By Matt Smith/msmith@trcle.com
Last year, Pastor Kevin Jones said God called on him to return to Cleburne and set up a church.
Jones was no stranger to Cleburne, having grown up here. The same thing happened to his father, Pastor Kenneth Jones 34 years ago, Jones said.
Kenneth Jones took heed, moved to Cleburne and served as pastor of the First Assembly of God in Cleburne for 20 years.
Although he grew up in Cleburne, Kevin Jones had been living in Conroe with his wife, Vida Jones, and daughters Katie, Kevi and Kinsey for several years when God called upon him to return to Cleburne, he said.
Jones and his family commuted back and forth for a time but have since resettled in Cleburne.
Jones initially establish the Turning Point Church not by leasing a building but by establishing a presence on the Internet.
The novel idea to attract interest worked.
The church’s MySpace account attracted more than 200 people even before Turning Point Church got up and going for all practical purposes.
“We were looking for people that don’t have a church currently,” Jones said last year. “Of course, I know not all of those people will come to our church, but it does show a lot of interest.”
After building interest through the Web, Jones leased space in a local church and at the site of the old Johnson County Democratic Headquarters.
“We rented the Democratic headquarters to use for an educational Wednesday night building,” Jones said. “We realized it’s exactly the same size as the little church we’d been renting, and we’re paying double rent. So we moved into [Democratic headquarters] in June and began holding services Sunday at 10:30 p.m. and Wednesday at 7 p.m.”
With a growing congregation, Jones switched the emphasis of Turning Point’s Web presence.
“The MySpace account is still there,” Jones said. “We use it for announcements more than to generate interest still. We’ve left the account up mainly for people who haven’t connected with us physically, as an inlet where they can still reach us if they have a moment of need.
“We’ve mainly switched to Facebook though because we can notify more of our people because most of them have Facebook accounts.
With MySpace, we received interest from out of the area but we didn’t, I’m not saying we didn’t care, but at that time we were looking more to establish interest in a church serving people in Cleburne and Johnson County, not really just having a MySpace account with friends from all over the place.”
New home
Turning Point’s current location worked fine at first given that, despite Web-generated interest, they started out with a congregation of about five members. Membership grew quickly past the current location’s capacity of 50 people.
The church presently has about 80 members.
To meet the need, Jones worked with members of Cleburne Bible Church to relocate Turning Point to its former location on West Henderson and Pendell streets.
Turning Point will hold its official dedication on Sunday. That church building contains office space and can hold about 250 people.
“There’s no reason to think we won’t be full with what we have in the new building within a year,” Jones said. “It’s never about the number of people we have though. The whole focus, our emphasis is on expanding the kingdom of God, introducing people to Christ. If we touch 100 lives, and they disperse and go to 10 different churches, we’re successful.
“The benefit though, is that we’re small now but will get bigger and bigger as the church grows, which means we’ll be able to do more for the community down the road.”
Preaching the gospel is an important part of Turning Point, Jones said, but so is reaching out and helping the community.
Members distributed dessert boxes to Cleburne police officers last year to show appreciation.
Last April, church members hosted a citywide picnic at Hulen Park, handing out free hot dogs.
The idea, Jones said at the time, was to encourage families to spend time together.
“Turning Point is about building strong families and impacting the community,” Jones said. “One thing families need is quality time together.”
In a similar move, church members will distribute free cookies and hot chocolate at Hulen Park during Whistle Stop Christmas on Saturday nights through Dec. 19.
“It gives people a chance to enjoy the lights, fellowship and get to know their neighbors,” Jones said. “We’re not taking any donations, and it’s not a push by us for anything other than if we can help a family’s experience be a little better.
“The first Saturday, we planned to be out there a couple of hours but were only able to for about an hour because we ran out of stuff. We were surprised how many people came up, a good thing.”
Members plan to be at Walmart in Cleburne on Friday from 7-9 p.m. offering free gift wrapping for residents.
Funding for those and other projects comes from church members, not solicited donations, Jones said.
Church members have already worked, and hope to continue working, with other area churches on projects, Jones said.
Everyone is welcome, he said.
“We’re not trying to take members from other churches or worried if we lose some of our members to other churches,” Jones said. “We’re more concerned with who is not in church than anything.”
Turning Point Church is nondenominational.
“It’s kind of visionary thinking versus divisionary thinking,” Jones said. “And I think being nondenominational is visionary and it’s not drawing a line in the sand saying, ‘Hey, this is who we are. Don’t come over if you’re not like us.’
“This way opens the door more. At least people come and find out what who you are, what you’re about, and what your beliefs are. If they find another church that suits them better, that’s great, but at least this gets them in the door.”
On the Web:
www.lifesturningpoint.com
