Our History

Grace Pointe Church launched on September 15, 2019 as the Saint Cloud Campus of Celebration Community Church.

When COVID-19 hit, we were forced to leave our meeting location at Saint Cloud Elementary, regroup, and pray about how to move forward in the calling God gave us.

In 2020, we relaunched worship services at the St. Cloud lakefront under the moniker Church at the Lakefront. Attendance rose from around 30 to more than 100 quickly. We met new visitors every week and God blessed the church richly with new life groups, new partners, and even a few men who would become future elders in the coming years. We met rain or shine and even offered drive-in worship (via FM radio) for those concerned with meeting in gatherings in 2020.

As temperatures rose in Spring 2021, we realized we needed to find an indoor space to meet. God lead us to the St. Cloud Community Center on 17th Street. During this time all ministries experienced massive growth—especially our children’s ministry, which had not met since February 2020. More than 60 adults joined the various volunteer teams around the church in less than 30 days!

The Community Center’s calendar began filling up with other Sunday activities in Fall 2021, leading us to meet at Saint Cloud Middle School for a month. Later that Fall, the Saint Cloud Parks and Recreation department notified the church that the Community Center may become unavailable on Sundays. We decided to move to a more-dependable location and God provided Michigan Avenue Elementary, where the church was able to meet unimpeded by weather or calendar conflicts for more than a year! The church grew again significantly during this time. Grace Pointe Kids finally had enough space to open all the separate grade-level rooms it needed in order to teach children effectively.

2020 through 2022 brought numerous challenges, not the least of which was having to move our location periodically due to weather issues or scheduling conflicts with our venue hosts. But, what God during this time was nothing short of miraculous! Those years created an inhospitable time to plant a church, and only God deserves the credit for having preserved us. He launched and grew a healthy church at a time no one would expect a new church to be able to survive. God poured out immense kindness on us and Celebration Community Church took note, too. The leaders of both campuses agreed that our campus was at an important juncture, with the ability to soar to greater heights. There were so many positive signs that we together decided to transition the St. Cloud campus to operating as an autonomous church, named Grace Pointe Church.

Here are recordings of this announcement, shared at both Celebration Community Church (by Senior Pastor Gregg Heinsch) and Grace Pointe Church (by Senior Pastor Mike Chandler) in 2021:

Grace Pointe Church became fully autonomous on Resurrection Sunday, April 17, 2022. New elders were elected and the church became administratively and financially independent from Celebration Community Church. forming its own 501(c)(3). That same year, God provided a more permanent home for the congregation at its current location: 29 East 13th Street. Though the elders were prepared to remain at Michigan Avenue Elementary (potentially) for years to come, God had other blessings in mind! On Sunday, December 2, 2022, Pastor Mike share this announcement with the church during the worship service:

Where did our logo come from?

We inherited our logo from our founding church, Celebration Community Church.

1. The logo represents the 44 Life, which is a significant part of our church culture. It represents how we see creation, history, the church, and more. It reminds us of the tenets of our faith we should pursue consistently. Our logo is the ideal representations of the 4 pursuits and the 4 realities.
2. Having the same logo as Celebration Community Church has helped us maintain some continuity between the two churches and other churches that we plant together.

Where did the name “Grace Pointe” come from?

The name Grace Pointe Church was chosen by our Transition Team with the leadership of our Pastor, Mike Chandler. The name was chosen primarily because it suits our logo.

The logo above depicts the 4 realities as 4 arcs encompassing the world and all of history. The 4 realities represent one way of summarizing the storyline of the Bible. They are called “realities” because each of them is true whether we believe them or not. The fact that they are true shapes our understanding of life, sin, Christ, the future, and ourselves.The logo also depicts the 4 pursuits as 4 arrows directed at the cross at the center. The 4 pursuits represent key disciplines in Christ-centered living. They give definition to our faith, the action and the direction of believing Jesus.

The name Grace Pointe was chosen as a name to describe the center of our logo—the place where grace is offered on the cross, or the “Pointe of Grace.”

Grace Pointe (adjective + noun): the location of grace.

More than anything, we hope this name will represent the gospel to our community of St. Cloud. Jesus has offered grace on the cross, and we pray that our worship services, life groups, prayer gatherings, and all other activities of Grace Pointe Church will serve as opportunities for them to experience that grace.

What is the nature of our relationship to Celebration Community Church now?

Celebration Community Church is our sister church! We maintain a partnership with CCC to this day.