Beginnings

Our church roots go back to a work started in October 1988 by Pastor Tom Polker in South Toledo; this group of people who met together informally, eventually moved to a church building on the corner of South Avenue and Spencer Street in the fall of 1990, calling themselves, “Master’s Church”. Over the course of the next several years, Pastor Tom felt drawn back to the area where he grew up and in 1995 the people from this church in South Toledo, began holding church services in the old Waterville Elementary School.

Waterville Life

The church moved into the new Waterville Elementary School in January of 1997 and continued to grow. In May of 1997 the church broke ground for its new facility on 10 acres at the corner of Dutch and Waterville-Monclova Roads and changed its name to Waterville Open Bible Church. The first service was held in the new facility on December 21st 1997. Throughout the next five years, Pastor Tom and the congregation, again, felt drawn to change. It was decided that the church would leave the Open Bible Conference, becoming more non-denominational and change its name to Waterville Community Church. As the community surrounding the church and the church itself grew, an additional service was added in the fall of 2003. Later in the fall of 2003, Pastor Tom left Waterville Community Church moving on to another church expression where he shared his extraordinary gifts of teaching and administration with the team of a great area ministry. During the pastoral search at Waterville Community Church, which lasted several months, Joe Lengel, then Youth Pastor, was asked to fill in as Lead Pastor. His unique gifts were discovered and the congregation voted in July of 2004 to offer him the position. He remained our Lead Pastor until the end of March 2011. In September the Board of Waterville Community Church presented Mike O'Shea, Metro Director of Young Life, as a pastoral candidate to the congregation. Mike had been a guest speaker numerous times at the church was well known to the community through his position with Young Life. He was affirmed by the congregation as pastor two weeks later and he started as Pastor on October 1, 2011.

The Future

Well, honestly we don’t know where we are going but we do know that we are following Jesus Christ and that’s enough. We are in the process of dreaming, dialoguing, and discovering our purpose for being in Waterville. It is our desire to mature into a group of people who will be innovative in how we express ourselves to the community in which we feel privileged to be a part. Our hope is to discover the needs and dreams that may exist here and to play a role in fulfilling them.