It was the fall of 2008 when my wife Emily and I had the privilege of attending a Couple’s Conference with a pastor friend and his wife from a neighboring town. At the time of this conference, I had just completed my 10th year as pastor of Highland Drive Church in Lincolnton, NC. This was my first pastorate, and the truth is, I actually felt that it would be my only pastorate. I often said that I could see myself retiring in that town while serving that church.
While at this retreat, tucked back in the mountains, in what seemed like hundreds of miles from the next town, we began to pray about what our next ministry steps could look like. We had no external reasons to leave. After all, the church was growing, new doors of ministry were opening for us there, and the Gospel was going forth multi-culturally. What more could we ask for? Internally, however, my wife and I were both feeling a redirecting from the Holy Spirit. It was during that retreat that we said out loud what we had both been thinking—maybe it was time for us to consider planting a church.
Church planting had always been in the back of my mind. In fact, a college assignment for me was to come up with a fictional church name and a town to consider for a new church. This assignment rocked my world, and I prayed that would one day have the privilege of serving in a church plant somewhere. Side note- I recently found the business card that Emily designed for that class assignment and we both chuckled a bit as we looked at it.
After arriving back home, we agreed to take some time and to pray about this matter while considering some options that may be available to us. One of the options was with the church planting arm of our denomination. I reached out to them and asked them about some of the areas with which they were praying for church planters. Little did I realize that the simple “inquiry” conversation that day would open doors for us that were beyond our imagination.
We were tasked with choosing two or three cities for consideration, and with those names in hand, we made our first weekend trip to the Buffalo New York region. There were several noteworthy things that stood out to us from that trip. 1) Chicken wings made in Buffalo (the original location) are infinitely better than I could have imagined. 2) Those in Buffalo take their sports teams very seriously. While the 1990’s proved to be some disappointing years for the Buffalo Bills, the allegiance and loyalty to this team is unlike anything I have witnessed, except for maybe University of Alabama football. 3) There is a serious void of evangelical churches in the Buffalo area. Statistically, Catholicism accounts for anywhere between 70% and 90% of the population, at least in name.
Needless to say, that short weekend trip radically changed our lives and the trajectory of our ministry. We completed the application and acceptance process of North American Ministries and six weeks later, we resigned the pastorate of that church in Lincolnton, NC and started the process of relocating to Lancaster, New York.
I will share more details of our actual church planting journey throughout the next several blog posts. Suffice it to say, after a year of fund-raising and gaining prayer support, we were off and running. NorthPoint Church officially launched as a church plant on Sept. 11, 2011. In June 2024, we launched a second location in the Buffalo area (West Seneca), and we continue to pray for the opportunity to plant other churches in and around the Buffalo area.
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