My name is Dirk Yount, and I live in Dayton, Ohio, USA. I found salvation in Yeshua in August of 1994. By a year I found myself at the local Messianic Jewish congregation Sh’ma Yisrael. I felt the Lord telling me to serve and be discipled in this congregation under Rabbi Howard Tockman, and since then we’ve become best friends. I served faithfully under him for 20 years, doing whatever was needed, whether sound, music or leading while he was on sabbatical. We’ve always had a very dedicated group of servants and have made sure all aspects of the ministry were maintained. He retired a few years ago, and dissolved our congregation.
We retooled our group, becoming more organic, and renamed our congregation “Tree of Life Messianic Fellowship”. The years that Howard and his wife Christina sowed into our group have helped us to carry on as they “equipped us for the work of the ministry” in their absence. We have set up an “off the grid” ministry structure that functions well as a congregation. We typically spend time together in short liturgy, long worship, and then we usually read a portion of scripture together and discuss it. We love to gather together in nature, outdoors and in person. Over the warm months we dedicate at least one Shabbat together at a local park.
We have recently been rethinking the approach that our group has been using. During the coronavirus outbreak we began meeting on Zoom. That ended up being a tremendous blessing as it helped our group to connect and minister in ways we hadn’t considered before, but it also allowed former members of Sh’ma Yisrael and other groups to connect with us from afar. One of our folks even moved to Colorado, within a few minutes of a former member who reconnected. We call them the “Rocky Mountain Chai” part of our group…haha. We’ve found that quite a few of us are moved by “story”, and would like to incorporate telling Bible stories into our gathering times even more than we already do.
As this coronavirus chapter winds down, we are trying to figure out how to meet together in person while retaining close connections with our Zoom folks. We have some good ideas that we are processing, and will likely be meeting in person regularly in the months to come in addition to our park meetings. Please pray for us as we transition to this phase, and for growth personally in Yeshua. We currently meet on Zoom and anyone who contacts me is welcome to join us. We normally meet at 11am EST on Shabbat. If someone wants to connect with our group it would be through my email address at dirk@yountfish.net, or at 937-416-8082.
Interested in starting a group? https://yeshuagroups.com/start
