Our Story

Having been in full-time ministry for the past 18 years, Amy Jo and I have finally come to the point in our lives where we’re able to see the specific purpose for which God has been preparing us. We feel that God is calling us to plant a church in Chattanooga to reach the lost: both those who have no church experience and those who have stopped going to church for various reasons. We like to refer to these people as the “unchurced” and the “dechurched”.

For those of you who don’t know us, let me share a little of our story with you to let you know how we’ve reached this sense of calling. We both grew up in Church of Christ families who were committed and involved in their respective churches. Both of our fathers have served as elders. We met at David Lipscomb University where we both graduated with degrees in Speech Communication.

While dating, I shared with Amy Jo my feeling that I was being called into ministry. I felt that I had been prepared with my Speech degree to communicate effectively both publicly and interpersonally, but I felt that my knowledge of the Biblical text was lacking. I wanted an in-depth study of scripture from cover to cover. After looking at various graduate programs, I decided to enroll in the Memphis School of Preaching. While Amy Jo and I had heard this to be a conservative-minded school, we felt like it met our needs. While there, we were confronted with controversial doctrinal issues and matters of opinion where we found ourselves differing from almost everyone there. In some ways, we learned a lot about what we believe by challenging ourselves to study what was being taught. Perhaps the biggest lesson we learned from this time in our lives was the value of approaching scripture with an open mind and of exposing oneself to differing opinions.

Our full-time work began in associate positions working with youth, family, education, and involvement ministries. We’ve seen the work of the church from many different angles. God has used this variety of opportunities to develop our skills and help us discover which gifts we have that will be most useful in his Kingdom.

In 1999, we experienced a significant spiritual breakthrough after we lost our second son, Will, who was 15 months old, to heart disease. The healing that God brought about in our lives gave us a deeper understanding of not only His love for us, but also the transformation that only He can perform. This experience stirred in us a renewed desire to share God’s love with others. After two years of secular work, we determined in was time to get back into ministry.

In 2002, I accepted the lead minister position at the Ann Arbor Church of Christ in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our time there gave us the chance to get the perspective of ministry that we were lacking, that of being the one who shares a vision and direction for the church. We experienced the full spectrum of lead ministry from being loved and appreciated to being distrusted and blamed. We saw the highs and lows from growth and building plans to splits and financial instability. During our 7 plus years there, we led the way as the church there redefined herself in the community as a people of service and compassion. We feel, as do the people there, that we left the church a healthier, more relevant, more mission-minded body than we how we found it to be when we moved there.

Our family felt just as called out of Ann Arbor as we felt called to go there. We moved to Cary, NC in the fall of 2009. Amy Jo found an excellent opportunity to advance her career in nursing at Duke Children’s Hospital. When I left the Ann Arbor Church in October, I thought I would be taking advantage of an opportunity to work outside of ministry. However, that opportunity was lost due to the economic downturn our country has experienced of late. This is where we began to see God at work.

When we arrived in Cary, we started looking for a place to worship and call our church home. We really wanted to find a place that was close to home, one where we could feel comfortable inviting our friends and neighbors. We decided to look beyond the fellowship of Churches of Christ, and discovered a church called Crosspointe. We came to find out that it was started in 1998 by 3 families who moved to North Carolina from Indiana. Today, there are more than 3500 members! What we found to be most exciting about Crosspointe was the fact that it was reaching the “unchurched” and the “dechurched!” Over and over again we’d talk to people who would say that prior to finding Crosspointe they’d either never been to church or hadn’t gone since they left their parents’ home. The stories were different, but they all had the same gist: they’d “never experienced church like this before.”

The very first couple we met there happened to be the children’s ministry director and her husband who was one of the elders. They also happened to be one of the original 3 families that planted the church 12 years ago. Kris and Greg Stoner took a leap of faith and have seen what God can do through people who seek to spread his Kingdom. They recognized in me a discontent with traditional ministry. The discontent that comes from being so distracted with “member matters” and “family disputes” that you can’t focus on reaching the lost. They encouraged me to not give up on ministry altogether—but to consider a new approach, that of planting a church. It was when this seed began to take root in our hearts that Amy Jo and I felt like we knew the real reason God brought us to Cary.

After meeting a host of people involved in the world of church-planting, we were invited to attend a Discovery Lab hosted by Kairos, a church-planting organization associated with Churches of Christ.  After a week-long process of interviewing, observation, and project participation, the Kairos team affirmed our readiness to serve as a lead-planter couple. We are thrilled that they looked at our life experiences and agreed that God has been working in us to prepare us for this journey!

We continue to see God’s hand in the relationships that we’ve formed over the years and even during the past few weeks. We’ve been talking with and praying for people to join us as part of our team in this endeavor. We can’t wait to see how God brings together a mix of people with various gifts, strengths, and personalities, all with the shared focus of reaching the lost in Chattanooga. This is just the beginning of the story and we’re already hooked!