Josh Yerton, pastor of Restoration Church

There’s a new interdenominational church coming to Salem towards the end of September, and it’s technically “under construction,” since they’ll officially be meeting at the Salem Family YMCA.

For a little over a year, a small group of families has been meeting for approximately in order to bring a new church to Salem: Restoration Church. It’s affiliated with the Church of the Holy Spirit in South Roanoke County and with Orchard Hills in Bonsack.

Pastor Josh Yerton and his family, who have been serving at Orchard Hills for about six months from Kansas with the intention of starting Restoration Church, recently moved to Salem. They’ve already begun to host gatherings and bible studies with about 30 families, most of whom are young with children, Yerton said.

For a list of events, there’s a church website (www.restorationsalem.org) and they have a Facebook page, too.

“The idea of it was, there were a lot of people  that we were talking with that live here in Salem, and love Salem, and are kind of focused on Salem, except they go to church in Roanoke, or Botetourt,” said Jeff Lakin. He is the Salem and North Roanoke area Young Life director and his family was one of the first to start talking about bringing the new church to Salem.

“Twenty minutes might as well be a world away,” Yerton said.

Having local families stay local for church just makes sense, Yerton said: “We’re a part of the community; we get to be a part of what’s going on here. The first wave of this church is kind of bringing people back to Salem to be back in this community,” Yerton said. “Some would argue, why not the churches that already exist, we just figured that there’s not a church like this in Salem.”

Although Young Life will definitely continue its strong relationship with all of the Salem churches it’s already a part of, Lakin said, this is the first church in Salem that will partner with in mission as closely as Restoration Church will and have “Young Life DNA” built into it.

-Miranda Beck