Church planters Dan Ghramm and Alex Ennes have teamed up to kick off a church-multiplication movement in Cleveland, Ohio. Ennes started Gateway Church Downtown in 2006 and then encouraged Ghramm to plant Gateway Church West, which launched in 2009. They recruited Zach Weihrauch (not pictured) to plant Gateway Heights, which launched October 2011. The three planters share everything from logos to websites to health insurance.


What was lost has now been found.


Thanks, in part, to a unique relationship between two church planters in Cleveland, people like McTague, who may have never walked into another Cleveland church, are experiencing the gospel.


THE RELUCTANT CHURCH PLANTER
Gateway Church Downtown, pastored by Alex Ennes, and Gateway Church West, pastored by Dan Ghramm, are neither campuses of one another nor completely independent either. Instead, they’re interdependent. The two autonomous churches share everything—from health insurance to video screens to graphic design to a funnel-cake maker. Yet each church makes its own decisions, each pastor preaches his own messages, and each church has its own vision for reaching the community.


Together Ennes and Ghramm have teamed up— along with an assortment of other Cleveland church planters—to kick off a church-multiplication movement in the often-under appreciated Great Lakes city of Cleveland.


Gateway Church Downtown, the older of the two congregations, began in the fall of 2006. Alex Ennes, originally from Arkansas, had never seen himself as a church planter. After marrying the daughter of a Cleveland pastor and taking a staff position at a church in the city, Ennes assumed he’d spend his ministry in established churches. But he just felt empty.


From time to time he’d talk to the then local director of missions, Randy Chestnut, about opportunities at other churches. But nothing seemed right. Yet, when they talked in 2006, Chestnut had an idea.


ON MISSION • Winter 2012 23

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