12 | April 2025
Troy Pastor Moves into New Season of Ministry By Stephanie Heading, managing editor
Johnathan and Jeni Newman
Pastor Johnathan Newman and Koinos Church, Troy, are in a new era of ministry. For the last few years, Newman and his wife, Jeni, have sensed the Lord calling them into something new. However, Newman wanted to transition the church in a way that was best for its long-term health. “Being here for almost 27 years made me really have the desire to see the church do well beyond our lifetimes,” Newman said. He also wanted Koinos to avoid the very normal church pattern of start, growth, plateau, and decline during the transition. “Talking about that, thinking about that made us realize the importance of finding a way when the church is at a place of health and growth and strength became import- ant to us,” he noted. Newman and the other elders at Koinos began to pray and seek the Lord’s will for a new senior pastor for the church. “A plurality of elders caused us to see the growth of the church and development of younger men growing up, de- veloping for ministry and becoming pastors. Just recog- nizing that has created a pool of leaders, an abundance of leaders in the body, where it seemed like that would be the best case scenario if the next pastor would be raised up from within and that’s exactly what happened,” he said. Fifteen years ago, Brian Barnes and his wife Deanna came to Koinos as newlyweds. They were both baptized
at the church and Newman says they just took off grow - ing, learning, and being discipled. “Then we saw them begin to disciple others,” Newman recalled. “We saw clearly God’s giftedness and calling in their lives to be faithful disciple-makers, which led to Brian becoming a Life Group leader.” As time went on, the church recognized the biblical quali- fications of Barnes and appointed him as an elder. “So he’s been a pastor already for several years, but then as my wife and I began to think about God’s calling for us to take a step to do something different, I began to have the conversation with our elders, including Brian, about what God’s doing in our hearts,” he said. The elders found themselves on the same page – Brian Barnes was the man God was calling to be the next Se- nior Pastor at Koinos. “Not only does he love being an elder at our church, he really had the yearning to go be a lead teaching pastor of a church, plant a church, find a church to pastor,” New - man said. “As we’re hearing him say that, we’re thinking we don’t want him to move away and go find a church somewhere. We think he needs to be the next pastor at our church.” The succession plan was executed on February 16, when Barnes stepped into the Senior Pastor position. Following the execution of the successful succession plan, the transition period commenced for Newman, Barnes, and the church. Story continues on the next page...
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