Service of Organization: Ormewood Church

Ormewood Church
Sunday, October 5, 2025
11 AM

New Worshiping Community Highlight: Ormewood Church, Rev. Jenelle Holmes

Nearly a year to the date after the former Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church closed its doors with 15 remaining members, signs of new life at the historic sanctuary on Delaware Avenue emerged in the spring of 2017.

Ormewood Park neighbors, families of the Ormewood School, and fans of the well-loved Ormewood Dog Yard gathered with NCDC throughout the spring and summer of 2016 in pot-luck style community meetings to discuss the vision of the neighborhood and area. The priority was not a question of property; the top priority was to get to know the area and discern what God was already doing in Ormewood. From there, a clarion call emerged. The people needed community, and they desired a neighborhood gathering place that offered refreshing and creative new ways for folks to engage with one another and with their faith.

From these gatherings, a group of 12 southeast Atlanta residents of all backgrounds met in the fall and winter to dream how a new church could look in the neighborhood. These 12, with the guidance of NCDC Executive Director Lindsay Armstrong, drafted and published an advertisement for an organizing pastor. This was followed by months of interviews, discussion, and eventual unanimity in a way forward, hiring Jenelle Holmes as organizing pastor of “Ormewood Church.” The first worship service of this fledgling group was held Easter of 2017, new life emerging on the property of a closed church.

Eight years later this neighborhood church is known for its friendliness, creativity, and come-as-you-are spirit. It reflects the neighborhood in its gaggle of young children, LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, and deep curiosity in the many ways a life of faith emerges in people and community.

The values of Ormewood Church are to welcome others, be of service, open our minds, and participate. Our mission is to cultivate a shared community of curiosity, spirituality, and belonging.

We cultivate this community by maintaining a very porous relationship between the neighborhood and our beloved property, hosting things like parking lot pizza gatherings, the community Dog Yard and preschool, Federal Worker Support Groups, prayer vigils, and birthday parties for folks crawling to using a cane. We cultivate this community by being curious about faith instead of prescriptive–inviting people to ask good questions, read interesting books, and gather with others for faith-full conversation. We cultivate this community by hosting a creative and thoughtful Sunday morning worship service, sensitive to those in our community still wary to cross the threshold of a sanctuary because of church hurt.

In these eight years of planting, watering, and growing this new worshipping community in southeast Atlanta, Ormewood Church has been enriched by the support and wisdom of the PC(USA). Our diverse group of congregants appreciates the collaborative nature of decision making, the representative form of government, the breadth of theological wisdom, and the ways a Reformed faith takes seriously our responsibility in the world. Chartering as a formal congregation of this denomination feels like a confirmation of the ways in which we want to be held accountable and guided in community. We are grateful for the New Church Development Commission’s continuing support and the openness of this Presbytery to think creatively and listen well to a community that was ready for a different kind of church.