A congregation begins before its building
Before the stone walls rose at Wick and McGuffey, a congregation gathered around a pastor and the hope of a new beginning.
Daniel H. Evans had served First Presbyterian Church for decades before a painful leadership dispute ended his pastorate. Contemporary newspaper reports record the controversy from several sides. His supporters met on June 24, 1903, at Henry K. Wick’s log cabin to organize a new Presbyterian congregation in which Evans could preach. The group gathered in the former James L. Wick residence at 753 Wick Avenue while planning a permanent home. The founding was therefore a local story of personal loyalty, church governance, and renewed worship. [E114–E127, E27–E28, E31]
Henry K. Wick and Caleb B. Wick conveyed part of Out Lot 303 at the northeast corner of Wick Avenue and McGuffey Street for $6,500. The deed was executed August 7 and recorded August 11, 1903. The lot measured roughly 117 by 200 feet. [E25, E157]
The trustees received floor plans from Owsley & Boucherle on July 27, 1903. A September article credited the firm with a Gothic design inspired by an English parish church: limestone walls, an open timbered sanctuary, a tower study, and Sunday school rooms below. Charles Henry Owsley was the firm’s senior partner. [E26, E31, E106, E109]
The cornerstone was laid November 9, 1903. Construction paused for the winter, then resumed in spring 1904. Worship began in the basement on August 7, 1904, and the completed church was dedicated December 4. The dedication account described rock faced stone, a tile roof, a porte cochere, three sections of pews, and a pulpit framed by arches. [E29–E31]
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The architect at Wick and McGuffey
Charles Henry Owsley gave Memorial a landmark in stone. His own church membership and the buildings around the Valley place that commission in a larger story.
Charles Henry Owsley was born in Blaston, Leicestershire, in December 1846. He apprenticed with architect James Hoskins in Abergavenny, Wales, completing his training in 1868. After time in Toronto, he settled in the Mahoning Valley and built a Youngstown practice. By the time Memorial chose its architect, he had spent decades designing public, commercial, residential, and religious buildings with his partner Louis Boucherle. The September 1903 newspaper elevations name Owsley & Boucherle as Memorial’s designers. Charles Frederick Owsley, his son and an accomplished architect in his own right, joined the practice in 1905, after Memorial’s building was complete. [E26, E106, E111, E113]
Owsley belonged to First Presbyterian Church with his family, according to a 1907 biographical account. His 1935 obituary again names First Presbyterian. Daniel H. Evans and his supporters had formed Memorial after the dispute at First Presbyterian, placing the architect’s commission within two closely connected Presbyterian histories. Membership and authorship of a building followed different lines: the architect worked for Memorial’s trustees while his own congregational home remained First Presbyterian. [E106, E109, E114–E127]
For Memorial, the firm proposed a Gothic church in the spirit of an English parish church. The published 1903 account describes limestone, an open timbered sanctuary seating 350 to 400 people, a tower study, and large Sunday school rooms beneath the worship space, entered from McGuffey Street. The dedication report a year later described rock faced stone, a tile roof, and three sections of pews. From street corner to classroom to sanctuary, the plan made room for both gathered worship and the teaching life of the congregation. [E26, E31]
Other work in the Valley
The work beyond Wick Avenue helps show the scale of Owsley’s practice. His early commissions included Youngstown’s former courthouse at Wick and Wood. Owsley & Boucherle later designed the East Federal Street YMCA, the Dollar Bank Building, the F. H. Buhl Club in Sharon, and other churches, including the Richard Brown Memorial Church and a Methodist church in Newton Falls. The bank and Memorial rose in the same early 1900s building era, when the firm could work in steel frame commercial construction and stone Gothic church architecture at once. [E106, E111, E113]
After Charles Frederick joined the firm in 1905, father and son participated in the design of the 1910 Mahoning County Courthouse. Charles Henry withdrew from full time practice around 1911–12 while remaining involved with his son’s firm. He died of pneumonia at his Youngstown home on August 25, 1935, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. The Rev. Samuel J. Purvis of Memorial Presbyterian officiated at his funeral: a final recorded meeting of the architect and the church whose building he had helped to shape. [E107, E109, E111, E113]
Worship in an industrial city
By 1906, music, teaching, missions, and Sunday worship were filling the new rooms on Wick Avenue.
The building served more than a Sunday sermon. Notices record Bible classes, women’s missionary societies, holiday bazaars, young people’s activities, weddings, music, and public gatherings. A new pipe organ was first heard in September 1906. Together these details reveal a sanctuary and a network of rooms alive throughout the week. [E1, E12–E21, E32]
Pastoral succession brought Frederic R. Dent, Charles F. N. Voegelin, and Samuel J. Purvis after Evans. Their newspaper portraits give faces to this sequence; Purvis’s long ministry extended beyond the church walls through local civic and charitable relationships. The newspaper trail also records women organizing fundraisers, missionary work, meals, and teaching; their labor was part of the institution’s endurance. [E4, E34–E42, E55, E59–E62]
On March 28, 1929, the Youngstown Daily Vindicator reported that Memorial members had voted unanimously to continue after considering dissolution. In about twenty minutes they pledged $2,500 to clear the debt. Women’s groups, the Sunday school, and other organizations exceeded their goals. Their decision came seven months before the October stock market crash and became a defining statement of the congregation’s resolve. [E42]
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Depression, recovery, and a closing
Memorial chose to continue in 1929. A generation later, its final chapter would begin.
During the Depression, a proposal to join Memorial with First Presbyterian and sell the Wick Avenue building reached the front page on September 10, 1932. A second front page notice announced congregational votes for September 25. Memorial continued to worship in its own building in the years that followed. Citywide reports described reductions in ministers’ salaries and other church expenditures. [E47–E49, C3]
Through the 1940s and 1950s, services, Sunday school, women’s organizations, and successive ministers kept the congregation active. A 1953 report described increased income. Robert C. Powley and Richard S. Smilie were among the later pastors. [E64, E70–E78]
By 1961, however, Memorial faced declining membership, location concerns, finances, and low morale, according to a closing account. The congregation had voted 20–14 for dissolution, and the Mahoning Presbytery approved its own dissolution action. The civil corporation was dissolved by court order on October 6, 1961; a later court order authorized sale on June 6, 1962. These ecclesiastical and corporate steps are distinct. [E79–E81, E83, E158]
On April 9, 1961, the Vindicator described empty pews after Easter and former members worshiping elsewhere. The building’s religious use continued: Memorial’s liquidating trustees conveyed the property to Free Gospel Church for $65,000. The deed was recorded September 17, 1962. [E81, E158]
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Free Gospel on Wick Avenue
In September 1962, a different congregation entered the same sanctuary and made it home.
Free Gospel began elsewhere in Youngstown in the early 1930s, met in homes and storefronts, and built a church on McGuffey Road in 1942. It held its first service at 801 Wick on September 23, 1962; the October 6 Vindicator described that day’s dedication. Early invitations emphasized worship, healing prayer, and radio broadcasts. The successor congregation brought its own Pentecostal history into a building designed for Presbyterian worship. [E82, E85, E93]
Free Gospel’s ministry included radio broadcasts, revival meetings, Teen Challenge rallies, a Bible institute connection, and missionary support. David J. Beam preached his farewell on September 3, 1967. Kenneth K. Howe followed, with an installation announced for September 10; Ira E. Stiles was named pastor in 1968. Later ministers included Jack C. Crisco, Stephen L. York, Rev. and Mrs. James A. Howell, and Mike Petit. David R. Dercoli served as an associate minister. [E84–E101, N2]
The congregation celebrated the burning of its mortgage in 1972. Its services continued to reach listeners over WHOT radio. When the region’s steel economy changed dramatically later in the decade, Free Gospel remained a place of worship and ministry on Wick Avenue. [E93, C4–C5]
Hershall “H. Lynn” Bellows led Free Gospel in its final years at 801 Wick and handled the 2007 sale with the Shanks. Rev. Chester H. Heath, the denomination’s general superintendent, executed the recorded deed on Free Gospel’s behalf. [E132, E159]
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Metro: a place to belong
A welcome to people who seldom felt at home in church moved from an apartment to the old sanctuary at Wick and McGuffey.
An invitation beyond the usual church doors
Joshua and Aimee Shank came home to a Valley still reckoning with lost steel jobs. Before returning, Joshua served on the staff of The Summit Church in the Raleigh–Durham area, working with young adults alongside J. D. Greear. In 2003 the Shanks began gathering friends in a Canfield apartment, asking what it meant to be a church together. Metro identifies 2004 as its founding year. Looking back at the twentieth anniversary, Joshua recalled an early vision meeting in the back room of an Austintown Denny’s and Bible studies that went late into the night. The small beginnings matched the kind of welcome its founders hoped to extend. [E140, E148, E163, E165, O3, C5]
Metro’s original invitation named its intended community plainly: people seeking genuine friendships and an encounter with God, including a generation that had felt abandoned by family, friends, or the church. The welcome had a purpose beyond the congregation’s informal style. Its appeal was to people who seldom attended church and wondered whether they could belong. Aimee Shank told the Vindicator in 2008 that many in their generation were spiritually interested yet unlikely to commit to a congregation. [E128, E141, E145, E147]
Youngstown Metro Church is a community of people who gather to experience real friendships and a real encounter with God. It is a place where a generation often abandoned by family, friends, and the church will feel at home. It’s a place to connect with the one thing that will truly satisfy the human soul. It’s a place for you. We invite you to come, seek, and find the God who is relevant to every generation. Come seeking. Come expecting. — Metro’s original invitation [E141, E147]
Four places to gather
The group outgrew the apartment and met at Selah Café in Poland, taking over the space while it was closed on Sundays. A larger gathering moved into the gym at Youngstown Christian School on Southern Boulevard. Members arranged a room for worship and packed it away again afterward. Aimee remembered the repeated setup and teardown as exhausting; the school nonetheless helped the new church learn to serve together. [E128, E140, E145, E148]
Metro then moved to the Oakland Theater at 220 West Boardman Street. The first announced gathering there was June 11, 2006. This was a deliberate step toward downtown Youngstown: a theater stage became a worship space, and Sunday evening services brought a congregation of young adults into the city it intended to love. The move asked a young church to enter unfamiliar surroundings and depend on one another. [E129, E142, E145, E147–E148]
The night that opened 801 Wick
As the Oakland arrangement neared its end, the Shanks and other members searched Youngstown for a permanent home. In the anniversary interview, Joshua remembered a Summit Church team scanning the city for available buildings. The old stone church appeared vacant. A search of county property records and a chance discovery of a discarded sign helped Joshua and Scott Sailer reach the family connected with the property. On their first walk through, they saw both the possibilities of the sanctuary and signs of a building needing work. [E145, E165]
Metro’s retrospective remembers a negotiated price of $52,500. Banks had been reluctant to lend to a young church, and the price seemed beyond its reach. Joshua’s earlier work with J. D. Greear connected Metro to The Summit Church, which had supported the plant from its beginning. For the Wick Avenue purchase, Summit offered an interest free loan if the congregation could raise half the price in cash or pledges. Greear later named Youngstown Metro among Summit’s earliest church plants. His help was integral to the acquisition. [E140, E145, E148, E163, E165, O3, Q4]
For about three weeks, the congregation talked and prayed about a special offering. At an Oakland gathering the offering was taken before the sermon; when the totals were counted afterward, the church’s own retrospective reported $107,000 in gifts and pledges, including $70,000 in cash. The result exceeded the required amount and became one of Metro’s most retold memories of provision. Its congregation was made up largely of young adults and college students, which made the response all the more striking to those who witnessed it. [E140, E148, E165]
Free Gospel’s property was conveyed to Youngstown Metro by a deed recorded August 2, 2007, on the eve of a national recession. The congregation still had a sanctuary to prepare. Its August schedule called skilled and unskilled volunteers to clean and renovate the building on four workdays, including two long days just before worship began there. Members who had carried equipment into temporary rooms now carried the work of making a lasting home on Wick Avenue. [E143, E145, E159, C12]
A congregation through the week
In May 2008, the Vindicator reported about 65 members and 90 people attending Metro’s 6 p.m. Sunday worship. Services were informal and allowed time for reflection. Women’s, men’s, couples’, and mixed life groups gave people places to know one another. The church’s online prayer wall and sermon and music podcasts extended those connections, while its position near Youngstown State University opened conversations with students, including international students. Older members also became mentors to young people who needed steady family relationships. [E145, Q1]
That outward focus crossed borders. A Metro team traveled to Liberia in 2007, helping build five clean water wells and set up malaria clinics. The 10 Miles to Cure Thirst event raised funds for further work. In 2009 Joshua described plans for cooperation among local churches through the Change Project and for another partnership in Liberia. That February Metro ordained Erik Bennett and Phil Patrick to share pastoral leadership with him. Local service and global mission were joined to the small groups and friendships that kept the congregation together. [E144–E145, E147]
Leadership, family groups, and the next pastor
In 2010 Joshua Shank felt led away from pastoral ministry and stepped down as Metro’s lead elder. His departure began two years of uncertainty for the young congregation. Preachers from churches around the area rotated through its Sunday gatherings while a search team sought the next pastor. Through it all, family groups remained a source of strength: members kept sharing meals, questions, support, and the gospel. A survey completed by thirty members pressed the congregation to improve leadership and structure. Its vision for 801 Wick remained active: to connect the building more deeply to Youngstown and its university neighbors. Joshua and Aimee later returned for a period to support the church through the search. [E133–E136, E146–E147, O4]
Andrew Chamberlin’s first Sunday as pastor was August 5, 2012. He brought the remaining congregation the pastoral direction and momentum it had longed for. That season of renewed momentum was brief; lives were changed through Metro’s ministry, and God’s work continued at Wick and McGuffey. Over the following years Metro’s public language sharpened into the motto “Making missionaries for God’s glory to the nations.” A 2015 profile describes twelve week small groups, a monthly PUSH gathering to pray for the church, city, and world, and Friday Potter’s House meetings for those struggling with addiction. Michelle Chamberlin led children’s ministry. These regular gatherings show how the founding promise of friendship and belonging took shape inside the building. [E133, E147, O1, O3, Q2]
Metro’s mission also carried the congregation into a new international emergency. After the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal, Andrew traveled there with a church team July 11–19. In Duwakot they helped build temporary shelter, brought food and medicine, and spent time with residents through meals, conversation, and soccer. The team described both practical assistance and relationships as part of its calling. From the stone church on Wick Avenue, the ministry’s circle had reached families rebuilding on the other side of the world. Andrew served through July 29, 2018. [E137, Q2–Q3, P2]
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Steel Valley Church and a wider table
The congregation carried its old commitments into new leadership, a new name, and a second building beside the church.
A new pastoral chapter
Andrew Chamberlin announced his resignation July 8, 2018, and served his final Sunday July 29. The leaders’ letter thanked Andrew, Michelle, and their children for the life they had shared with the church. It invited members to a July 15 meeting with food and childcare, promised weekly family meetings after Andrew’s departure, and placed a question box in the building so that concerns could be heard. These were deliberate efforts to keep the congregation talking and praying together in a season of change. [E137, P2]
The elders recommended Brenton Beck as lead pastor in November. Members approved an offer in a December 2 congregational vote, and the church installed him February 3, 2019, in a service led by Rev. Gary Frost. Brenton had joined Metro in 2016, so the call placed a familiar member of the congregation in pastoral leadership. The service and the vote mark separate moments: the church’s decision to call a pastor and its public commissioning of him. [E138, E163, P3, P5–P6]
Worship when the doors were closed
In March 2020 the COVID 19 pandemic brought a change unlike the earlier moves between gathering places. Metro held online worship for ten weeks, March 15 through May 24. Members prayed and spoke over video calls and by telephone, delivered groceries and medication, and distributed food and masks. A congregational announcement from that season declared, “Our building does not define us; We are His church!” The sentence echoed a lesson already learned in apartments, a café, a school, and a theater: church life could be carried wherever people gathered and served. [E165, C6]
A name that speaks of the Valley
On August 15, 2021, the congregation publicly adopted the name Steel Valley Church, with Gary Frost speaking at the launch service. The name carried three convictions. It joined the congregation to Youngstown’s vibrant steelmaking history and the economic growth the mills once brought to the city. It described the church’s wider home: members came from Trumbull, Mahoning, and Columbiana counties and across the border in western Pennsylvania. And it spoke of endurance. As steel is shaped and strengthened under pressure in a forge, God had sustained and strengthened this church through its own difficult seasons. The name connected the region’s history, the people in its pews, and their testimony of God’s faithfulness. Its stated mission was to “Proclaim the Gospel and Equip the Church, to Reach the World for Jesus Christ.” [E165, C7, O4]
The church’s food pantry held its first distribution April 16, 2022, in a ministry begun under Pastor Les Upright. Its third Saturday rhythm brought families to Wick Avenue for practical help and personal contact; in November 2025 the church added a distribution amid uncertainty over SNAP benefits. In that same period Brenton Beck bought vacant land for the church and brought its properties under the new name. The church expanded its parking area from approximately 6,000 to 31,000 square feet, with a separate 2,000 square foot accessible lot. Brenton signed a general warranty deed as lead pastor on July 6, 2022; recorded July 15, it transferred twelve parcels, including 801 Wick Avenue, from Youngstown Metro Church to Steel Valley Church of Youngstown Ohio. The new land and the church’s established home thus became part of one property record in its new name. [E160, E162, E165, R4, O4]
A second building and a new organization
In 2024 Steel Valley celebrated twenty years since Metro’s founding. Joshua Shank returned on June 30 to remember the apartment, the search for Wick Avenue, and the offering night with Brenton Beck before a full sanctuary. The conversation joined the people who began the church to those carrying its present work. [E165]
That same year a second building beside the church at 801 Wick Avenue was purchased with funds raised in the community and support from the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio; the purchase was paid in cash. The new address for Steel Valley Outreach Center is 833 Wick Avenue, Mahoning County parcel 53-019-0-060.00-0. A 2024 property listing dates the one-story building to 1960 and describes approximately 4,500 square feet on a 0.44-acre lot. Originally offices for local attorneys, it later served as a day care and had stood vacant for more than a decade. Brenton founded Steel Valley Outreach Center, Inc., on April 12, 2024, as a separate nonprofit devoted to serving children, families, and neighbors. The center’s board names Brenton as president and Carman Arroyo as executive director. Its 501(c)(3) status and community and neighborhood development classification give the work an organizational home alongside the church. [E165, O3, SV1–SV2, SC1, A1–A2]
The center’s mission is to strengthen Youngstown by meeting essential needs through compassionate support and practical services. Its vision includes food assistance, childcare, special needs development, and family counseling. Its fuller plan describes clothing and furniture assistance, care for vulnerable families, and partnerships with local organizations. This is a vision for the second building and its future programs; the congregation’s food ministry had already begun at the church in 2022. [E165, SV1, SV3]
Two doors on Wick Avenue
The acquired building needed its own work before welcoming these activities. Its roof was replaced in 2025, and the heating and cooling system was replaced in 2026. The first food pantry distribution at the neighboring outreach building is planned for November 2026. These improvements prepare another set of rooms for the neighbors who already know the church’s ministry on the block. [O2, SV1, SV3]
Revive & Restore
The outreach center's 2026 mission project gives this neighboring building a new chapter of care for Youngstown. Its project page invites neighbors and partners to give, serve, and pray as the work continues. The photographs below place 833 Wick Avenue beside the historic church and show the parcel from above.
Watch the mission project
Explore Revive & Restore · Watch directly on YouTube · Visit Steel Valley Outreach Center
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Words that remain
A few sentences spoken and written across the church’s generations.
1904 · Memorial’s first service in the building
“This is a picture to be fixed in memory, an event to be written down”
Memorial ministry · giving as worship
“There is no substitute for direct giving.”
Free Gospel · reflection on congregational life
“been blessed with real love and unity”
Metro · public interview in 2008
“What you believe should be revealed in how you live”
Metro · after the Nepal relief trip, 2015
“We have so many resources here. I want to figure out ways to help there.”
The corner in five documents
The 1903 deed is recorded in Mahoning County Deed Volume 116, page 445. Later deeds mark the building’s successive congregations; the 1989 plat records a change to the street corner. Select a scan to examine it.