A Memorial Garden Finds a New Home
Gracious Hospitality at a Tender Moment

By the Rev. Amy Duiker, pastor of Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church, Kettering, and the Rev. Cynthia Holder Rich, pastor of Corinth Presbyterian Church, Dayton.

When a congregation decides to sell its buildings and move on, that one decision raises many other questions that need answers. Corinth Presbyterian Church has learned this truth again and again over the last six months, and members have come to know the great importance friends in ministry can have when critical choices have to be made.

One of these was the question of what would happen to the Corinth Memorial Garden. The Garden was opened in the 1990s, and many saints of Corinth have been remembered there. On August 16, 2026, the Corinth Presbyterian Church Memorial Garden at the buildings was formally closed. On that day, boxes of soil from the garden were given to family members of many Corinth saints, and the congregation also took a box of soil, separated into two bags, with them when they moved their ministry to nest at Ohmer Park United Methodist Church. The question of where the soil would be scattered was still on the table, and the relationship of Presbytery of the Miami Valley congregations brought the answer to the surface.

Corinth leaders and members of the Administrative Commission looked for a new home for the Memorial Garden that would allow their members and families to visit.  They hoped for an arrangement with a congregation in our presbytery that would be convenient to where most members lived.  When a member reached out to Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church, who has its own Memorial Garden, the Session quickly agreed that it wanted to be good neighbors to its siblings in Christ at Corinth.

They worried, however, that the current overgrown and somewhat neglected condition of its Memorial Garden would be unhospitable!  Using the request as an opportunity to clean up the area and the surrounding garden beds, Sugar Creek established a Garden Guild to make the space ready to share and to be more welcoming to all who visited.  Hours of labor over several months bore fruit (and far fewer weeds!), enabling the congregation to support Corinth in a small but meaningful way in this season of its ministry.

On Sunday, November 1, All Saints’ Day, the Corinth Memorial Garden was formally transferred to Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church, Kettering. More than 20 members of Corinth and Sugar Creek gathered together for the service, and both pastors helped lead the service. During the service, soil in one of the bags taken from the Corinth Memorial Garden was scattered at Sugar Creek. The other bag of soil will be held until Corinth finds a new permanent ministry home and is able to reestablish a Memorial Garden there.

The members of Corinth Presbyterian Church are grateful for the ministry relationships with other presbytery congregations—through the Collaborative Congregations network, through the participation of the PMV Administrative Commission, and through the support and prayers of many across the presbytery. Corinth members have learned that there are significant challenges in the move from an established place of ministry to ministry on the road. Friends are precious when the call comes to a congregation to go.

Corinth members are grateful for the gracious hospitality of the Session and congregation of Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church at a tender moment in this journey. Thanks be to God for the witness of the saints—both those who have gone before us, and those who offer support and stand with us all in this life.