DAPHNE, Ala. — Pastor Timothy Conaway is a Daphne native who said he has finally come home to start his own church in his hometown, but he hopes his church can help the people and this area through ministry.

“We feel the Lord called us to come home and start a ministry,” Conaway said. “It is a great area that is booming with youth needing influence and a safe place to learn more about God.

“We love the atmosphere and we love the community. We felt like there was no better place than Daphne to start a church.”

He hopes to increase church attendance by offering an experience that will appeal to many.

Conaway said the church will be affiliated with the Church of God in Christ, but his church will function more like an independent or non-denominational church. He said the church will use the Church of God in Christ for spiritual guidance, but his services will be causal.

“We will have contemporary worship with casual dress every Sunday. We want you to come as you are. It will be a church that focuses on practical teaching and practical living but we felt it necessary to be affiliated with a larger denomination for accountability reasons and for spiritual guidance along the way,” Conaway said.

“When you come to Restoration Place Church you can expect to be greeted with a smile. We are a church that is mandated to not have an intimidating atmosphere,” Conaway said.

Conaway said he hopes to offer a worship service where members of the congregation can reach God and meet the needs of the community.

Conaway hopes his church can fix something he sees as a problem in society today. He said his church will not focus on any specific gender or ethnic group, because he says “Sunday morning is the most segregated time in our country.”

He said it is “not because of any law or because we don’t get along. We will eat together and go to games together but on Sunday morning we go our own separate ways,” he said, referring to churches that attract mostly white or mostly black members.

Services will be held at the Lake Forest Yacht Club every Sunday at 10:30 a.m. beginning March 27. Conaway said the location was selected because it is a central location in Daphne and the Yacht Club has agreed to allow the church to use it. He is expecting between 50 and 100 people at the first service thanks to innovative advertising used by the church.

Conaway set up a Facebook page for the church, which he said had more than 700 friends, and he created a YouTube video to generate more buzz for the church.

“We were trying to get the word out,” Conaway said. “When we were getting close to the launch date we wanted to send out a video to enhance our outreach efforts.”

In 1999, Conaway, then 19, “received a serious fervency to serve God after going to college,” he said. He got his license to preach in 2000 and has been involved in ministries in Huntsville and Memphis before returning home to Daphne.

“I have been in and around church basically all my life, but I became very serious about it at the age of 19. We have been on fire since then,” Conaway said.

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