Obviously, in many ways our story is just beginning. Koinos is just getting off the ground, and we look forward to many years seeking God together and being good friends with one another and the world. However, as with many other things in life, Koinos has existed for quite awhile in many of our hearts and minds. In a way, Koinos Community Church is just a new chapter in our lives...

Brian Ross grew up as a skinny kid in Columbus, Ohio, trying to be somebody. From a very young age, he would sit around and think about the meaning of life, what it meant to truly be happy, and what the “good life” was. With his parents divorced and his mother working a lot to make ends meet, Brian had plenty of time in suburban Columbus to be by himself and think.

By the time he began high school, things seemed to just get “darker” all the time.  Nothing seemed to make sense or give hope and he was overwhelmed with a sense of “purposelessness” and ugliness of the soul. He slowly began to loathe life altogether.

Eventually, Brian’s mom prodded him into trying a youth group at a local church. Though not excited about the idea, he eventually gave in. That was the specific vehicle, time and place God used to draw Brian to Himself. There he met peers and adults who seemed to truly care for him in ways he had not experienced before. When the leaders read out of the Bible about the life and teaching of Jesus, Brian was drawn in. In this man’s teachings there seemed to be the stuff that is the truth of life. Slowly, Brian’s outlook on life, people, and God began to change and in a very realistic, day-in-and-day-out way, he felt he was on the right path.

It wasn’t long until Brian felt that God wanted him to be a pastor for people who weren’t really “into church,” but who needed God. He really knew very little about the teachings of the Bible or even about God, for that matter. His desire was not to be a stuffy, professional clergy member, but to be a bridge to help normal, everyday people—people who weren’t religious—to discover the life and teaching of Jesus.

Brian felt himself overwhelmingly compelled by the person of Jesus Christ and His teachings. Jesus was truly becoming the person he wanted to follow wholeheartedly. But at the same time, he rarely felt that same compulsion towards most forms of American church and religion. For whatever reason, Brian just did not seem to find there what he was finding in the Scriptures and the stories of Jesus and his early followers. God seemed to be using these experiences to one day lead Brian into beginning a new church that would somehow attempt to be an avenue for others to connect with God in Jesus.

A few years later, Brian and his new wife, Stephanie, moved to Lancaster County, where they began their adult lives. Brian continued to work on his education and also served as an associate pastor in the church Stephanie grew up in.  Eventually, they also completed a year of full-time internship specifically in the area of beginning new churches.

In these churches, Brian and Stephanie began to meet and serve alongside others with whom they felt they had a real kinship. Here and there, they met people who also felt the dual tension of an overwhelming commitment to follow Christ, while at the same time feeling an uneasiness with—and an incompatibility with—much of popular American church and religion. These relationships continued to deepen, and they formed into a close group of friends who were all very different, both culturally and socially.  Yet at the same time, they all felt a compulsion towards one another and a unity in what it meant to follow God in Jesus. They were realizing in new ways that God does not only call us to follow Him on an individual level, but to follow Him and learn from Him as He works through a group of people who are all different, yet together form a healthy community.

To Brian and Stephanie’s surprise, not only did these people become great friends, but one by one, they, too, began to feel compelled to help form a new church that would somehow attempt to be a vehicle for people, many of whom just did not “fit” in many other churches, to find God. These people became the core of what is now Koinos Community Church.

Eventually, this group felt it best to affiliate with a denomination whose structure and philosophies were aligned with theirs.  They also decided to establish their faith community in the Reading area, as it was central to many of them. It was what they were looking for culturally as well as a place they believed they could enjoy living in for many years.

After much searching and frustration (checking out over 80 possible places to meet), Skateaway Family Fun and Sports Center was decided upon as the place to meet on Sundays for the new church “for people who aren’t into church.” Somehow, it just fit. After a year and a half under the crystal ball, Koinos moved to its present Sunday-morning location of Colonial Sports and Fitness.

In the first couple years of Koinos, it has become clear that there are people all over who are looking for the freedom and life offered by Jesus, but who simply don’t fit most churches or religion. Koinos has grown from 16 people (including children) to around 150 people who are part of a new community, many of whom drive quite a distance to gather together.  And we are confident that this is only the beginning...