“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen!”

Ephesians 3:20-21


What is Imagine?


IMAGINE is an initiative to fund movements in three key areas (church, community, world) as well as keeping our current ministries.  Through the Imagine initiative, we are asking each and every person who calls the Summit home to invest boldly in all levels of compassion, energy, and finances to further God’s vision for our hometown and around the globe.

We believe that every life matters to God, so every life matters to us.  We want to see people of all backgrounds changed by the power of God as we are used by Him to better our church, community and world for His glory.

We have been thrilled to welcome new children, teens, and families into our new student center as of April 2017.  We continually hear from parents how excited their children are to come to Summit Kids every weekend! Although we have completed this phase of our Imagine Initiative, we are not done yet.  God has big plans for our community and our world & we are continuing to dream BIG as we listen to and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. We encourage everyone who attends Summit to be part of this exciting time in our church’s history by serving, praying, and giving financially to the Imagine Initiative as we make every life different in Indiana and around the globe.



What parents are saying



Questions & Answers


One Fund is a simpler way for us to organize the finances of our church. Instead of having multiple funds for multiple purposes, there is simply one fund to fund the one vision that God has given us.

No. There are some similarities, but what we are doing will be different in a number of ways. A capital campaign is typically about a specific project, but what we want to do is take all the things we do & make sure that the vision is central to all of that. This is not just about a project, but it’s about engaging our entire body in the vision that God has for us.

Why do we need to expand? Since January 2014 we have grown by almost 50%.  Our fastest growing demographic is young families. With this growth, we’ve experienced overcrowding in all of our children’s spaces. This creates an atmosphere that is challenging for workers, parents, & the children that we’re impacting. Since we want to continue to see more lives made different, we must expand to meet current needs & anticipate future growth. If we fail to expand we will cap our growth at our current level.

The Summit has contemplated adding space since the original building was built in 2001, but the need didn’t truly arise until the fall of 2014.  From the moment Pastor Mel arrived, he’s been talking about the need for additional space. It simply takes time to develop & implement the plan.

We have looked at a number of building plans & ideas. We’ve also considered not building & just adding more services. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t stifle the growth that God is bringing, while maintaining our commitment to good financial stewardship. This led us to the conclusion that we need to add space, while aggressively starting new locations & planting churches throughout our region.

The leadership is committed to be good stewards. This includes ensuring that we’ll never have debt that will prevent us from fulfilling our vision to see every life made different. We won’t take on a project that will prevent us from giving & going on mission trips or partnering with organizations to help people.  Yes, we can afford this.  The real question is, “can we afford not to do this?”

The culture of the Summit is to encourage everyone to live generously. We have never used high pressure tactics to manipulate people & we will not start now.

This will be one of the most exciting seasons in the history of the Summit. We’re seeing record growth in every area & we are realigning our vision to make sure that we can try to keep up with all that God is doing here.


Multisite Questions & Answers


A multisite church is one church meeting in multiple locations–different locations in the same region, or in some instances, different cities, states, or nations. A multisite church shares a common vision, budget, leadership and board. Successful multisite churches reproduce and extend their ministry best practices consistently across multiple locations. The same things you love about the Summit will be reproduced at new locations.

A new, larger auditorium is cost prohibitive. We’ve looked at the possibility of building & the cost for a 1300 seat auditorium was almost $8 million. We feel it would be wiser to continue to do multiple services & spend a fraction of the cost on new locations & the vision God has given us.

Often times, people want the excellent, vibrant ministry that comes with larger churches with the intimacy found at smaller churches. This normally is very difficult, but with multisite churches we can have a smaller local congregation with all the resources & excellence of a large church.

Every multisite church is unique. Most multisite campuses are fully-functioning congregations with a local pastor, including a site pastor to shepherd the local congregation. Some churches use video-cast sermons (recorded or live-streamed); others have in-person teaching on-site. Some churches maintain a similar worship atmosphere and style at all their campuses, and others allow or invite variation.

Since this movement began in the mid-1990’s over 8,000 churches have embraced this model and their number is growing daily.  Outreach Magazine declared in 2007 that the multisite model is no longer a trend, but the “new normal.” An estimated 5 million people, 15% of Protestant church-goers, attend a multisite church on any given weekend across North America and it’s spreading internationally.

Not at all. Of the 5,000+ multisite churches, only about 20% are megachurches (2,000+ weekend attendance). The multisite movement began as band-aid strategy for megachurches who found themselves out of room or limited by zoning restrictions. It quickly evolved into a growth strategy for healthy churches of all sizes. It has developed into a revitalization strategy for stable, but stuck churches and has increasingly become a rebirth strategy for struggling churches through merging with a multisite church.

They both arrive at the same outcome of a new congregation in a community but they arrive through different pathways. A church plant is usually a small delegation of people who leave a church to go develop a brand new church. Typically, church plants have their own teaching pastor, their own leaders, and their own budget with some financial help from the “sending” church or denomination; otherwise, they are a new and independent entity. Multiple sites are extended and fully-functioning congregations of a sending church, but not independent churches.

No, multisiting is for healthy churches that have a desire to reach more people, mobilize more volunteers, and multiply their community impact. It is not a growth engine to stimulate a declining church, but can be a vehicle to accommodate and accelerate a healthy, growing church.

Statistically, multisite churches:

  • Reach & baptize more people than single site churches. We will be able to reach people that would never drive to Indiana for church.
  • Spread healthy churches to more diverse communities. We will be able to help infuse the life of Christ into communities with no or very few healthy churches.
  • Have more volunteers in service as a percentage than single site churches. We will be able to engage volunteers to serve who normally couldn’t because they drive long distances to church.
  • Tend to activate people into ministry more than single site. We will be able to engage more people at high levels of leadership to facilitate excellent ministry at every location.

We are planning to launch another Summit location in the fall 2018.

Staff & leaders are praying about where to go next, but we feel like some areas that we want to target are Kittanning & Blairsville. We are open to other locations