Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light+Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church where his wife, Jen, serves as the lead pastor.

By Jeff Finley

In the small Connecticut town of Bozrah (population 2,500), Pastor Matt Grohocki leads the decade-old Revelation Church that is impacting its region and breaking conventional wisdom on church attendance.

“Bozrah’s just a small, country farm town,” Grohocki said on “The Light + Life Podcast” in an interview with Brett Heintzman. “I quickly learned the myth of ‘location, location, location’ is really garbage when the Lord’s involved. If you came to our location in Bozrah, sometimes your GPS doesn’t get you where you need to be, but people keep showing up week after week.”

While planting Revelation, Grohocki absorbed statistics and expert opinions claiming people won’t drive across bridges or go farther than the local Walmart to attend church. These concepts, however, proved not to be true for Revelation, and the church developed a vision for reaching southeastern Connecticut.

“We’ve got people who are traveling 30 minutes to get to our church, and, within 30 minutes of our church, there are probably a dozen Walmarts,” he said. “I can only attribute it to the fact that we’re a church that’s biblical, and we are unapologetic in preaching the gospel, unapologetic with the truth, and are willing to receive people as they are.”

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“I didn’t want to be a fishbowl that was just attracting other Christian fish into my bowl.” – Pastor Matt Grohocki

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That means some people may be heard cursing in the church foyer. Grohocki noted that the church needs “people who are of the world in the church if you want people to meet Jesus. I didn’t want to be a fishbowl that was just attracting other Christian fish into my bowl.”

Before COVID-19, the church attracted nearly 1,000 people in person each weekend. When services resumed after quarantine, services drew approximately 250 people. Attendance is now 600 people in person.

“We’re dealing with that barrier of trying to get people back in person and reengaged,” Grohocki said. “When your online presence is done well, we’re finding it can be a bit of a barrier.”

The church staff includes Worship Pastor/Creative Director Josh Creedon, a former heroin addict who overcame addiction with help from the faith-based Teen Challenge recovery program.

“The Lord provided him, and when He provided him, it opened the door to people who would normally consider themselves too worthless to be at church,” Grohocki said. “Josh was a phenomenal example of how the Lord can do a tremendous work, even through people who have been to the lowest of lows. We’ve just seen story upon story upon story, whether it be through single moms, broken marriages, or people who have been suicidal.”

Finding Faith and Returning Home

Grohocki has lived in Connecticut for much of his life although it’s not the state where he met Jesus Christ.

“Connecticut is where I was born and raised. It’s where I met my wife [Heidi]. She’s my high school sweetheart,” he said.

The New England state hasn’t always been home, however. After four years in the U.S. Navy, Grohocki and his family moved to Florida. At that time, his experiences inside of church buildings were primarily limited to funerals and wedding.

Heidi convinced him to begin attending church, but he insisted on finding a church that felt right for him. They finally settled on a church that met inside a YMCA in Zephyrhills, Florida. He then experienced a sudden shift in his attitude toward church.

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“I really felt that the Lord was telling me I was going to lead His church one day…” – Pastor Matt Grohocki

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“From a place where I didn’t want to be or even be a part of, it became a draw for me,” he said. “I really felt that the Lord was telling me I was going to lead His church one day, which was absolutely terrifying, and this was all within the first six to nine months of beginning a relationship with Jesus.”

He unexpectedly began serving in youth ministry.

“I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t attend a youth ministry [growing up]. I really didn’t like teenagers. It was a very awkward decision to make,” he recalled. “But I went to my pastor and said, ‘You know, I feel like this is what I’m supposed to do.’”

He eventually led the youth ministry for three and a half years. Rather than accepting another pastoral position that his Florida pastor offered him, Grohocki sensed God telling him to return to his home state.

“It took a bit of convincing. Heidi had to leave her career as a teacher. The boys had to be pulled out of the school system,” he said about the difficult decision to leave the Sunshine State. “They were a part of all the family and friends that we had gained and acquired through the church along the way. We were packing up and leaving all of them.”

He returned to Connecticut in February 2012, and his family joined him when the school year ended in June. Revelation Church launched in September.

Along with returning to his home state, Grohocki also made a move in denominational affiliation. His church-planting mentor transitioned from the General Baptist Church (which include the family’s Florida congregation) to the Free Methodist Church USA, and he introduced Grohocki to the FMCUSA.

Revelation Church faced big challenges such as Connecticut being “at best, in most areas, complacent as far as the church is concerned,” according to Grohocki. “When you come up vision-casting a very large powerful vision from the Lord, people do one of two things. They either run, or they get on board.”

Thankfully, God blessed Revelation with other people who were willing to help launch the church or at least check it out.

“We had probably 35 or 40 highly committed people going into launch weekend, and then probably another 80 to 100 people that were like: ‘We’ll be there, but we’re not going to do anything leading up,’” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of people helping in the beginning, but we had enough to where it wasn’t just Heidi and I.”

Revelation launched in the auditorium of a Norwich, Connecticut, high school that only allowed use of the building for eight weeks.

“We had our first service of 209 people; nine of them began relationships with the Lord. And then that Monday, I got the building permit in order to build out a location that we had gotten once we found out we only had eight weeks at [the high school],” he said. “We were not only planting a church, but we were remodeling a building in order to move in eight weeks later.”

The church plant relocated to the leased building on the property of a furniture warehouse in the nearby community of Bozrah. Five weeks of construction followed.

From Camp to Church

After two and a half years, the furniture company’s owner notified Grohocki that the entire property would be for sale, which meant the church would likely not be able to use the same space under a new owner. The church explored other available property but didn’t immediately find anything.

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“We’re just going to wait for the Lord to show us what we need to do.” – Pastor Matt Grohocki

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“I really ran into a barrier of ‘I feel like we’re forcing our hand to find a location,’ so we just paused and I said, ‘I’m not looking anymore. We’re just going to wait for the Lord to show us what we need to do,’” he recalled. “A month later, one of our church members brought in a manila folder and threw it on my desk and said, ‘You’re going to want to look at this. … It was paperwork for a closed auction for a camp that was literally 1.1 miles up the road from where we were meeting at this point.”

When church leaders visited the property, Grohocki said, they “realized that the kitchen and the dining hall building there was enough for us to make a foyer and a sanctuary out of.”

An addition was needed for children’s ministry, but an existing building met the need for an office. Funding, however, seemed like a major obstacle for a church that was only two and a half years old.

Traditional banks were not an option for a congregation without a long record of giving, but Revelation Church received a loan from FM Financial’s Free Methodist Investment & Loan Fund. The church closed on the loan in February 2015 and moved to the former Boy Scout camp in July 2015.

“We just had our 10th anniversary [of the church’s launch], and at that service, we were able to share with the church that the loan has been paid off. It’s been seven years [since receiving the loan],” he said. “It was $1.4 million in the beginning, and it is $0 right now.”

Click here to listen to the podcast episode.
Click here to learn more about Revelation Church.
Click here to learn more about the Free Methodist Investment & Loan Fund.

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Revelation Church

Revelation Church

Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley

Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light+Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church where his wife, Jen, serves as the lead pastor.