14 | November 2024
Ross County Church Reaches Unchurched With Real Joy
By Stephanie Heading, managing editor
Pastor Tony Lambert has a heart for reaching the un- churched. For the past 16 years, Lambert and the members of his church plant, Real Joy Community Fellowship, Chill- icothe, have done whatever it takes to reach the un- churched in Ross County. Lambert’s call to plant Real Joy came in an unusual way. The Lord used a canceled mission trip, a thunder- storm, and an unchurched mom and daughter on the run to make his will clear. A youth mission trip Lambert was planning for students in the church he was serving was canceled. He decid- ed to do a home mission week holding block parties in parks in Chillicothe. During the home mission trip, a storm blew up. “We were an hour late getting to the parks because every- body thought it was a tornado, and actually, funnel clouds were seen,” Lambert remembered. During the torrential downpour, the students ap- proached Lambert wanting to know if they were going to go out. “And I said, ‘You know what? Maybe someone is wait- ing for us so we’ll go an hour late.’ So we went down to one part of town that was more on the lower income side and we started setting up. And of course, we’re an hour late and nobody’s there,” he said. Then a little girl and her mother showed up. While the youth were with the little girl painting her face and giving her cotton candy and snow cones, older team mem- bers approached the mother, shared the gospel, and led her to Christ. Lambert spoke with the mother. She was fleeing an abusive relationship. “I started talking to her and it just kind of broke my heart,” Lambert noted. He had been reading about reaching the unchurched and now it was in right front of him. “We set out to reach the unchurched in Ross County. And that’s what we did,” he said. With a group of 30 people, mostly family, Lambert planted Real Joy Community Fellowship. He leased a building with one restroom and the church was born. However, the building had a few issues. “We had mis- matched chairs and a building that didn’t have a ceiling in it. We had cobwebs all over the place and I’ll never forget the sermons of my preaching and snow coming down through the roof. And you’d see people get up and move their chairs.”
Pastor Tony Lambert, Real Joy Community Fellowship, Chillicothe
Real Joy wanted to upgrade the building so they spoke to the owner, who was a Christian, and asked about purchasing the property. “He gave us a fabulous deal,” Lambert said. “He said, ‘Please don’t tell my wife, be- cause she’s going to kill me.’” With a renovated and eventually expanded building, Real Joy grew to 163 people prior to the Covid pandem- ic. The church closed for six weeks during Covid then reopened with an additional service and new schedule. Sunday school moved to Wednesday nights and Real Joy held two Sunday morning services—a first service for people 55 and older, and a second service for peo- ple under 55. “God blessed and he just blew the doors off,” Lambert recalls. With continued growth, the leadership at Real Joy be- lieved it was time to build a new building on nine acres of land that the church had previously purchased. Securing funding for a new building was a challenge. The church needed money to build a three million dollar building and financial institutions turned them down. “I believed God wanted to do this, so I went to the local bank here,” Lambert remembered. He sat down with the bank president, two vice presi- dents and the loan officer – all Christians. “We don’t know why we’re going to do this,” they said. “But you’ve got to send us all your financials for the
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