One church on West Jackson Street in Ridgeland is expanding while another is starting over.
First Ridgeland has a more than $3 million construction project underway, while the neighboring congregation, which was once known as Ridgeland First United Methodist Church, is finding its way as Old Town Wesley Church after members voted to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Conference.
Come this fall, members of First Ridgeland expect to begin using an outdoor central plaza and an interior with an expanded main entrance, café and more.
After the construction is completed, the building that houses the sanctuary will feature an updated exterior.
“What we were trying to do was modernize the look we had,” said Derrick Cowan, executive pastor of First Ridgeland, which is located at 302 W. Jackson St. “We wanted to keep the aesthetic but push it to the edge.”
The expansion, which will add more than 5,000 square feet, will result in a larger entrance that will better accommodate members as they come and go on Sundays after the 9 a.m. service and before the 10:30 a.m. service.
“We began designing a place we refer to as the central plaza so we could welcome everyone in a main entrance and provide a café space and a counseling space and make updates to the restrooms and the broadcast and security office,” Cowan said.
The restrooms needed attention. “It would be nothing to see the women’s restroom line 12 or 15 deep,” Cowan said.
Five years ago, the church renovated its Community Life Center that is across the street from the church campus, added a drive-through and doubled the number of parking spaces. The new entrance to the church will line up with a new crosswalk that is in the middle of the parking lot and make it more convenient to access.
Kent Design Build, a general contractor that handles both design and build, is responsible for the addition, Cowan said. The church launched a Kickstarter Campaign and reached it goal, he said. BankPlus helped by restructuring some church debt, he said.
Formerly known as First Baptist Church of Ridgeland and dating to the 1960s, First Ridgeland has about 1,100 members. “On Sundays, we run about 900 people,” Cowan said.
First Ridgeland is known as a big church with a small church feel, he said.
“It’s place where everyone will know your name,” he said. “You’ll be greeted by multiple people from the time you drive your car here and leave. There’s not a lot of pretense. It’s real people doing life together.”
The church operates a food pantry each Tuesday that provides food for about 125 families weekly. Partners include the Mississippi Food Network, Watkins Roofing and BankPlus. “People start lining up at 5 a.m. in the Community Life Center parking lot,” he said.
The church also operates a pre-school that is attended by about 300 children (infants to four years old) and includes an after-school program.
“Our facility is used every day for the benefit of the community we serve,” Cowan said. “Our new central plaza will be no different. Our long-term plan is for the café to be open to the community to purchase coffee and meet friends. We want to use it during the week like a coffee shop. We should be able to do that in early January.”
Cowan, age 37, began working part-time at First Ridgeland when he was a sophomore at Mississippi College and became executive pastor at the church about eight years ago. He and some of the church’s charter members and senior adults traveled to Chicago in 2012 and got a glimpse of what the church could become.
“We served and slept on the floor all week in a Salvation Army Shelter that served that community,” he said. “We saw that they were using that facility every day to benefit this community and said, ‘Why can’t we do this in Ridgeland?’ That’s when our focus became outwardly focused.”
The church had 60 members when Cowan went to work there and last year added 140 members and so far, this year has added another 80 members.
“The potential in the community is unlimited,” he said. “We’ve never stopped fulfilling our mission.”
Located at 324 W. Jackson St., Old Town Wesley Church meets for worship in the sanctuary at 10:45 a.m. and has a covered dish lunch after the service on the second Sunday of each month.
The church has a grief support group that meets on the second Tuesday of each month at 2 p.m. and Women of Wesley meets on the first Thursday of each month at 6 p.m. Alcoholics Anonymous meets in the church fellowship hall Monday through Friday at noon, Saturday at 10 a.m. and Monday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m.
A fall festival is scheduled on Oct. 14 at Old Town Wesley Church.
Storms in mid-June blew down the original building of Ridgeland First United Methodist Church. It is thought the chapel was built around 1890, dedicated for the first time in 1896 and was originally an Episcopal Church on Old Canton Road. The Methodist church purchased it in 1901 and moved it from its location to the corner of West Jackson and Perkins streets.
It was the congregation’s first church building and used as the sanctuary until the 1950s when it was moved to the side of their education building and a new sanctuary was built. It remained there as a Sunday school building and fellowship hall until the early 1990s when it was moved to the back corner on Perkins and Maple streets where it once stood.
