South Dakota Brothers-in-Law Lead Historic Church Reunion

Faith Facts

• Two brothers-in-law ministers helped heal a 20-year church division in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, uniting two congregations into one thriving body of believers.
• Scripture teaches that division among Christians weakens the witness of the Gospel, and unity reflects the heart of Christ as stated in John 13:35.
• The merged Sioux Falls Church of Christ now serves over 200 members weekly, including many children, demonstrating how faith, family ties, and obedience to God can restore what was broken.

Two brothers-in-law. Two ministers of the Gospel. Two congregations once divided by disagreement. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, those realities have become a powerful testimony to God’s ability to bring healing where there was once separation.

Clint Giltner, the church’s preaching evangelist, and Zack Opheim, its discipleship evangelist, shared their recollections over Sunday lunch at Blarney Stone Pub in Sioux Falls, the state’s largest city with a population of about 225,000.

Both still sported their Sunday best: a button-down shirt and necktie for Giltner, who delivered the sermon that morning, and a short-sleeved polo and John Deere cap for Opheim.

As their varied attire reflected, these two men of God could not be — in some ways — any more different. Count Giltner, 39, as the straight-laced one, the rule-following Oklahoma City cop’s son whose father, Greg, now serves as chief of police at Oklahoma Christian University.

View Opheim, 44, as the one with the rocky past, the drug addict who turned his life around. He found Jesus in a halfway house a quarter-century ago. “I was just a Minnesota methhead,” Opheim quipped.

Their paths crossed because Giltner, measured and reflective, and Opheim, blunt and spontaneous, married sisters. Both Sarah Giltner and Elizabeth Opheim have biblical names.

Contrasting personalities aside, the husbands always have gotten along well. That is, except for a brief time years ago when Giltner temporarily broke up with his future wife.

“So we were trying … to comfort Sarah,” Opheim recalled with a laugh. “So we said everything, like, ‘Clint is a scumbag. He’s a real, cheap, dirty loser.’ And two days later, she comes back smiling, and they’re back together. It’s like, ‘Hey, Clint.’”

“It was longer than two days,” Giltner corrected. “But definitely, she’s not forgotten that I did that.”

Same family, different churches

The sisters have family ties to Sioux Falls, where a monumental stainless-steel sculpture called the Arc of Dreams spans the Big Sioux River. Clint Giltner earned a degree in communication studies from Oklahoma Christian in 2009 before he felt called into ministry.

He served as the family and involvement minister for the Mannford Church of Christ in Oklahoma for five years. In 2015, Giltner returned to his wife’s South Dakota hometown to become the preacher for the 41st Street Church of Christ, which the sisters’ parents, Tom and Mary Wilcox, attended.

The 41st Street church, with Sunday attendance of about 150, had resulted from a 1999 breakaway from another Sioux Falls congregation. Since the split, the Southeastern Church of Christ, about 3 miles away, had dwindled to roughly 50 members.

“Being from Oklahoma, I’m just used to having multiple churches in a place, and that’s just normal,” Giltner said of his native state, which has more than 500 Churches of Christ. So the idea of trying to reunite the split congregations was not on Giltner’s radar.

But South Dakota — which is larger than Oklahoma geographically but more sparse in population — counts only a few dozen Churches of Christ. Long distances typically separate individual congregations in the Dakotas.

Enter Opheim, who completed his Bible degree at Oklahoma Christian in 2008. He did mission work in China and then preached domestically before experiencing ministry burnout. In 2017, he decided to move to Sioux Falls and work as a roofer.

His focus on manual labor did not last long. Opheim soon found himself recruited to serve as the full-time minister for the Southeastern church. “In my interview, I said, ‘I don’t see a reason why the churches remain divided, and I think we should work toward getting together,’” he recalled. “Immediately, people took me aside and said, ‘Oh no, that’s never happening.’”

One’s advantages, another’s disadvantages

Once in the Southeastern pulpit, Opheim preached expository sermons that he prayed would soften hearts to the idea of reuniting. In a Southeastern men’s meeting in January 2019, two members — Roger Schulke and Kyle Adams — proposed approaching 41st Street’s elders with the possibility of a merger. Southeastern did not have elders.

“I never got a voice out of the air that said, ‘Do this,’” Schulke said. “But the signs were there, and I said, ‘I think God might be telling us to pursue this.’”

Both Schulke and Adams became members at Southeastern after the split. Neither knew the ins and outs of why it occurred. Many of those involved had moved away or died. Gary Styke, one of 41st Street’s elders along with Tom Wilcox, was part of the group that left Southeastern in 1999.

While reluctant to discuss the specific reasons for the split, Styke told The Christian Chronicle concerns related to how to approach Scripture, including whether to preach a more positive message. When first approached by the Southeastern brothers in 2019, 41st Street’s elders were reluctant to consider a merger.

“Honestly, our thoughts were, ‘We want a good relationship, but we think there’s probably room for two churches in Sioux Falls,’” Styke said. “And the leadership from Southeastern was very persistent and adamant. … They convinced us that this was something that we at least needed to prayerfully consider.”

As Schulke saw it, bringing the two congregations together made sense. Southeastern had a larger building, while 41st Street was cramped for space. Southeastern’s members were mostly older, while 41st Street had younger people. “The advantages of one congregation were the disadvantages of the other,” Schulke said, “so we presented it that way in a positive manner.”

As the discussions progressed, the congregations decided to put aside past differences and become one body again — as the Sioux Falls Church of Christ. In May 2019, more than 200 men, women and children gathered for the kickoff service.

Jim and Kim Vander Woude started attending Southeastern in 2001. Although the split occurred before their arrival, they celebrated the merger. “I mean, division is never good,” said Kim Vander Woude, a mother of two daughters now in their 20s. “You see all the turmoil that happened in the first century church, and we know that God doesn’t want that.”

Giltner and Opheim remained as the ministers. Styke and Wilcox became elders for the full group, although Wilcox later stepped down after his wife, Mary, died of brain cancer in September 2019. Greg Alexander is now the second elder.

While moving into the former Southeastern building, the newly combined group kept 41st Street’s schedule — worship first on Sundays, followed by fellowship time with coffee, juice and doughnuts and then a Bible class hour.

“I just see God’s hand in it,” Styke said of the merger. “It’s been a blessing. It doesn’t seem like we have two congregations. It seems like we have one congregation, and that was the goal.”

Styke downplayed any notion that the family relationship between Giltner and Opheim played a huge role in the merger. “It was more due to their character,” Styke said. “I mean, they’re both interested in the Lord’s church.”

Different personalities and strengths

For their part, Giltner and Opheim welcomed the opportunity to work together and focus on their individual strengths. Giltner’s gifts include sermon preparation, church organization and hospital visitation. “I’m comfortable in the pulpit and teaching,” the father of four said.

Opheim said he’s at his best building relationships with seekers and leading Sioux Falls’ addiction recovery ministry. “I don’t have any administrative skills,” joked Opheim, a father of three. “I just open the Bible and drink coffee with people.”

Soon after the merger, a group of about 50 Christians — some who had driven about 70 miles each way from Tyler, Minn., to worship in Sioux Falls — formed a new congregation closer to home. But with growth in recent years, the Sioux Falls church still tops attendance of 200 some Sundays — including 60 to 80 children.

“Babies are a little noisier, but guess what? They are our future,” said Dave Cutshall, a deacon who helps lead Sioux Falls’ support of international ministries such as Healing Hands and Orphan’s Lifeline.

Jada Baltazar, a mother of four young children, drives more than 50 miles each way to worship with the Sioux Falls church. “Something that really made a difference to me is how much everybody accepts you and welcomes you and treats you as family, and that never changes,” said Baltazar, who owns a Mexican restaurant with her husband, Humberto, in Madison, S.D.

She previously attended the 41st Street church. The merger, she said, “gives the opportunity to share cross-generational wisdom for biblical living.”

Ethan Bilbrey witnessed the merger from about 260 miles away while serving as the minister for the Richfield Church of Christ in Minnesota. He recently moved back to his home state of Tennessee, where he preaches for the Westwood Church of Christ in McMinnville.

“I grew up in a Church of Christ that split when I was 7 years old,” Bilbrey said. “I know personally the grief this causes to brothers and sisters and the negative effect it has on our witness to the Gospel in the community.”

He emphasized how much the Sioux Falls merger encouraged him. “I see the work of God and the power of the Gospel in the reconciliation of the two congregations becoming one again,” he said, citing Jesus’ words in John 13:35. “I pray that more churches who have experienced division could love one another and be reconciled for the sake of the mission of God.”

Stepping out in faith — again

On a recent Lord’s Day, Sioux Falls’ opening announcements offered details on a community clothing giveaway, an areawide hay ride and a group going to encourage the Vermillion Church of Christ, about 60 miles south of Sioux Falls.

A third minister added to the Sioux Falls church staff last year — 32-year-old Mackenzie Driscoll — led the Vermillion trip. Driscoll, a Sioux Falls native, served for years as a volunteer youth minister before mentioning his desire to become a preacher.

He’s helping with the church’s technology needs and producing a church podcast featuring the ministry team. The congregation didn’t necessarily plan to budget money for a third evangelist, Giltner and Opheim said. But as with the merger, the Sioux Falls church stepped out in faith.

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