History

Cape Coral Campus

 

In 1978, the Bishop of the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist appointed David Kelley to begin a new congregation in what was then the outer band of the growing city of Cape Coral.  Many thought the church location was “too far north” in the city limits and that it would be decades before anyone lived in that area.  Those prognosticators were wrong.  The city of Cape Coral was on the front end of explosive growth.

 

From 1978 to 1993 under David Kelley’s leadership, Grace United Methodist Church grew from a handful of worshippers to over 1000 members.  During Dr. Kelley’s tenure the Fellowship Hall, two classroom wings and Sanctuary was built. 

 

From 1993 to 1996, Jim McWhinnie gave remarkable leadership.  He was the pastor that introduced the Walk to Emmaus to our fellowship. 

 

In 1996, the Bishop of the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church appointed Jorge Acevedo to guide and lead a now eighteen-year-old congregation.  Sadly, Grace Church was on a five-year decline.   The community had changed but we had not.  Interestingly enough, Cape Coral had dramatically changed from 1978 when Grace United Methodist Church was planted.  In 1978, the average age in Cape Coral was 68.  By 1996, the average age had dropped to 38.  In eighteen years, the average age in Cape Coral had dropped thirty years!   The city was primed for a relevant, growing church!  And as only God could orchestrate, Grace Church was ready for a dramatic transformation as well!

 

The amazing turn around at Grace Church was fueled by a relatively small group of women and men who had been on the Walk to Emmaus and experienced the grace of God through the body of Christ.  Their prayer work long preceded Jorge’s arrival at Grace Church.  They prayed revival and renewal to us.  They knew things could be better at their church that they loved.  They wanted to experience the power and presence of the Holy Spirit at their church on the corner of Hancock Bridge Parkway and Southeast 21^st Place in Cape Coral and not just six weekends a year at the United Methodist Camp in La Belle.  They are the real behind-the-scene heros.  Jim and Sue Haynes, Jim and Joyce Joray, Ron and Venia Joray, Ray and Betsy Bockner and a handful of others wore their knees out asking their heavenly Father to breathe new life into Grace Church!

 

A few days after arriving, Becky Brown who had been hired as a bookkeeper walked into Jorge’s office and told him that there was $29.16 in the checking account.  To make matters worse, Grace Church had a 1.2 million dollar loan on the Sanctuary, $20,000 in unpaid bills and a letter from the IRS about back payroll taxes that were due. 

 

But the finances were only the evidence of a deeper and more destructive issue.  Grace Church was filled with wonderful Christ-followers who had lost their way.  They had forgotten that the Church of Jesus was to be a Spirit-led missionary movement making the realities of heaven the realities of earth.  Great pastors who modeled vision driven churches had mentored Jorge.  So that fall, Jorge began to pray, “God what is your vision for Grace Church?”  One morning in his study at the parsonage, Jorge penned the following words:

 

God’s Vision for Grace Church:  To partner with God in transforming people from unbelievers to fully devoted disciples of Jesus to the glory of God.

 

Shortly after that, he shared it with the small staff and later a group of leaders.  The Holy Spirit had placed that vision in the hearts of many of the staff and leaders.  The ones who “got it” stayed and worked to make it a reality.  A few left because this vision was not in their hearts. 

 

Jorge spent his first nine Sundays at Grace Church preaching a series called The Exciting Church!  The first week, he introduced a biblical picture of the exciting church that was envisioned by the Father, established by the Son and empowered by the Spirit.  Then he asked them to join him in praying, surrendering and obeying God’s will for their life and Grace Church.  The next eight weeks Jorge spoke on the exciting church where people love, grow, pray, gather, worship, witness, give and serve.  His hope was to re-image the church.   His job was to paint a picture of a preferred future that was compelling.  He wanted to paint a picture of our future together that was invitational in nature and yet challenging.

 

The seeds planted over those nine weeks have borne great fruit since 1996.  The very first initiative of the “new” Grace Church was Stephen Ministry.  Nancy Ewing on our staff made an appointment for Jorge to meet with her and Jan Gilbert.  They told Jorge of their vision for beginning Stephen Ministry at Grace Church.  He knew of the power of this powerful Christian care-giving ministry.  He had it in his two previous churches.  The vision was not the problem in those early days.  Money was.  We were broke!  Nancy and Jan told Jorge that for us to sign up and be trained would take about $2000.  Call it naivety or stupidity, but Jorge said to them, “Let’s go for it and see if God provides.”  On faith, Stephen Ministry was begun.  Though we can try, only God knows the hundreds and maybe thousands of people who have been touched by Grace Church Stephen Ministers since the first class was commissioned in 1998.  Only God knows how many tears have been wiped away; how many hands have been held; how many prayers have been offered; how much comfort has been extended!  Only God!  Stephen Ministry set the tone for a new day at Grace Church.  This ministry is biblically based, needs oriented, and lay empowered. Stephen Ministry was the first in my estimation.

 

Paul and Toni Marzella came to Grace Church in late 1996.  Convinced by the Holy Spirit to invest in middle and high school students they masterfully led our Student Ministries until 2001.  Under their amazing leadership, hundreds of students experienced life change in Jesus.

 

Teaching our people to do relational evangelism was birthed in those early days.  We taught our people the biblical value that lost people matter and that we needed to be the exciting church were people witness. And they began to invite their unchurched friends.  The major evangelistic turn around came in 1997 when we launched our contemporary worship service.  That first Sunday in September of 1997, 261 people showed up.  It settled in at around 150.  Within nine months it was the largest service.  On its one-year anniversary, we moved into our Sanctuary and a year later we did the unthinkable.  We canceled the 11:00 traditional service and began a second contemporary service.  Since September of 1997 at our Cape Coral campus, we have grown in Sunday worship attendance from 500 to over 1600.  And the vast majority is from the ranks of the unchurched, once-churched or over-churched!

 

In September 1998, Nancy Ewing and a team of volunteers with a passion for children’s started a new style of children’s ministry.   Modeled after the Willow Creek Community Church’s Promiseland, Grace Place was born.  With praise and worship, a biblical message and small group elements, Grace Place exploded.  Heather Evans became our Children’s Pastor and grew a huge team of volunteers who served the children. 

 

In January 2001, our major evangelistic initiative was a recovery ministry.  In January 2001, we began Celebrate Recovery, a biblically based; Christ centered twelve-step recovery service.  That service has grown to include a weekly BBQ, worship service, small groups and coffee house.  This happens every Friday night.  At the same time, we began our immersion services.  We have baptized more felons, ex-cons, former prostitutes, alcoholics, and drug addicts than you can shake a stick at.    This is kingdom stuff and it’s addictive!   Every Friday night, we see between 400-500 people at Celebrate Recovery and over 700 people in weekly recovery ministries hosted by Grace Church.

 

Later, in September 2001, Jan Gilbert, one of our leaders, had been to a Global Focus Conference in Georgia and returned to Grace Church on fire.  And soon, her fire spread.  For months, we planned a Global Focus week at Grace Church.  At our Wednesday night, New Community service, we would invite Dan Betzer, Senior Pastor at First Assembly of God in Fort Myers.  He is a giant in world missions.  Then on Friday night and Saturday morning, Dick McLain and his team from the Mission Society for United Methodist would lead as many core leaders from Grace Church that we could get to attend through a seminar on becoming a globally focused church.  Sunday morning, Dick McLain would preach.  Neil and Mary Hicks, missionaries from Japan, would meet with as many small groups as possible during the week.  As Jan and her team planned this week; we never could have imagined the change that would occur in our church.

 

Jorge’s personal defining moment came on Saturday at the Global Focus seminar. The Harvest video that closed the seminar broke Jorge.  Dick had asked Jorge to close the seminar with prayer.  Jorge stood to pray.  After several minutes of silence, he asked the people to join him at the altar to pray.  With tears running down his face, the Holy Spirit gently convicted him of my leadership sin of omission.  The Spirit revealed to Jorge that as a pastor he had been seduced into a “Jerusalem-only ministry.”  It was not intentional, but it was the truth.  In his zeal to reach the lost of Cape Coral and the surrounding area, he had forgotten about the world.

 

Jorge asked God for forgiveness that Saturday.  He told God that if He would give him another chance, he would do all I could with His help to lead Grace Church to be a globally-focused church.   Now, please hear.  Grace Church is still red-hot to reach our Jerusalem.  With God’s help that will never change.  God has just expanded our vision to partner with him in reaching the 1.7 billion people who have no access to the gospel.  Re-reading Acts 1:8, we noticed how Jesus used the word “and.”  He said, “…you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”    Jesus never said, “Reach your Jerusalem first, THEN go to Judea, Samaria and the rest of the world.” Jesus meant for us to have a biblically balanced church with a passion and a strategy to reach lost people in our backyard and around the world!

 

Another defining moment for Grace Church happened in March 2002.   Jorge went with Dick Wills, Phil Roughton, Dale Locke and Mike Sullivan  to Hawaii to spend a week with Wayne Cordeiro, pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship.  At the age of 42 with a wonderful education and nearly twenty years of ministry under his belt, Jorge found myself struggling with a daily time with God.  As only God could orchestrate, this trip to New Hope for Jorge was not about learning leadership lessons from one of the world’s most amazing Christian pastors and leaders, but about coming home to his first love.  The Holy Spirit orchestrated what can only describe as a complete reorientation and revolution in Jorge’s walk with Jesus.  He began for the first time in his twenty-five year relationship with Jesus a consistent discipline of daily Bible reading and journaling what the Holy Spirit revealed to him.  Jorge saw modeled in Wayne that week a leader who led his life well.  Upon returning home to Grace Church, Jorge introduced the University of the Holy Spirit as a model for spending time daily with Jesus.

 

In late 2003, Jorge threw out the possibility of Grace Church adopting a low functioning church in a high-growth area to Dr. Sharon Patch, District Superintendent of the Fort Myers District.  As only the Holy Spirit can arrange both Sharon and our Bishop were considering the same possibility.  There was a church seventeen miles from us that was struggling.  There were about 50-70 people attending weekly.  A huge developer in southwest Florida had purchased thousands of acres across the street from it and was beginning development.  We began talking with the church in January of 2004.   By February, we came to an agreement on this new initiative.  By March, the Bishop and the Cabinet concurred with our selection of the Campus Pastor and by June 15, Casey Neely was on property ready to lead the church.  We became one church in two locations.

 

Fort Myers Shores Campus

 

After some conversation with the Fort Myers District Superintendent in late 2003 and early 2004, on June 20th, 2004 Olga, Fort Myers Shores United Methodist Church was adopted by Grace United Methodist Church in Cape Coral, FL.  The Olga Fort Myers Shores United Methodist Church was a dying congregation in a community with great need and on the verge of great growth.  Grace Church adopted this congregation in the hopes of transforming the church and in turn transforming the community.  When the Olga-Ft. Myers Shores campus became a part of Grace Church, the same vision was adopted:  “To partner with God in transforming people from unbelievers to fully devoted disciples of Jesus, to the glory of God.”  What this meant for the OFMS campus was that we would refocus all our efforts toward that goal and become a growing and thriving congregation changing lives through Jesus Christ.   On that first Sunday, we held one service and invited the District Superintendent to preside over a special Unity Ceremony, where representatives from both churches made commitments to one another and then took the two flames of a unity candle and lit them into one.  About 25 Cape Coral members decided to make a two-year commitment to join those at the Fort Myers Shores Campus to launch this new effort.  Pastor Casey preached a message on Ephesians 3-4 with a special emphasis on the scripture saying “God can do more than we ask for or imagine!”  We have seen that promise become a reality!

 

This campus has grown and developed in many ways since 2004.  Sunday morning worship attendance has grown from about 60 to over 300 people!  Teams are active in spiritual formation, connection, outreach and missions.  A Celebrate Recovery ministry began in 2006.  We regularly hold adult new believer baptism services at the river and celebrate lives being changed through God’s power and love! 

 

One of the first decisions that we made was to remove the “For Church Use Only” sign on the basketball court and to clean out classrooms filled with rummage sale items to make room for ministry to children and adults.  One of the long time leaders, who had been a huge rummage sale supported, caught the vision and stood up on Sunday morning and proclaimed “We are out of the rummage business and now we are in the children’s business!”  That first summer the Cape Coral campus sent volunteers and supplies to the Fort Myers Shores Campus to host a Vacation Bible School outreach event.  We worked hard to get things prepared, but a week before VBS, we only had one child signed up!  We prayed and fasted and hit the streets with invitations.  That week we had 50 children and youth at Vacation Bible School!  God is good! 

 

Within days of removing the “For church use only!” sign on our basketball court, youth and adults began playing on the court.  We began to talk to the players and dream about a ministry that might reach these youth that God was sending us.  We would see these and other youth wandering the streets all hours of the day and night, and we heard story after story of youth getting into trouble and lacking positive activities.  After prayer and an overwhelming sense of direction from God, we began our youth ministry called Prime Time.  We designed the ministry around the needs and interests of the kids we met in the community.  We began by having hang out time with basketball, football, volleyball, pool, ping pong and air hockey.   We fed them a snack each night, but we soon realized that the youth were hungry and were not eating a meal on Prime Time nights.  Many of the youth walked over to Prime Time straight from school and stayed at the church till 8:30 or 9:00pm.  Seeing the need, we began to provide a full meal and now we have partnered with the local food bank to get food at a minimal cost.  After the meal, the youth are invited to attend small groups where discipleship happens. 

 

Twenty kids showed up the first night, thirty the next week, and now we have about 100 children and youth each week.  We have been amazed!  The response was almost beyond belief, and confirmed the need and hunger for a safe, enjoyable and meaningful youth ministry in this area.  We have been equally amazed by the diversity among the youth.  These youth are African-American, Hispanic, and Caucasian and many of them are very far from God.  Each week they experience and hear about a God who loves them! 

 

An event that captures the heart behind the amazing transformation that has happened, was called “The Extreme Church Makeover.”  We noticed that the facilities were in great need of renovation and updating.   The paint had faded and chipped.  Things were falling apart.   Algae was growing up the walls outside the church.  Something needed to be done.  The call went out throughout Grace Church for volunteers.  The response was awesome!  Over 100 people came out for one workday and renovated most of the facilities.  Then over the next month, volunteers continued to work to finish the beautiful transformation of the buildings.  What happened in the Extreme Makeover is a physical representation of what has happened spiritually in this congregation and community.  Through the adoption of this church and work to become 1 church in 2 locations, God has resurrected this community of faith into one that is beautifully building the kingdom of God.

 

North Fort Myers Campus/ Grace Community Center

 

In 2006, The Cape Coral campus of Grace Church began to seek God’s guidance in continuing the vision God had given.  God began to unfold the next natural step of obedience among our leaders.  After a season of prayer and discernment, God clearly revealed that His Vision was not complete, despite the fact that our current facilities were full of activity the entire week.  In the Fall of 2006, the leaders determined God was calling them to expand both the preaching and healing ministries of the church.   We began to sense that God was calling us to reach the people nobody else sees – the poor and marginalized, those with HIV AIDS, the unemployed, single parents, and others who suffer quietly and often invisibly in our own community.

 

Soon, the Sunday morning prayer expanded to… “God, send us the people nobody else wants…AND the people nobody else sees.”

 

For over five years, there had been a clear need for additional worship space to reach more people.  This urgency became energized when combined with a Spirit-led calling to take the logical next step in helping people find healing and transformation through Christ.  It was no longer enough to help people get saved and sober and then simply return them to the unemployment line.  It was no longer acceptable to help a single mother find Jesus and recover from a divorce without also helping her get her G.E.D.  A holy discontent began to emerge at watching local officials deal with gang violence when we knew that Jesus is the One to bring peace to the lives of troubled teens.

 

In September 2006, the dream for the Grace Community Center was born.  The Grace United Methodist Church Community Center is to be a place where people can both hear the Good News and find healing.  God provided Grace Church with the opportunity to acquire a Winn Dixie Superstore that had closed the previous year. We were blessed to have a contact that allowed Grace to purchase the property instead of it being sold to Wal-Mart.  But Grace had to act quickly because we had to close within ninety days!  Thankfully, with an established relationship with Generis Consulting, we were prepared to launch a capital campaign called “Imagine.”  Over 1000 giving units contributed to this campaign and we were able to raise $2.8 million dollars, including one million dollars in cash with an additional 1.8 million pledged over a three year period.

 

This is a place where community events are scheduled to include family fun nights, regular worship services, and recovery meetings with seating available to over 1,000 people.  The building will also house free and reduced-fee medical care, automotive, and culinary arts vocational training, meals-on-wheels, an after school program for at risk youth, a food bank, GED training, and a computer lab.  The thrift store, a coffee shop, moving company, and bookstore will both raise revenue and provide much needed job experience for people.

 

This 56,000 square foot facility and its ministries will not only greatly impact the Cape Coral/North Fort Myers area, but also the Route 41 corridor between Tampa and Naples.  We believe that each individual who is snatched from a life of violence and addictions helps to reduce the crime rate in the communities of Southwest Florida.

 

Teams are already under development to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, heal the sick, and educate the uneducated. Renovations and remodeling are now underway and we expect to complete the first phase of the build out in the first half of this year.

 

We at Grace Church believe that it is the responsibility—the obligation—of the local church to love our neighbors and our neighborhoods.  Research has shown that in many areas across the United States, the local church has spawned substantial community efforts in housing and economic development. There have been shopping centers built, senior housing units developed, and communities transformed by the church.  With the help of our community, we pray—we believe—that we can do the same here.

 

 

Fort Myers Central Campus

 

Fort Myers Central is the fourth campus of Grace Church, located in urban downtown Fort Myers.  On July 1, 2010, with the blessing of our United Methodist District Superintendant and the Florida Conference, Grace Church adopted Central United Methodist Church, an 88 year old church that had been declining for many years.  The neighborhood in which the church was located had changed over the years and decades, from a family-oriented, working middle class area to an urban area populated by many transient people and a variety of different cultures.  It became obvious that the church had to adapt to a new vision and mission to be a vital force for Jesus in the community!  The Fort Myers Central Campus adopted the vision that God placed in the heart of Grace Church: to partner with God in transforming people from unbelievers to fully devoted disciples of Jesus to the glory of God.  This meant that we knew we needed to become rabidly missional, to reach the people nobody else wanted and nobody else saw, the last, the lost and least, for the sake of their transformation through relationship with Jesus Christ.  It also meant that we needed to address many of the unique needs of people who live in the area, forming relationships so we can better understand each other and help one another, and also forming partnerships with other churches and organizations in the down town area.  Fort Myers Central began a Wednesday night worship service that included a free meal, a teaching, testimony or night of musical worship, combined with two “12 Steps for Christians” recovery meetings for people who were struggling with any type of issue.  This service now averages over 100 attenders every week, and people stream in from the neighborhood to take part of the recovery experience.  It is a joyful experience of worship to all who attend.  There is also a Brazilian congregation that worships at FM Central on Sunday evening and Monday evening.  We began a Sunday morning contemporary worship service in addition to the traditional worship service, and also began a free Sunday morning breakfast.  Several dozen “missionaries” from the other Grace Church campuses agreed to come and roll up their sleeves and help with the harvest for two years!  On any given day at Fort Myers Central, you will see people of any race, color, and socio economic status hanging out, volunteering, or waiting for some lunch!  Everyone comes as they are, by bike or by Lexus.  It is our dream at the Fort Myers Central campus that through our obedience to the Holy Spirit’s call, everyone in the downtown area can experience the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and that crime rates will drop, families will be reunited, drug addicts will stop using drugs, prostitutes will stop prostituting, and that instead people will become more like Jesus and change the world.   Big Vision, but we’ve got a Big God!  As we shout every Wednesday night, “God is Good!  All the Time!”