Feature
The One Body of Christ
God has brought together the resources and support to help two new church plants take root in south Wisconsin.
“In Acts Chapter 2[:42], after Pentecost, [there’s] this phrase, ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.’ … That is exactly what we’re doing [at this church plant], and that is exactly what the church has always done,” said the Rev. Joshua Benish, pastor of Peace Valley Lutheran Church, Monticello, Wis.
Two new church plants have recently formed in the LCMS South Wisconsin District (SWD): Peace Valley, which has been holding Sunday services for just over a year now, and another plant in Viroqua, Wis., which is still getting off the ground.
As in the days of the Early Church, the Body of Christ today is still gathering in Jesus’ name around the Word and Sacraments.
Meeting a Need in the Area
Like many church plants, Peace Valley got started to meet a need — there was no other LCMS church around for miles. People living in and around Green County, Wis., would either drive up to Madison or cross into Illinois to attend St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lena, Ill.
It was time to plant a church closer to home. With St. John’s support and the help of the Rev. Dr. Nathan Meador, SWD mission executive, they began the process of planting a church.
“[We had] a group of people that were hungry for this,” said Dawn Pederson, a charter member of Peace Valley. She also noted that “God puts a group of people together with different specific talents, and we’ve all been able to contribute.”
In 2023, with the help of the SWD, they were able to call Benish after his graduation from Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (CTSFW).
“It’s really neat that we were able to get a new pastor fresh out of seminary,” said charter member Scott Horn. “He’s starting on his journey as a pastor at the same time we’re starting our journey as a church.”
In the fall of 2023, after Benish and his wife, Talitha, moved to Wisconsin from Fort Wayne, Peace Valley held its first service in the living room of Horn’s home. And Horn, whose father was an organist, still had his father’s old one-octave organ.
“Kevin [Harrison] and Scott [Horn] carried [the organ] up the stairs [from the basement], and it fit right in the entry way of their house. We used it for the first month of worshiping there, and it worked perfectly,” said Talitha Benish.
Just a month later, a new location fell into their lap: the library of Zwingli United Church of Christ in Monticello, where they have been gathering ever since.
All along the way, God has provided support for Peace Valley from other congregations, including St. John’s, as well as another congregation in Peace Valley’s circuit, which gave them funds to pay for a year’s worth of rent for use of Zwingli’s library.
“In going through this process, I have a greater understanding of what the one Body of Christ actually is,” said Joshua Benish. “The Lord provided in many ways for us. A couple of churches in Wisconsin unfortunately closed, but they gifted a lot of stuff to us. We got pews, chairs, a pulpit, an altar — all that goes into a church.”
Searching for a Home
Some members of Peace Valley had grown up LCMS but began attending church elsewhere because there wasn’t an LCMS church in the area where they lived now. Others had searched for a church home for years but were not able to find one nearby that truly preached the Gospel.
“It’s really refreshing for me to be with a group of people that have the same feelings and mindset,” said Kim Harrison. “I grew up in a Missouri Synod church, and so for me, having that again was what I knew and wanted.”
On Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, three new adult members were confirmed at Peace Valley, all of whom were invited by their friends who already attended church here.
Benish said that the reassurance that the pastor “wasn’t just going to plant and then move elsewhere, like most denominations end up doing,” was a significant factor for why some people joined Peace Valley. Others expressed the relief they felt to join an LCMS church and to commune — perhaps for the first time in years — at a church where they knew the Gospel was proclaimed purely and the Sacraments administered rightly.
Kim Harrison said she and her husband, Kevin, are especially thankful “to have our kids be part of something very unique like this. Everybody knows everybody. … It’s easy to pick up conversations, feel welcomed, and the kids talk about it. They talk about the people. They bring up the things that we do.”
All God’s people at Peace Valley are thankful for having been brought into a new church home.
“When you make … disciples, they’re not just a disciple unto themselves — they’re brought into a community, they’re brought into this fellowship with Christ, they’re brought into the kingdom of God, through Baptism and through teaching,” said Benish.
The Early Stages of Church Planting
On paper, it was a no-brainer that Vernon County, like Green County, also needed an LCMS church. Viroqua, a central town of 4,500 people and the county seat of Vernon County, jumped out as the best location for a new church. The next closest LCMS church to Viroqua was either 45 minutes northwest in La Crosse, Wis., or 45 minutes southeast in Richland Center, Wis.
The Rev. Jacob Eichers, pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in La Crosse, said the idea for a new church plant in Viroqua first took root at a pastors’ conference, when another pastor from another part of Wisconsin asked him, “Why isn’t there a church in Viroqua?”
Soon Meador joined the conversation and floated the idea of trying something different in planting a church: assign a vicar to the new church plant.
In the spring of 2024, Vicar Josiah Junkin, a CTSFW student, was assigned to Faith. In addition to his vicarage duties at Faith, Junkin is helping the church plant through the early stages of the Synod’s Church Planting Simplified program.
This guide, produced by the LCMS Office of National Mission, “breaks church planting into bite-sized chunks,” as Eichers put it.
“One of the big strengths [of Church Planting Simplified] is that you don’t have to be Mr. Super Church Planter,” continued Junkin. “I’m here for a year. I’ll be leaving before we go public, and there will probably be another vicar after me. … He can pick up the process where we left off. … Churches that rest on a single influencer tend to fail.”
By relying on a team and, above all, by relying on God to water these seeds and give the growth (1 Cor. 3:6), this new church will bear fruit as God wills it.
So far, Junkin, Eichers and four laypeople have conducted a feasibility study and made some contacts in the community.
At the Vernon County Fair, laypeople volunteered at a booth hosted by the church plant. To gather contact information and gauge interest in a new church plant, they handed out surveys that doubled as raffle tickets. Completed surveys were entered into a raffle for prize baskets. The results of the survey indicated that even though there are a lot of churches in the area, people were interested in a Lutheran church.
Junkin’s next step was to get a Bible study going. In early January, he began studying the Gospel of John with a group that gathers in the breakfast room of a hotel in Viroqua. Some attendees are part of the planting team, others attend Faith, and a few are Viroqua locals who were invited along by friends or who saw the Bible study advertised on a poster at a local restaurant.
“The reason why we plant churches is that we want to have a place that’s local, to be able to celebrate the Sacraments [and] learn the Word together, and in some places that just isn’t available,” said Eichers.
“I think about how God became a man to be among us, to be local, to teach His Word in person, face to face,” said Junkin. “You need local churches to do that, and you need clear teaching — the truth as God gave it to us, in person.”
Learn More
- Learn more about LCMS Church Planting
Pray with Us
Dear God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, You promise that where two or three are gathered in Your name, You are in their midst. Grant success, we pray, to those planting churches in the LCMS South Wisconsin District. Dwell among them with Your presence and Gospel, that all might hear and share in the benefits of Christ’s redeeming work; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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Sarah Reinsel
Staff writer and editor for LCMS Communications.
