PLAIN TWP. − Like many Stark Countians, the Rev. Daniel Dunnivan was a generational patron of Fishers Foods.
“It’s where my grandparents shopped. It’s where I shopped. I bought my grandmother’s house, so I live just a mile from here. Our kids go to Plain Local Schools,” the 46-year-old said, standing in front of the former Fishers store at 44th Street and Cleveland Avenue NW.
“We know the Fishers. We love the Fishers.”
On Aug. 30, Dunnivan plans to reopen the building’s doors, this time as RedOaks Church, which is transforming 10,000 square feet of the one-time grocery store into a worship and community space. He serves as lead pastor.
“RedOaks is part of the RiverTree network,” Dunnivan said. “We’re just one out of eight other campuses.
“RiverTree really strives to have local churches that really represent their communities. It’s not going to look anything like RiverTree in Massillon or RiverTree Jackson. It’s going to look like Plain Local, truly an expression of our community here. And I think that’s one of the beautiful things about RiverTree is that even though we’re all connected under the same umbrella, we all have a different expression based on where we’re located.”
Choosing the name RedOaks
Dunnivan said the name was chosen to pay homage to the area’s plentiful red oak trees, which are the fastest-growing version, as well as being a biblical reference. Isaiah 61, which Jesus quoted in his first public statement, makes reference to making wrong things right, fixing what’s broken, and that (the faithful) will be “like oaks of mighty plants.”
“We kind of summarize that as our mission,” he said. “We want to be like a great oak, and we’re making the connection between that, and where we live, where there are oak-named things, so we were trying to connect the dots. We also want to be more than just a bunch of branches, reaching wide but being shallow. We want to be deep and wide, so the red oak tree became our metaphor.”
The building once housed one of seven Fishers Foods locations. The family-owned grocery chain, founded by the late Joseph Fisher in 1933, closed in 2025.
“We officially signed the lease agreement with the new owners of (the building) back in November, and construction began a couple weeks after that,” Dunnivan said. “There was some holdup with the permits and all of that, but our goal is Aug. 30 for our first service.”
The church is leasing only part of the building facing 44th Street NW, while the remainder is available for retail and other usage.
RedOaks was planted in 2021 near the tail end of the COVID-19 epidemic.
“We were trying to rent from the schools but no one would open their doors to us because of COVID,” Dunnivan said.
The nondenominational congregation found a welcome at nearby Faith Community Church just to the south at 4301 Cleveland Ave. NW.
“They had a hall in the back that was just sitting empty, and so they said that we could lease that,” Dunnivan said. “And so, we’ve been kind of tucked away in the back of another church for the last five years.”
RedOaks, with no advertising or signage and a single service at 9 a.m., has grown to 150 members.
‘We’re still a young, small church’
“We’re still a young, small church,” Dunnivan said. “A third of our church is children. So if you come on a Sunday morning when we have the kids with us in worship and we send them to their class, it looks like half our church just left.
“We have young families, but we also have all ages. We have 80-year-olds on down to babies. But I would say the majority are young families in their 30s and 40s with young children. We have good diversity now, but we’re praying for more diversity.”
The Rev. Mandy Codispoti is RedOaks’ family and connections pastor.
“I work with the families and kids. I provide a lot of family-disciple and discipleship resources. I do all the obvious things that a kids’ pastor would do,” she said.
“I also preach about every eight weeks. I’m also in charge of a lot of the teams, our host teams, our hospitality teams. My favorite part is the ‘connections’ part to our community. We are on a mission in Plain Local. I am at the schools almost every week, and we partner with them on a variety of different things.”
Codispoti said she’s looking forward to moving into the new location, which will enable them to be more active in the district and community.
“I really like it,” she said. “So, one of the constraints of sharing a space with another church is you have to honor that it’s their space. They’ve been extremely gracious and kind, and I would even say overly generous — they’re amazing. But the thing I’m most excited about is saying to (school administrators), ‘Hey, our space is open. What do you need? What can you use it for?'”
Codispoti said her son and daughter have used RedOaks’ current space for school projects and programs, including a Christmas party.
“I want to do more of that in the future,” she said. “To bridge that gap between us and Plain Local. We have space available for whatever purpose. That’s what gets me excited.”
Dunnivan noted that their new location sits between North Canton and Canton.
“For the last five years, we’ve really been praying about where God wants us to be,” he said. “I drew a circle on a map five years ago to determine a good location. There are a lot of churches in Plain on the northeast side. I thought if we are going to plant a church, this would be the ideal place. I even wrote it in a journal that if one day, Fishers ever became available, we want our church in there.”
Fishers Foods to be remembered
Electrical, HVAC and water services have been installed, with drywall installation being the next step. Dunnivan said the entire renovation bill is around $200,000, most of which the congregation has already raised.
“We got to come in (June 14) for the first time with our church,” he said. “We got to write on the brick inside, prayers and messages and Scriptures.”
Dunnivan said the new sanctuary will be able to accommodate about 350 people. There also will be four classrooms and a food pantry.
“We’re calling it the Fishers Foods Room, so they’ll still have a presence here,” he said. “We serve students at Avondale School on the weekends. My wife, Kristin, is a community liaison there.”
Codispoti described RedOaks as an “empowering” church that feels like a big family.
“Everybody’s welcome,” she said. “You’ll be greeted at the door, you’ll be loved and cared for, and then you’ll be empowered to go out for Jesus in your own community. We don’t just want you to live out our mission.”
Dunnivan said the church is planning an open house in September.
“We want the community to see what’s available to them, so we can dream together about how the space can be used for the community,” he said. “We don’t want this just to be a space for church. We want to see it used during the week. Our goal is not to have a bigger church, but growing the church larger in the community.”
More than 50,000 square feet of the first floor is still available for lease from the developer. Another 50,000 square feet is located in the basement. Dunnivan said he’s hoping some local businesses will decide to lease some space.
“Even for me, if I lived here and I wasn’t a pastor and I just heard a church is taking over, I’d be like, ‘Oh, man, I was hoping for another grocery store, or another place I can eat or drink some good coffee,'” he said. “So we’re praying that we’re going to have some good neighbors, and some good local food for us to eat at after service.”
Reach Charita at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com.
On Twitter: @cgoshayREP
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Former Fishers Foods site is the new home of this ’empowering’ church
Reporting by Charita M. Goshay, Canton Repository / The Repository
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Charita M. Goshay, Canton Repository | USA TODAY Network
