Flocking to the Summit

Lead Pastor Mel Masengale compares Summit Church to a boomtown.

During the past decade, the Indiana, Pennsylvania, church has grown from 70 attendees a week to more than 1,000. In the past two years alone, the number of people coming to services has doubled, prompting the church to start building onto its facilities and planning satellite locations.

But Masengale, who began pastoring at Summit in January 2014, isn’t taking credit.

“It’s totally God,” Masengale says. “We didn’t come in with step one, two, and three, then we’re going to implement this program and we’re going to see this crazy growth. God is just moving sovereignly.”

Summit Church is located in Indiana County, which has a population close to 90,000 plus a local public college with about 15,000 students. Masengale says much of the church’s recent increase in attendance is the result of new Christians. In 2015, more than 350 people prayed for salvation during Summit’s services. This year, the church is on pace to double that. More than 180 had accepted Jesus as Savior by the end of March.

“They come to our church and say, ‘I didn’t know God was like this, I had no idea church was like this,’ ” Masengale says. “We’re seeing lots of those kinds of stories.”

Associate Pastor Dick Motzing, who came on staff in 2008, notes that Summit regularly conducts outreach projects throughout the city and maintains a campus ministry for college students.

“It’s always been a very loving church, one that reaches out to the community tremendously,” Motzing says. “The slogan that we operate by is ‘Every life made different,’ and every opportunity that we can, we want to be able to change lives.”

In the past two years, the church has made changes to service times, worship styles, and staff numbers. But beyond any of these changes, Masengale says he believes the church’s emphasis on relationships has been key to growth.

“At the end of the day, unity and relational health is what fosters a culture for the Holy Spirit to move in a really incredible way,” Masengale says. “Programming and music and all those things are important, but for us it’s really been about health more than anything else.”

The church’s greatest need now is more room for children’s ministry. The church averages about 250 children each week.

“Our children’s department has grown percentagewise more than even the adults,” Motzing says. “We’re pushing the limits of how many kids we’re putting in our children’s wing.” 

In May, the church will break ground on a 20,000-square-foot youth facility that will double the church’s space. Future plans include an expansion of the church’s auditorium and the establishment of satellite locations within a 30-mile radius.

Ian Richardson

Ian Richardson is a 2014 graduate of Evangel University and former intern with the Pentecostal Evangel. He is originally from Afton, Iowa, where he grew up as the son of an Assemblies of God pastor.