A Brief History of Youngstown Metro Church

Youngstown Metro Church began as a vision that God placed within the hearts of Josh and Aimee Shank during their last year of Seminary. Originally from the Youngstown area, Josh and Aimee grew up going to a small church on the West side of Youngstown. In 1997, they moved away to go to college at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, FL. After graduating they planned on moving back to Youngstown, but took a detour when they moved to Wake Forest, NC to pursue their masters degrees. During their last year of Seminary, they knew that God was calling them back to Youngstown to start a church. For several months Metro met in their apartment, where we began working through what it meant to be a church.

Smells like coffee...

We were looking for a place to meet as a church and eventually met a Christian that owned a local coffee house in Poland, OH. Since he was closed on Sundays, we were able to have full run of the space.

A bit of promo...

After meeting there for several months, we outgrew the small room, and started looking for a new location. During this time we started getting the word out about the new church. Below is a sampling of our original promo and some of the places we connected with people to tell them about what was going on. (Just in case you were wondering, this picture is from the Metro Booth at the Canfield Fair.)

Off to the gym...

From there we ended up moving into the gym of Youngstown Christian School on Southern Blvd in Boardman. It was technically our first move into the city because, even though it was in Boardman, it had a Youngstown mailing address.

Having a good time.

During this time we had an incredible time hanging out and serving together.

Moving into Youngstown...

An opportunity came for us to move into the city. It was a big jump outside of our comfort zone, but we knew that God had called had us to the city, and by his help we would make it. So, we stepped out and moved into the Oakland Theater in Downtown Youngstown.

Youngstown miracle...

After our contract with the theater came to an end, we were looking for a new location. Through a crazy set of circumstances we ended up purchasing a multi-million dollar cathedral in the city for $52,500. As the story goes, we were overjoyed when the owners of the building agreed to the amount above, but we were quickly brought down to earth when we realized that no one would loan the money to our fledgling church plant. After talking to several banks, we felt completely discouraged. We brought this issue back to our sponsoring church (The Summit Church), and they told us that they would approve a loan on one condition. We had to raise half the money in cash or pledges before we could proceed. This task seemed crazy at the time because we only had three weeks to raise the money. We questioned whether or not we could make it. For the next two weeks we discussed the special offering and collected it on the third week. We took the offering at the beginning of the gathering, and by the end of the service, we were completely shocked to find that our congregation had generously and sacrificially given a total of $107,000, $70,000 of which was in cash. It was an amazing night.

Where the story picks up.

God is writing a story - one that has been going on a long time before we began and will end a long time after we are dead. We only have one life to wrap our tiny little story around the never ending story of God. We would love for you to join us in being a part of God's story in Youngstown.