MISSION CLEVELAND STORY

During fall of 2016, a small community of Clevelanders attending Mission Chattanooga began to dream and pray about initiating a local parish closer to home. This core group began to meet quarterly for Eucharistic services, tithing toward a future church plant, and fellowshipping informally in each other's homes. In January of 2017, monthly services were initiated, then on the first Sunday of Advent 2017, weekly worship services began. 

In our earliest days, our weekly services were held in an industrial event venue called the Old Woolen Mill. From there we quickly formed a partnership with First Cumberland Presbyterian Church, who graciously rented us their sanctuary space in the evenings from 2018-2021. In the spring of 2020, discerning a call to be an incarnational church embedded in a developing neighborhood, we then moved our services to the Blythe Oldfield Community Development Building, where we met in a gym. In the spring of 2023, we formed a relationship with a local Methodist Church and began to rent an unused church building in their possession just a mile away from our previous location. On February 1, 2026, Mission Cleveland was launched from the Mission Abbey to became its own entity.

Embedding ourselves in our current neighborhood has been something we long to do intentionally, creatively, and well. We desire to be a place of welcome, peace, and healing to the families that live to our left and our right. During the summer of 2023 we hosted monthly neighborhood cookouts, to which we invited residents by going door to door with cookies and smiles. In 2025 we partnered with Cleveland TN Community Resources to expand our small food pantry to include a refrigerator to better serve essential needs in our community. We are also partnering with The Chattanooga Food Bank to be a food distribution hub. We continue to seek out ways to be a blessing in our current space by keeping our eyes open to the needs around us and looking to serve our neighbors above ourselves.