FORTVILLE — Bridge Church had its last service Oct. 27, but the building is not expected to be empty of worshipers for long.
Mercy Road Church anticipates closing on 611 Vitality Drive in January 2020 and launching services there in the spring.
Josh Husmann, lead pastor of Mercy Road, said he respects the ministry Bridge Church and its lead pastor, Rick Cochran, did through the years.
“Pastor Rick and I really connected. I feel so humbled and grateful that he has been so open-handed,” Husmann said. “He sacrificed so much to see that building built and that property there.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
“He and I both think God has big plans for how that property could be used in the future.”
Mercy Road is planting several churches in Central Indiana. They are not subsidiary campuses with a sermon simulcast from the main church. Each location will have its own pastor, and the goal is for each to spin off in three to five years as an independent church, a church that eventually gives away 50 percent of its income yearly “to make an impact in the community,” Husmann said.
Ten years ago, Husmann was a pastor in southern California. In 2010, he went to a conference in Georgia; one night after the day’s sessions, he was praying in his hotel room and felt God calling him to start a church in Indiana.
He and his family moved, and Mercy Road Church was launched in September 2011. It leased a location for several years before buying a former Borders bookstore at 116th Street and Keystone Avenue in Carmel, where about 1,000 people worship each week. It planted another church on Massachusetts Avenue in downtown Indianapolis in January.
Husmann said Mercy Road and Bridge connected through members in each congregation who are friends; they knew Mercy Road had been looking some 20 months for a building. They also knew Bridge was looking for a good transition, someone who “would be able to carry on the legacy,” said Daron Earlewine of Mercy Road.
Cochran did not respond to email and phone messages seeking comment. Bridge Church member Jacki Kennedy wrote in an email to the Daily Reporter that he and wife Jill “will take a long-deserved sabbatical and consider what lies ahead for them in their service to Christ.”
She wrote that even after that last service, the church played host to a Trunk or Treat on Oct. 31. It was also the site for a multi-church effort to give away Thanksgiving dinner groceries on Nov. 16.
Kennedy also wrote, “We see this as an opportunity to expand our church base and fulfill the vision Pastor Rick Cochran had when they broke ground at the Bridge Church.”
Before that congregation met at 611 Vitality Drive, it met at Fortville Baptist Church in a building at 10 W. Church St., which later became Ten West Center for the Arts.
According to county records, the 18-acre campus at 611 Vitality Drive is valued at $1.2 million. The building, built in 2005, is about 18,000 square feet. Kennedy wrote it would be renovated and expanded.
The new site will have its own pastor speaking during services. Earlewine — who leads Blackbird Mission and is known as “Pastor Daron” on radio station WZPL’s Smiley Morning Show and Radio Theology — said he will not be the pastor at the Fortville building, but he will sometimes be the person speaking in services.
Husmann said some of the people worshiping at Mercy Road in Carmel live closer to 611 Vitality Drive and would welcome a shorter commute to services.
Earlewine said there’s “a good core group” who plan to call the new site their church home. He also said a monthly Worship on the Water series over the summer at Wolfies Grill in Geist drew people in the area — some of whom were already part of Mercy Road, and some of whom weren’t regular churchgoers but were also excited about services starting in Fortville.
He thinks the location could be a good fit for people in not only Fortville, but also Pendleton, Lawrence and Geist. He said he hopes the main identity of the church will not be about its address but about being “a source of hope and of faith and of love” for the area.
“No one is too far from God to experience life change through Jesus.”
