and things were shut down, they would have plenty of time to prepare rather than to start for a couple of weeks and then be shut down again. “It really worked out well,” McClung said. “We’d been praying that nothing would happen to prevent us from launching on that day and it all worked out.”
Summit Church Vilonia will continue with two services at 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. every Sunday. To get more information on this church plant, click here.