Open Arms Church will celebrate its 20th anniversary on Saturday, Oct.1, with a night of music and personal stories. And again celebrate with services and a picnic on Sunday, Oct. 2. Both celebrations will be held in Bradford.
Storyteller’s Live will start at 6 p.m. Oct. 1 in the auditorium at 1289 E. Main St., Foster Township, and will focus on people sharing their experiences from Open Arms over the past 20 years. Music will also be performed.
On Oct. 2, services will be held at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. in the auditorium at the Bradford campus The second service will be simulcast at Open Arms Port Allegany, 105 Smith Ave., and be available on the church’s Facebook and YouTube pages.
“We have been so blessed to minister to the people of Bradford, Port Allegany and the surrounding areas,” said Lead Pastor Zoe Hatcher. “We have seen many lives restored in Christ, which is our vision here at Open Arms. And we are far from finished. Countless people have made a public declaration of their faith for the first time in their lives and have chosen to follow Jesus. God has much more in store for this ministry as we continue to press toward seeing our community transformed for God’s glory.”
Former Open Arms Church pastors, Andy Haskins, now of the Franklinville (N.Y.) Free Methodist Church, and Michael McAvoy, now the superintendent at South East Region of the Free Methodist Church, will also speak at the services on Sunday.
Open Arms Church was founded in the fall of 2002 as a church plant from Allegany (N.Y.) Free Methodist Church by Haskins and his team in the building that once housed the Tuna Valley Free Methodist Church. What first started out as a Saturday night outreach service grew from that initial service to become an independent church and brought on McAvoy in 2003.
“There are hundreds of things to highlight as we tell the story of Open Arms that it might require 20 years to tell,” Hatcher said. “Our church has seen many changes over the years and has also become a valuable resource to the community and the surrounding area. In 2013, we launched our Open Arms Port Allegany campus in what was formerly the Port Allegany Free Methodist Church location, and since then they have become an invaluable resource to the community there as well.”
Open Arms has a deeply held value of serving and collaborating with the community, holding a ONE worship service for community churches in Bradford, and Break the Chains organization’s One Church on the town square in Port Allegany. In 2020, leaders from Open Arms collaborated with other churches leading worship through the Kingdom Collective community worship events in downtown Bradford.
Open Arms also partners with the Surr’enity House in Bradford, a sober-living home with a focus to see those in recovery learn how to live God’s way in wholeness. Those at Open Arms have even had opportunities to carry the gospel to the world through missions trips to the Dominican Republic, Guinea and Kenya in Africa, and Haiti.
“We have had the opportunity to learn to share God’s truth in an increased way through having an early online presence and live streaming our services,” Hatcher said. “We also have participated in the Great Commission Project, which distributed books of local testimonies and the Good News to 60,000 homes in the surrounding area. We hosted one of three Free Methodist Church Keystone Conference’s Awakening Services and joined our denomination praying for revival and saw healings. We have seen God move in powerful ways.”
In 2020, when the world was introduced to the COVID 19 pandemic, the Open Arms was going through a lot of changes itself. Hatcher, former children’s ministry coordinator, was appointed as the lead pastor after McAvoy moved into superintendency with the Free Methodist Church. After the church’s services moved solely online for 10 weeks because of the pandemic, the growth of the Open Arms continued in a different way, expanding out of the buildings.
“We birthed a network of micro churches in 2020, which has grown to 15 small communities that meet throughout McKean County,” Hatcher said. “God has done tremendous work in many lives in and through His church, and we are humbled and honored to continue to be a small part of this work.”
For more information about Open Arms, see oachurch.com.
