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The Hamilton JournalNews is committed to coverage of the local community — from schools and our local history to business and news. Each Sunday, reporter Richard O Jones tells the story of the people, history, places and events that make Greater Hamilton unique. Have an idea for Richard? Email him at Richard.Jones@coxinc.com.
The Rev. Bryan Price so much wants the community to know that Jesus is amazing that he named his church that.
The Jesus is Amazing Church held its first 10:30 Sunday morning service two weeks ago in the building at the corner of Pleasant and Woodlawn avenues in Lindenwald, drawing 77 worshippers with a minimum of advertising and a maximum amount of prayer and preparation.
“I’m a big Hamilton guy,” Price said. “It’s hard for people to say negative things about Hamilton around me. Politics aside, Hamilton has a lot to offer and I think we’re starting on the upswing again.”
Price, 41, had been going to the First Church of Jesus Christ in Loveland since the late 1970s, and has been pastor there for two years.
“But I always wanted to come back to my community,” he said. “We looked at this building over a year ago, and it was in such bad shape that we thought it would just be too much.”
They kept going back to look at the broken windows, graffiti and other damage, and each time their hearts softened a little. In November, they finally made the leap to purchase and renovate the building for a new community-based church.
Price said that the trustees at the Loveland First Church of Jesus Christ got behind the purchase and have embraced the new Jesus is Amazing church as part of its family and have shown up to paint walls and scrub bathrooms.
“We finally decided that we shouldn’t be breaking up the body over a 30-minute drive,” he said.
Plans include coffee house, food pantry
The building was constructed in 1929 by the First Church of God, a congregation that formed from a home Bible class in 1917 and outgrew two previous buildings before vacating the Lindenwald sanctuary in 2000 for a 30-acre campus in Liberty Twp., according to its website.
“They left behind a community that needs Jesus,” Price said, “that needs someone to show the love of Jesus and give them hope.”
“We want to show the community how awesome Jesus is, no matter if your tatted from head to toe or have hair down to here,” he said.
The 24,000-square-foot facility includes 24 classrooms, 10 bathrooms, a four-bedroom house, a wing that was once the Lindenwald branch of the Lane Libraries and a gymnasium.
And Price and his family have plans for all of it.
“We basically remodeled the place,” he said.
They’ve already gone through the $150,000 they had budgeted with 66 new commercial-grade windows, remodeling of the sanctuary, refurbishing the gym and redecorating the bathrooms.
The former library is earmarked to become a coffee house for young people, a place where they can hang out without fear of judgement, Price said. They will hold open gym sessions for them to play basketball.
A wing has been set aside with plans for a food pantry and free clothing store.
“We want to offer financial classes to help people get out of debt and put together a budget,” Price said, and his mother, Sheila Maxwell, has plans for the fully-equipped commercial kitchen to teach young mothers how to cook and do it economically.
“We can show them how to make a pot roast for one meal, beef and noodles for the next and vegetable soup the third day,” she said.
‘We’re invested in this community’
By the time they finish the renovation and add an elevator, treasurer Wayne Maxwell, Price’s stepfather, estimates that they will have invested between $225,000 and $240,000, not including the purchase price and not including the volunteer labor provided by Price, who owns a construction and remodeling company, and his friends.
Price said that three other churches have come and gone in the building since the First Church of God moved out, so Jesus is Awesome has been slowly rolling in. They had some T-shirts made with a drawing of the building’s distinctive facade and handed out bottled water at a community festival a couple of weeks before the first service, but that’s been the extent of their publicity.
“We didn’t want to just pop up a banner,” he said. “We want people to know that we’re invested in this building and this community. We’re here to be part of the family.”
For the first service, Price preached from the 36th chapter of Ezekiel: “I will resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt… They will say, ‘This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden.’ ”
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