BARNESVILLE — Ed Eberhart is a minister and a board of education member — and in both roles he actively engages with the people of the community and listens to their ideas.

Eberhart is the senior minister at First Christian Church in Barnesville, a role he has held since 2006.

Although he has been employed by the church since 1997, he spent his first couple years there as a youth minister. In 1998, he became a pastor at the church, and in 2006 when it hired another youth minister, he became the senior minister.

Eberhart performs the pastoral duties of preaching, teaching, counseling, marrying couples and administrative work in the office.

He said the world is living in the digital age now, so a growing trend within the church industry is the use of the internet.

Since 2020, the church has livestreamed its Sunday services. Eberhart said this allows people to watch the service if they are not able to come in for some reason, whether that be sickness or something else.

He added that churches across the industry have been struggling with membership and attendance, but First Christian Church is blessed to surpass that trend and bring in high numbers.

People are also now able to go online to the church’s website to see what it’s all about.

“I think that’s a neat opportunity that people have now that they can check churches out online,” Eberhart said. “Whether it’s the website or whether it’s the service being streamed, they can check churches out online before making the decision to show up for an in-person service.”

He believes the new technology of streaming has had a positive impact on the church.

“I think it widens our exposure in the community and even beyond,” he said. “We have people watch our service from all across the United States.”

The church has a lot of outreach ministries, such as feeding people through its “five loaves” food ministry and helping young mothers and families through the Gabriel project, which provides clothing, diapers, wipes, food and cribs to babies and small children.

“My hope would be that the Kingdom of God and that the gospel would always grow,” he said. “So, if we are doing ministry right, then I’m convinced that there will be growth in the church, that we’ll be able to reach the community in even greater ways. I feel like we do what we’re supposed to do, the way the Lord has set up the church. I feel confident that it will continue to grow.”

Eberhart added that he thinks it’s important for there to be strong churches in healthy communities, and healthy communities will have strong and growing churches.

Not only is Eberhart involved in the community with his ministry, he has been vice president of the Barnesville Board of Education since 2022. He also served for six years as a trustee of Belmont College, which he said he enjoyed.

He described the school board’s job not as running the school’s day-to-day operations, but as working with the superintendent in setting policy and holding schools accountable for carrying out the policies the board adopts.

“We represent the interests of the community,” he said. “We’re kind of a link between the school and the community, and sometimes I see my role is trying to be a voice on the board for the community, and so to offer that perspective to the school.”

Since Eberhart is a minister, he knows a lot of people, he said, which is helpful being a board member because he has a lot of contacts and does a lot of networking in the community. That allows him to know what people are saying, what people’s questions are and what ideas they have.

“So I think both of them work together very well, because they’re both about working with people and hearing people’s concerns and then responding to them,” he said.

Eberhart said school districts face a lot of financial pressures, providing services to students and the community but being limited on funds. He added the Barnesville district tries its best to manage its money wisely.

Eberhart said Barnesville schools continue to grow, as they are great places and have significantly more students from neighboring school districts enrolling than they have leaving Barnesville to enroll somewhere else.

“I think people see that we have tremendous community support in Barnesville, for our schools and for our athletic teams and all of that,” he said. “So I think we have to be smart and make wise decisions going forward, but I think the school in general is going to continue to excel and to grow because of that.”