When Shawn Snyder and his family moved from Memphis to the Northwest in 2015, they weren’t simply relocating—they were walking onto a mission field. The church that Shawn was being called to pastor wasn’t just struggling; it was in crisis. What awaited them was a near-empty building, a small group of older members, and a debt load far greater than they had anticipated. But even still, they sensed God’s call clearly: This wasn’t a place to abandon—it was a place to begin again.
“We were called to come to Medford, Oregon, to do a church replant,” Shawn said. “God called us back; that’s how I describe it.”
The replant started with seven people, all over the age of 70, and a building that had been neglected for years. It wasn’t just a spiritual renewal that needed to happen—it was a physical, structural, and financial one too.
“We had to really begin from scratch,” Shawn said. “The first year was just really understanding what we got into because there were a lot of things we didn’t know.”
Once they had an idea of the work needed for the Living Hope Church replant, Shawn and his team rolled up their sleeves and got to work.
“The building was not in that great of shape, so we needed to clean it up, clean it out, and reestablish Living Hope in the community,” Shawn said.
Five years in, Bellevue stepped in to partner with Living Hope when a fire damaged the church’s sanctuary in 2021. A missions project team helped clean up and prepare the space to reopen. Ever since then, Bellevue has continued to support the church by sending residents, teams, and resources.
“We were having some insurance issues, and then Bellevue sent a team that summer, helped us set up our sanctuary again, and got us cleaned up so we could have services in our main building again,” Shawn said. “Since then, they’ve come each year for a missions trip.”
Through partnerships with churches like Bellevue, Living Hope has been able to launch ministries such as Engage, a college campus outreach, and Kennedy Hope Kids, an after-school program where kids from the community can hear the Gospel regularly. But while the building was being restored and the congregation regrowing, Shawn began to realize the deeper challenges weren’t structural—they were cultural.
“There’s definitely biblical ignorance here,” Shawn said. “There are a lot of people who are generationally lost, so they have not been to church. Their parents don’t go to church or their grandparents.”
Even among Living Hope’s congregation, spiritual depth wasn’t always guaranteed. Many had settled into routines of attendance without ever being discipled, and their understanding of Scripture or commitment to living it out was often shallow or fragmented.
“We had people who had been in church for years but didn’t understand what it means to apply God’s Word,” Shawn said. “When we introduced church membership, that was our first big pushback. People didn’t get it.”
Living Hope responded by making a clear discipleship pathway where members could learn what it truly means to be part of the Body of Christ. But the goal was never just to grow Living Hope—it was always to multiply its impact.
“We want to be a church that plants churches—that was one of our desires when came here,” Shawn said. “We’ve been planted for years. Now we want to be a hub that sends out leaders and planters.”
That vision is becoming reality. This year, Living Hope sent out their first church planters, Taylor and Hannah Benton, to Yerka, California. They also sent out their first missionary, Emily Kingsbury, who had grown in her faith through Living Hope’s disciple-making pathway.
Now, after a decade of transformation, Shawn says the church is back in a season of evaluation and renewal.
“The way we’ve described it is ‘10 years in and ready to begin again,’” Shawn said. “We’re kind of reevaluating what’s worked and what hasn’t worked. Over the next 10 years we want to continue connecting with the community. We feel like there are more people in our church who feel called into ministry, and we want to give them an opportunity to be encouraged, developed, and then deployed to wherever God’s calling them to go.”
Living Hope’s prayer is that what God started 10 years ago won’t stop with its current members. They believe the impact of their story is just beginning—that the seeds planted in faith a decade ago are now bearing fruit meant to be shared far beyond their walls.
“Everything we do, we want to multiply,” Shawn said. “We’re not just trying to establish a church—we want to see a movement of God in the Northwest and beyond.”
To learn more about how you can serve with our national church partners, visit bellevue.org/missions.