About Us

OUR BELIEFS

Below is our statement of faith. These are the core beliefs at Mount Olivet Presbyterian Church.

1. We believe there is one God and Father who has created us in love and strengthens us in life. God is perfect in all His ways and lives in three persons as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our greatest purposes in life are to praise God and find our truest pleasure in our relationship with Him.

2. Jesus Christ became human through His miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit and His virgin birth. Jesus is both true God and true human, united in one Person forever. He gave His life in love and died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. On the third day He arose from the dead, ascended into heaven where, at the right hand of God the Father, He rules in glory and power. He will come again visibly and bodily to consummate all history and take us Home. We have the opportunity to live in a personal relationship with Christ by responding in personal faith to Him as our Savior and Lord. This begins a lifetime of walking with God, walking in His love, and walking with others in the same kind of love, humility, and service He has shown us.

3. The Holy Spirit is the presence of Christ here on earth. He is God and has come to glorify Christ and to call people into a relationship with God. He convicts us of sin and draws us to the Savior. When we begin this relationship with God, His Spirit comes and resides in our hearts and is always with us. He then daily fills us so that we have power to walk with Him in love and obedience. His Spirit gives us spiritual gifts so that we can serve others. His Spirit comforts us in struggles, gives us guidance in life, shows us when we sin and need to come back into fellowship with God, and gives us strength to follow and live out His purposes for us.

4. Scripture is God’s Word which is completely true and helps us to know God. In the Bible, God reveals who He is, how we can begin a relationship with Him, how to grow in our faith, and how to live in this world as we relate with love towards others.

5. Being estranged from God and condemned by our sinfulness, our salvation is wholly dependent upon the work of God’s free grace. God credits His righteousness to those who put their faith in Christ alone for their salvation, and thereby justifies them in His sight. Only such as are born of the Holy Spirit and receive Jesus Christ become children of God and heirs of eternal life.

6. The true Church is composed of all persons who through saving faith in Jesus Christ and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit are united together in the body of Christ. The Church finds her visible yet imperfect expression in local congregations where the Word of God is preached in its purity and the sacraments are administered in their integrity, where scriptural discipline is practiced, and where loving fellowship is maintained. For her perfecting she awaits the return of her Lord.

7. Jesus Christ will come again to the earth personally, visibly, and bodily—to establish His Kingdom, judge the living and the dead, and to consummate history and the eternal plan of God. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).

8. It is our joyful call to share with others this news of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and love. This message, called the Gospel, has the power to draw people into a living relationship with God and to change their lives while giving them a purpose to live that is larger than themselves. We have this call to share Christ with our families, our neighbors, and to the rest of the world until all hear God’s story.

GOD'S STORY AND OUR STORY

Life is really about a story. It’s the story of how God pursues us in His relentless love to draw us into a relationship with Himself. In our sin and self-sufficiency, we turned away in the Garden of Eden from a perfect home and relationship with God to follow our own ways. A perfect relationship was broken and is in need of being restored. In the story of the Old Testament and his special people, Israel, God began to share His heart to woo and call us back. He is working to restore all of creation to Himself so His Kingdom and perfect rule and reign can once again be realized.

Two thousand years ago, God revealed Himself in His Son, Jesus, who was fully God and fully human. Through the story of Jesus’ time on earth, He reveals the heart of God the Father by teaching truths of who God is and how to live in a life-giving and growing relationship with Him. God shows us how to begin a relationship with Him as we respond to His love through the repentance of our sin and embracing Him as our Savior and Lord. He shows us how to love, serve, and relate in humility with one another. In Jesus’ life and ministry He shows us His compassionate heart as He seeks to comfort, heal, and encourage us. In places where we need His tenderness and strength in our struggle, He comes and meets our needs. Where we need His truth to understand how to live in light of life’s hard choices, He grants us wisdom. When we need forgiveness for our sins, he forgives us and us takes us to the cross. Where we need challenge to follow, He redirects our paths. When we need love to serve others, he gives us the capacity to care. When we doubt His love for us, He points us to the cross. And when we need a fresh encounter of His love, He speaks to our hearts, and says, “I love you and I call you my beloved.”

We have a story, too. Our own story is how we live with God, His people, and His world. Our story is about serving others in compassion and telling them that new life begins by personal faith in Him in response to His amazing grace. Because of His deep love and care for us, we respond with our own love for God. Jesus gives us all we need to walk as sojourners in this life until the day He calls us home. That will be a glorious day. Until that day, we walk in love for Him and for others.

GRACE

Grace. It’s what God’s story is all about. God is incredibly loving and perfectly holy. But we are broken, in sin, and have fallen away from God which means our connection was lost. The Lord lovingly gave His Son, Jesus, to pay the cost for our sins on the cross. That is grace. Out of love, God makes the first move to offer a relationship and restore connection where there was once separation. Grace is undeserved favor. He longs for us to be back in relationship and this is possible only through responding to His grace in personal faith in Jesus. As we respond in repentance and faith to God’s grace, God brings us back to Himself. We become God’s children and we have the joy of a full life here on earth and eternal life forever. We become Christ-followers, growing in faith, encountering God in daily life, living as His beloved, and sharing His love with others that they may also discover the joy of knowing God. Our hope is that people would know this personal, loving and holy God and walk in His love and power.

Ephesians 2:8-9; I John 3:1, 4:7-21; Isaiah 6:3; Romans 5:1-11, 10:10; John 1:12, 10:10

Mount Olivet Presbyterian Church was organized in Eicher’s Hall, above 21 E. State St in July of 1901, with 25 members. Dr. McFadden and Dr. S. A. Livingston organized the group and made plans to build a church. A lot at 115 E. State St. was purchased for the building. On January 29, 1905 the church was dedicated. This building served the congregation until it grew too large for the space and a new building project began in 1971. The current building was dedicated on October 29, 1972. In 2014, Mount Olivet Presbyterian Church affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church denomination, an association which has worked wonderfully for our congregation.

Many pastors and lay people have served here over the past 100 plus years of this congregation. We have shared a great love of God, worshipped and obeyed Him, and loved one another. This is evident in the fruits of our labors; Housing the Edgewood Ministerial Association Food Pantry, Fellowship Hall, Scholarships, and mission support.

OUR DENOMINATION

We are part of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church denomination. In 1980, a group of pastors and elders began meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, for prayer and planning. They came from the two mainline Presbyterian denominations at the time, the United Presbyterian Church of the USA (UPCUSA—the “northern church”) and the Presbyterian Church US (PCUS—the “southern church”). These leaders had become concerned with theological progressivism and institutional resistance to change in their denominations. They wanted to form a Church that took seriously the Bible, the theology of the historic confessions of the faith, and the evangelical fervor of the founders of American Presbyterianism. They envisioned a denomination that was really evangelical and really Presbyterian; hence the name the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). In addition, the motto, “In Essentials Unity, In Non-essentials Liberty, in All Things Charity; Truth in Love,” was adopted.

Jen is our Communications Administrator. She is responsible for creating all of our bulletins, slideshows, annual reports, Facebook page, Instagram account, and keeping up with our website and calendar. She has been a member of the Mt. Olivet congregation her whole life. When she isn’t busy at the computer you can find Jen cooking, volunteering, traveling, antiquing, and hiking. Jen is married to Steve, they live in Inverness, Florida and have two adult children. Contact Jen at: jen.mtolivet@gmail.com

Jason is our pastor. He met his wife, Susan, while in college at Miami University in the collegiate ministry of Cru. Following a short-term mission trip to Southeast Asia, he felt a call to ministry and graduated from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is most excited when people begin to encounter the presence and love of God and see them commit to a lifetime journey of love for God and others. Jason and Susan have four adult children - Emily, Carrie, Nathan, and Luke. On crisp autumn Saturdays he loves watching college football and also enjoys biking, pickleball, reading and time with his family and friends. You can contact Jason at (513) 839-0546 or jason@mtolivetchurch.org

Jon has served as the music director at Mt. Olivet since May 2013. He leads the choir and praise team in rehearsals and provides music throughout the service. He loves using music to draw people closer to God. As the famous composer J.S. Bach said, "The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." Outside the church, Jon is an active teacher and accompanist where he lives in Oxford. When he's not practicing, he enjoys being outdoors where he can hike, bike, or walk his dog, Coda. You can contact Jon at

jon@mtolivetchurch.org.