Highland Church of Christ appointed Jonathan Storment as the congregation’s 10th preaching minister last month, ending a year-long search after Mike Cope joined Heartbeat Ministries full-time last fall.
Lindsey Seufferlein. sophomore English major from Cedar Rapids, Mich., began attending Highland last fall just before the congregation started looking for a new minister. The search allowed her to better see what the church was and where it was headed, a progression Storment also wants to move forward, she said.
“He’s one of those people not content with the status quo,” Seufferlein said.
Storment graduated with an undergraduate degree in Bible from Harding University in 2003. He worked as a teaching minister at Jacksonville Church of Christ in Jacksonville, Ark., and joined the Highland staff after serving as the associate preaching minister at The Hills Church of Christ in Fort Worth for three years. Storment also gained experience at The Hills serving as a young adult minster and a college minister.
“I think it takes someone really special to relate to so many different age groups,” Â Seufferlein said.
Storment is finishing his master’s degree in Christian ministry at ACU. He says he has an interest in helping to raise up young preachers studying and living in Abilene.
“This is a strategic location where people are trying to figure out who they are and who God is calling them to be and I would like to be a part of that,” Â Storment said.
He said he felt called to serve at Highland because its definition of church is not limited to only serving church members on Sunday mornings.
“I never saw church as a place where you just come and spend one hour of  your week. One of the things that drew me to Highland was that was not how they understood church either,” Storment said.
Rather, Storment describes Highland as a place of blessing from which to send people out.
“In my opinion Highland is a kingdom outpost that exists for the people that aren’t a part of her.,” Storment said. “The general sense of Highland is to be a place where we can bless and equip and let people go.”