CAYA makes move to downtown

The growth of a church is often the reason for a change in location. That is true for CAYA, Come As You Are Church, which recently joined spaces with The Least of Saints ministry at 219 N. Second Ave. W.

During the past six years since its inception, CAYA has met in several locations, starting in Pastor Sharon Isley’s basement. They then moved to the former Holiday Inn, Union Hall and the Jasper County Community Center. For the past two years, the church has met in a meeting room in the storage facility, owned by Julia Prenergast, across from Agnes Patterson Park.

“She was gracious enough to allow us to redecorate one of the rooms and use it and the main hallway,” Isley said. “We outgrew the space, however, and needed to relocate so we would have enough room.”

Isley said she has been friends with the Least of Saints’ Pastor Scott Greene since he started the ministry. They had explored the possibility of combining locations and cooperating together in the past, but found the timing was never quite right until now.

“Pastor Scott and I, as well as our two congregations, are really excited about the added opportunities we will have to combine our resources and make a bigger impact,” Isley said. “We are also fully supporting the ministry of Discover Hope, which also shares this building.”

While the change has been challenging, Isley said, it has also been exciting. There has been some adjustments with technical aspects of the service including the PowerPoint presentations and how to set up the mixer board for sound, which both churches use. Overall, she has found the transition to be pretty smooth, considering the undertaking.

The new location brings many advantages to the church including additional parking space and more room to work.

“We also have a space dedicated to our small children, which was a pretty serious need,” Isley said. “The visibility of being just off the town square has helped, especially on the day when the merchants did their trick-or-treating. We had hundreds of people lined up to get candy and hot chocolate. I believe we gave away around 550 cups of hot chocolate that day.”

Isley also hopes the location will help new people in the community find a place to worship they feel comfortable with.

“CAYA is intentionally designed to be a place for people who are not comfortable in a traditional church to come and explore a relationship with Jesus Christ,” Isley said. “Least of Saints is as well, though the groups we naturally draw tend to be a bit different.”

CAYA meets every Sunday at noon. For more information about the church, contact Isley www.cayanewton.org or on the church's Facebook page.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com