- April 18, 2024
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Missing Beach hosted a Sunday Soul Brunch at Ormond Brewing Company in July and hopes to make it a quarterly event (Courtesy photos).
Missing Peace also regularly at Bailey Riverbridge Gardens.
Missing Peace practices a physical worship with activities like gymnastics at Sky High Gymnastics Training Center.
The church will celebrate its one year anniversary Aug. 28.
The idea for a nomadic, experiment-style community church came from a ladies’ brainstorming session. When they thought about what kind of world they wanted their kids to live in, they decided they wanted them to be physically and mentally healthy, to exercise their intellect or cerebral, to make time to give back to their community and to develop spiritually.
While the majority of those could be accomplished in many different ways, the women felt like spiritual development was something people don’t have much access to out in the world. It was the “Missing Peace,” they decided to name their church after.
“We asked what was the missing piece in the lives of our families, communities and the peacefulness that’s kind of missing in the world,” said Missing Peace Pastor Katy Cuthill Steinberg. “The institutional church wasn’t that place for a lot of people."
The church launched in August 2015, and members will be celebrating their one-year anniversary Aug. 28. In an effort to remain nomadic and be out in the community taking action, the church meets in a different place every week that’s appropriate for the activity. Each week, the service is based on worship through physical, spiritual, cerebral, service and play.
They’ve cleaned up community gardens, participated in adult gymnastics, walked a labyrinth and asked local professors spiritual questions about the creation of the universe. Every unique activity is an experiment that relates in someway to Pastor Steinberg’s message.
Usually, they have an average of 15 to 30 people attending services every week, and in total they’ve had 175 people attend at least one event this past year. Pastor Steinberg also gives her sermon after the service via Facebook live, and said she has an average of 300 to 500 people tuning in each week.
"I think people are hungry for a spiritual engagement,” she said. “The spiritual self has been neglected and traditional churches have gotten disconnected with the community. Some of that is good, we’re preserving who we are, but it creates a disconnect. We’re [Missing Peace] being engaged in the community. We're going and doing and moving. It’s not come here and sit, but we’re going to go and do it.”
Pastor Steinberg doesn’t think traditional churches are doing anything wrong, but rather that they’re not for everybody. Missing Peace is offering something that might appeal to a person who doesn’t feel connected in a normal church setting.
“We launched this thing as such an experiment,” she said. “My hope would be that we would grow in numbers, but not lack in depth.”
Follow Missing Peace on Facebook for more information or visit ormondsmissingpeace.com
BOX: Missing Peace One Year Anniversary
10:30 a.m. at 1 N. Beach St. Missing Peace partners and friends to join us for a time of celebration, food, drink, and highlights from the last year.
