It’s a good thing organizers of the Lighthouse Presbyterian Church in Paola weren’t serving lunch Sunday because, unless loaves and fishes were on the menu, they’d have been in big trouble.

Person after person after person walked through the doors of Evergreen Events on the south side of Paola’s Park Square shortly before the 10:30 a.m. service in which the congregation would become official members of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Church leader Mike Gibson said a special-use permit had to be obtained from the city for the event, and it was needed when it was all said and done. By the time everyone was settled, the large ballroom was filled with 370 people, far exceeding the maximum occupancy of 294.

The majority of that group was made up of about 315 people who became official members of the new church and the EPC on Sunday, Gibson said. Others were friends, family and members of the Hillsdale Presbyterian Church, who were invited to attend.

The Lighthouse Presbyterian Church was formed late last year following a split in the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church in Paola, which is a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

In June 2007, more than 200 members of the First Presbyterian Church voted to leave the PC (USA) and join the conservative EPC. After the vote, the Rev. Kirk Johnston and the church’s session submitted a written request to the Heartland Presbytery in Kansas City, Mo., asking to be dismissed from the PC (USA) with property.

That request was denied in September by an administrative commission of the Heartland Presbytery, and both sides began exchanging letters in an attempt to find common ground.

The issue came to a head in November, when a group of congregation members led by Gibson, a 37-year member of the church and three-time member of the session, left the First Presbyterian Church to create the Lighthouse Presbyterian Church.

Gibson’s wife, Linda, spent most of Sunday morning scurrying throughout the crowd hand-delivering certificates of membership to the new congregation members.

“I walked in this morning, and I started crying,” Linda said as she panned the ballroom growing with people before the service. “I want to cry with joy.”

Michael McCarty, Philadelphia attorney and stated clerk of the New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery, attended the service Sunday to ordain elders and Johnston into the EPC. McCarty joined Johnston in 2006 on a strategy team to help map out the future of Presbyterian congregations looking to branch out of the PC (USA).

“Folks, we’re Presbyterians, we don’t do fast. And yet, in nine months we went from maybe being able to help each other to the creation of a transitional non-geographic Presbytery to receive churches who want to be members of the EPC,” McCarty told the congregation Sunday.

The Rev. Jeffrey J. Jeremiah, executive pastor of the EPC, also showed up Sunday to deliver the sermon.

“I’m excited for you and the EPC as we begin our journey together,” he said.

Mike Gibson said he shares the excitement, not only about his new church, but about his old one as well.

“They’ve gotten many people to come back,” he said. “We hope they can make it. They will be in our prayers.”

As for the future, Gibson said a strategic planning team has been created to map the future of the new church, which likely will begin with a large gathering place to call its own.

“We outgrew our building the day we moved in,” Bayles said.

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