Bethany Covenant Church Worship Director Ethan Bryant, left, and Pastor Laura Tarro will soon be hosting church services at Pollyanna Brewing Company in St. Charles. The church formerly met at Dimples Donuts.
Sandy Bressner/Shaw Local News Network
Bethany Covenant Church in St. Charles will move its services from a doughnut shop to a brewery, with the first service at its new home set for 9 a.m. Sept. 29.
The Evangelical Covenant church has been holding its services in Dimple’s Donuts, 1307 E. Main St., for the past two years. Now it’s moving to Pollyanna Brewing and Distilling Company, 106 S. Riverside Ave., in order to have room to grow.
Pastor Laura Tarro said when the church first opened it hosted about 10 to 15 people each week. Now they have about 40 members at each service and the congregation is growing steadily.
Holding services in a doughnut shop, and soon a brewery, is not the only thing that makes Bethany Covenant unique. Tarro said the church has a more relaxed approach to worship compared to traditional churches.
Bethany Covenant ditches the pews and dress codes and aims to make everyone feel welcome. Members sit at tables together during services and they often pause during teachings to allow members to engage in group discussions.
Tarro said many members have come from large churches where they felt disconnected.
“At a lot of churches, you have the expert on the stage teaching, and we really try to decenter that,” she said. “We follow a fairly traditional worship set, with written prayers, singing, creeds and all the stuff, but we do it in a more relaxed way.”
Worship leader Ethan Bryant is in charge of organizing the church’s volunteers, planning the songs and leading the music during services, when he plays guitar. He and Tarro have been leaders of Bethany Covenant since it opened.
Bryant said they see a wide range of ages and demographics, with newborns to seniors, several multigenerational families and a lot of teenagers. The church is led by two female pastors and they do Communion every week, which differs from most Protestant churches, he said.
Several times per year they hold Youth Sundays, where they let the younger members of the congregation lead the services.
In addition to the extra space, the new location allows the church to get into the community in a different way, Tarro said. The owners of the brewery are involved in the community, giving back in different ways, and the church hopes to join in those efforts, she added.
The Rev. Laura Tarro addresses the congregation of Bethany Covenant Church during the Easter Sunday service inside of Dimple’s Donuts in St. Charles last year.
Eric Schelkopf/Shaw Local News Network
Tarro said their goal is to have their own permanent space in the community, but for now they are happy to have a space to rent once per week that fits their needs and allows them to build community connections.
“We’re just excited to see what happens in this new location,” Tarro said.
Bryant said the response from church members to the move has been positive. They tried out the location for a service in August that was attended by about 75 people, who he said were enthusiastic about the space.
Tarro said it takes a certain amount of humility for a church to operate out of someone else’s space.
“I think it says something about a church when they’re willing to meet in unique spaces,” Tarro said. “It definitely brings some challenges with it, but we really enjoy having those connection points and our hope is to be a good neighbor to all of these different businesses around St. Charles.”