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When Nathan Roe Dorner is baptized Sunday , he will not be the only one to experience rebirth and new life in Christ.

Standing with him at the threshold of renewal will be four generations of Dorners, together with the whole of the Starmount Presbyterian Church family.

As the first child to be united with the church in Starmount’s newly revitalized sanctuary on its Rededication and Homecoming, Nathan’s baptism marks the ending and the beginning of a long journey for child and church. In fact, when Nathan’s great-grandmother, Clara Jane Dorner, first arrived here with her husband, Frank, in 1957, Starmount was a new church development with only a modest chapel and no grand worship space.

The elder Dorners, after initially joining First Presbyterian Church, did not call Starmount their church home until their son, Frank Jr., and daughter-in-law, Ann, discovered and invited them to the congregation’s new sanctuary in the early 1970s.

“The first Sunday that we visited Starmount, we were hooked,” said Ann Dorner. “The next month, we were already working with the youth program. From the very beginning, it was a family, the kind of church where you knew everybody and everybody knew each other.”

Although the extended Dorner family was unquestionably attracted to Starmount by the unique warmth of the church’s membership and pastoral staff, they, like many members, found that the worship space did little to enhance the congregation’s overall appeal with its poor seating, sight lines and uninviting color scheme.

When Starmount’s current pastor, the Rev. John L. Odom, therefore announced early last year that the church leadership had decided to embark upon a major capital campaign to renovate the sanctuary, the Dorners stood in full support.

“We saw that it was intended by God,” Ann Dorner said. “It was needed for our church to continue to grow.”

Undergirded by the faith and support of families like the Dorners, the church’s ambitious fundraising campaign — called Faithfulness to All Generations — was successful in raising nearly $1 million for the sanctuary’s revitalization and the hiring of a new minister of outreach, a position to be filled May 4 by the Rev. Laurie Valentine. That attests to God’s abundance even in bleak economic times.

“Proclaiming God’s faithfulness to all generations is our response and our responsibility for a faithful future at Starmount Presbyterian Church,” Odom said. “We are following in the footsteps of this church’s bold leaders of the past. They stepped up and stepped out sharing the steadfast love of the Lord with generations here in Greensboro. Today, our call is to respond to this very same God who has continuously and benevolently blessed us.”

With its up-to-date worship space and in its renewed commitment to community outreach, the Dorners have great hope in Starmount’s future and in its ability to attract new members.

“You can already feel the difference in the way people are responding,” said Frank Dorner Jr. “There’s a real feeling of optimism now.”

That positive outlook is shared by Daniel and Nadine Dorner, Nathan’s parents, who like Daniel’s parents before him, now serve as volunteer leaders with Starmount’s middle school youth program.

“When I first walked in to Starmount, I was warmly welcomed,” said Nadine Dorner, who had little previous church involvement. “Now I’m excited that our son will grow up in this church and do what his dad did.”

“It’s really cool,” Daniel Dorner added, “to see all the new babies coming into the church right now. I know that our new church and all of the new stuff will keep them here, giving Nate a great group of kids to grow with and to play with. We’re definitely excited to keep going to see where it all leads us.”

The Rev. Emily Enders Odom, an associate for Mission Communications for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national offices in Louisville, Ky., lives in Greensboro.