Granger Community Church: the living room and the cinema, 1986–2019

FOUNDED 1986 · FIRST PUBLIC SERVICE, FIRST SUNDAY OF DECEMBER 1986 · 630 E. UNIVERSITY DRIVE

The largest Protestant congregation in the place's history began with fewer than ten people in a living room: in 1986 Mark Beeson, a United Methodist pastor newly transplanted to Granger, his wife Sheila, and a handful of others began meeting in the Beesons' home — the founding, in the church's own repeated formula, of Granger Community Church. For months Beeson could find no hall to rent for public services, and the plant nearly stalled, until he rented a cinema then under construction on the Grape Road corridor; passersby read the poster's "Coming soon: GCC" as the initials of the theater chain, General Cinema Corporation, and Beeson took the misreading as the sign it was. On the first Sunday of December 1986, Granger Community Church held its inaugural public service in the rented theater. The growth that followed is a matter of the denomination's and the church press's record: double-digit annual growth for years, topping 5,000 members by 2007; a season of stagnation and decline the church's own accounts date to 2007–2009; a re-visioning that produced its "2016 Vision"; and 446 baptisms in 2012, with membership counted at some 5,500 the same year. By the United Methodist Church's own 2018 statistics, kept by its General Council on Finance and Administration, Granger ranked tenth among United Methodist churches in the United States in attendance — a Methodist church plant of 1986 standing among the denomination's giants while seated in an unincorporated Indiana suburb. The church built its campus at 630 East University Drive and multiplied into campuses: Elkhart, at 2701 East Bristol Street, and in a 2013–14 account a third, in LaPorte — the church's current record lists Granger and Elkhart and online, and the LaPorte campus is printed at its dated strength. Pre-pandemic weekly attendance stood around 4,000. The Beeson era's end, and the succession that closed it, is the next entry.

Sources:

1. Granger Community Church, "Our History" and About record (grangerchurch.com) — the 1986 living-room founding by Mark and Sheila Beeson; the two campuses and online; 630 E. University Dr. and 2701 E. Bristol St.
2. Michiana Life, "Growing faith," June 2016 — the church's thirtieth-anniversary account: the months without a hall, the cinema rental, the "Coming soon: GCC" misreading, and the inaugural service on the first Sunday of December 1986.
3. Outreach Magazine, February 2013 — 5,000 members by 2007, the 2007–2009 stagnation, the 2016 Vision, 446 baptisms and some 5,500 members in 2012.
4. United Methodist General Council on Finance and Administration statistics (2018), as carried in the church's reference record — tenth in attendance among U.S. United Methodist churches.
5. Christian Post, July 14, 2020 — pre-pandemic weekly attendance of about 4,000; the Rocket Company's 2013 profile — the three campuses, Granger, Elkhart, and LaPorte, at that date.