Encounter Church

Encounter Church Encounter Church is a family, and a place to call home. We seek to love well and be a community that welcomes people from all walks of life.

🔥 What a fantastic time at Encounter Academy this morning!Our seminar on Relational Evangelism brought together great co...
06/06/2026

🔥 What a fantastic time at Encounter Academy this morning!

Our seminar on Relational Evangelism brought together great content, wonderful discussion, and a truly fantastic community — all united around one calling: to love people well and share the hope we have found.

Emil Brunner said it best, “The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning. Where there is no mission there is no Church; and where there is neither Church nor mission, there is no faith.” May the small light of our church family keep burning brightly…one relationship at a time. 🙏✨

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Tomorrow we close out ten month long journey through the Book of Revelation. 🕊️📖What a journey it has been. Richard Bauc...
06/06/2026

Tomorrow we close out ten month long journey through the Book of Revelation. 🕊️📖

What a journey it has been. Richard Bauckham captures something of what we’ve been experiencing together when he argues that Revelation offers a set of “counter-images” that impress on us a different vision of the world, purging and refurbishing the Christian imagination with alternative visions of how the world is and will be.

That’s exactly what we’ve been praying for, that this journey would not just beef up our minds with new information, but would lead to transformation of our lives. That the visions of this book would do their slow, deep work on us. That we would see the World differently. That we would see the Lamb differently. That we would see everything differently.

As we sit with this sacred text one final time, our prayer is simple, “Lord, may what we have seen in this book stay with us. May our hearts and minds continue to be shaped by its vision — a life not propped up by empire, but yielded under the reign of the Lamb.”

Join us tomorrow as we bring it home.

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☀️ Introducing our Summer of 14s! All summer long, something special is happening on the 14th of each month — and we’re ...
06/05/2026

☀️ Introducing our Summer of 14s! All summer long, something special is happening on the 14th of each month — and we’re kicking it off in the BEST way! Join us on June 14th at 11:30 AM right after service for a Parking Lot Party @ 8110 Corporate Blvd! Come relax, have fun, and dig into some delicious BBQ with our church family. This is just the beginning. You don’t want to miss a single 14th! Bring a friend and let’s celebrate summer together! 🍖🎉
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Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,...
06/04/2026

Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” [Psalm 23.4]

The Psalmist does not say if we walk through the valley of the shadow of death…he says when. The path of life does not bypass the dark places but rather passes directly through them. Grief, suffering, fear, and loss are not detours from the journey. They are part of it.

And yet the verse does not linger in the darkness. Its weight falls not on the valley but on the presence within it: you are with me. The Psalmist’s confidence is not that the valley will be short, or that the shadows will not fall deep. It is that he will not walk alone. The rod was a weapon against predators while the staff was a tool to guide and steady.  These are not abstract symbols. They are tangible, active care of a Shepherd who does not watch from a distance.

This is precisely what Alexander MacLaren captured when he wrote, “The love of the Shepherd is the security of the sheep.”Security, in this verse, is not the absence of danger. It is the presence of love. The sheep does not fear the valley because the Shepherd is in it too.

So here we find the great anchor in suffering: not an explanation for the darkness, but a companion through it. The fear is not pretended away rather it is displaced, crowded out by something greater. You are with me. These four words have steadied countless souls at the edge of the unbearable…May they steady us through this week. 

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Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” [John 10.27]This ve...
05/30/2026

Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” [John 10.27]

This verse carries a deep promise. Jesus doesn’t say His sheep might hear His voice rather He says they will. As His flock, we are called to a posture of active listening and willing obedience. The Shepherd is always speaking.

The challenge for us is not whether God is speaking, but whether we are truly tuned in. In the noise of daily life, it’s easy to let His voice become background sound. But Jesus calls us to more than passive hearing. He calls us to follow. Listening and obeying are inseparable in the life of a disciple.

Let’s make it a priority today to quiet the noise and incline our ears to the One who knows us by name.

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Minute Meditations | Scripture & LifeThis verse does not shout, nor does it issue a command. It just lays out before us ...
05/25/2026

Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life

This verse does not shout, nor does it issue a command. It just lays out before us a gentle promise: the Lord will be your confidence. Not our willpower…Not our track record…Not how well we got it all together. But rather Him and only Him.

Brennan Manning wrote, “You will trust God to the degree you know you are loved by Him.” This gets to the heart of it all. Confidence in God isn’t something we manufacture through discipline or determination rather to grow naturally, almost inevitably, from deep settled knowing that we are loved. When that love becomes real to us, trust stops being a struggle and starts being a response.

The image of a foot being kept from a snare is so tender and so specific. Snares don’t announce themselves. They’re hidden in ordinary ground…in anxious Monday mornings…in the conversation we have been dreading…in the quiet fear that this week will ask more of us than we have to give. And yet the promise stands: He will keep you. Not because we are careful enough, but because He is faithful enough.

As this week begins, what if we carried just one question with us. Not “Can I handle this?” but “Am I loved by the One who holds this?”

We are. And that changes everything.

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Minute Meditations | Scripture & LifeJesus has issued a generous invitation, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burd...
05/23/2026

Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life

Jesus has issued a generous invitation, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” [Matthew 11.28].  He doesn’t say strive toward me or earn your way to me. He says come. Just come, as you are, weary and burdened, with the full weight of whatever you’re carrying.

The rest he offers isn’t merely a pause before the next round of effort. It’s a deep settling, the kind that happens when we finally stop straining and let ourselves be held.

Mark Buchanan wrote, “Most of the things we need to be most fully alive never come in busyness. They grow in rest.” The things that make life genuinely rich such as peace, presence, gratitude quietly wither under pressure. They need space. They need exactly the kind of rest Jesus is speaking of.

Wherever this day finds us, the invitation is open. We don’t have to earn our rest.  We just need to come and receive. May we rest well today.

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Minute Meditations | Scripture & LifeIsaiah paints a vivid picture of a sun-scorched land. It is the kind of place where...
05/20/2026

Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life

Isaiah paints a vivid picture of a sun-scorched land. It is the kind of place where our own resources run dry, where the heat is relentless and the ground offers nothing. It’s an honest image. Life has those stretches. We all face the seasons where provision feels impossible and the way forward is unclear.

Walter Brueggemann captures it well: “’Wilderness’ is a place, in biblical rhetoric, where there are no viable life support systems.” That is precisely the terrain Isaiah has in mind. It is not metaphor for mild inconvenience, but a genuine landscape of exhaustion, where survival cannot be self-generated. And yet, into that very landscape, God speaks two commitments: GUIDANCE and SATISFACTION.

Guidance means we are not left to figure it out alone. The path may be unfamiliar, but the One leading it is not lost. There is comfort in being led rather than merely advised. It implies presence, not just direction.

Satisfaction in a scorched place is perhaps the greater miracle. It doesn’t say the land will change. It says our needs will be met within it. Brueggemann names this with precision, “’Grace’ is the occupying generosity of God that redefines the place.” Notice the word redefines…not relocates. The wilderness does not become a garden. It becomes, instead, a site of divine presence so real and so generous that its barrenness no longer has the final word.

This is the quiet wonder of God’s provision. It often doesn’t remove the difficulty rather it redefines it. What was once a place of no viable life support becomes, by grace, a place of sustenance.

This verse is an invitation to trust not in favorable circumstances, but in a faithful guide. When the ground beneath us offers nothing, the promise is that He will be enough- leading, staying, and satisfying in ways the landscape simply cannot. So let’s rest in the guide, not the geography.

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🌿🌊 Adventure awaits at Rainforest Falls VBS! Kids K-5 are invited to dive into an unforgettable week discovering the nat...
05/19/2026

🌿🌊 Adventure awaits at Rainforest Falls VBS! Kids K-5 are invited to dive into an unforgettable week discovering the nature of God and what it means to be rooted in Him!

📅 Monday, June 15 – Friday, June 19
 
⏰ 6:00PM – 8:30 PM 

📍 Encounter Church…8110 Corporate Blvd, Plain City, OH

Sign up your kids OR join us as a volunteer — link in bio! 🙌

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Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life“He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from...
05/18/2026

Minute Meditations | Scripture & Life

“He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.” [Isaiah 25.8]

Tears are honest things. They fall when grief is too large for language, when loss carves out space inside us that nothing in this world can fill. But in their honesty, tears do something quietly profound — they lead us somewhere. The aching soul that weeps is a soul that knows it was made for more than this.

Isaiah lifts our gaze to a horizon almost too beautiful to hold. Death itself will be swallowed up — not managed or softened, but forever defeated. And then, tenderly, personally, God will wipe away the tears from all faces. Not in some distant, impersonal sweep, but face by face. Every tear that ever traced a path down a human cheek was witnessed, and not one will be forgotten.

This is where grief, if we let it, becomes a road. Every time we weep and find world unable to comfort us, we are being drawn toward the only One who truly can. The Holy Spirit does not wait for our tears to stop before He draws near — He meets us in them, the Comforter our souls are always reaching for in the dark.

So weep, if we must. But let our tears do their quiet work, pointing us to the God who made this unshakeable promise: The Lord has spoken. The last tear has already been numbered.

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Address

8110 Corporate Boulevard
Plain City, OH
43064

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