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Kathy Waters/Highlands Today
Reinhold Buxbaum, pastor of The Way church, leads his Bible study group in prayer Wednesday at his home.
By Douglas Carman of Highlands Today
Published: April 8, 2007
SEBRING
Before taking over the family business from her late husband, Patty Palmer spent much of her time at church.
With the youth groups and the nursery at the First Baptist Church in Avon Park, the stay-at-home mom said she spent as much time as she could with her children.
Through a church, so do many.
Despite apparently stalled growth reported by many congregations through Highlands County, some of
the more rapidly growing churches have sustained that growth through an array of activities.
Ranging from the charitable to simply the amusing,
some upstarts as well as some established churches build from side projects and outreaches while giving out their message.
Church At Home
Reinhold Buxbaum's church, which was established less than a year ago, takes some of its services to the home. Or rather, several homes, including his own.
The members of The Way of Highlands County, a small non-denominational congregation in downtown Sebring, divide themselves into groups of five to eight on Wednesdays. Buxbaum, the church's pastor,
leads the young couples as they gather at his house. At other houses, Buxbaum said they were running simultaneous groups for older couples (but no singles group for any age, at least yet,
although a men's group gathered on Saturdays, he mentioned). "We want to keep the groups small," Buxbaum said.
At a Bible study late in March, the group Buxbaum led, where the participants' ages ranged from the 20s to the low 40s, went into a discussion about the role of men and women in marriages. "If
your husband truly loved you 'as Christ loved the church,' what effort would it have on your marriage?" was one of the questions debated by the married women in the group, as the men responded.
Daniel Schumacher, who was at this Bible study, came to this church to network with people closer to his age. In Texas, he added, he previously left another church for that reason. "They didn't
have any contemporary services," Schumacher said.
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