GREENVILLE, S.C. (BP) — There is a sense of loss when people leave a church. There are also times when that loss is coupled with celebration.
Christ Fellowship Church Cherrydale began 15 years ago, sent out by another young church, Crosspoint in Clemson, S.C. As church planter in residence at Crosspoint, Matt Rogers learned about looking at the bigger picture and serving in a ministry that remains small even though it is in consistent growth.
Christ Fellowship, with attendance of 500-600 each Sunday, is currently in the middle of showing what that looks like.
Five families have recently pledged to go overseas and help start new churches, with two of them already on the field. Another will have their last Sunday this weekend. The final two will be gone by the end of the year.
“Gone,” of course, is subjective, as Rogers maintains contact with them. Their absence will be felt, though.
“These are people that you love,” he told Baptist Press. “You have stories with them and seen God sanctify them. I watched four out of five of these couples start dating in college. I did their premarital counseling, saw them get married and walk through family dynamics.”
The first family went to France, taking five girls under the age of 10. It was a “tear-fest” in the children’s ministry that last Sunday.
“All those little girls were so sad that their friends were moving,” said Rogers, a father of five. “In about a month we’re putting three moms and 10-year-olds on a plane to visit them. They were such a vibrant part of our church.”
And yet, the same tight connections that led to the tears are the very reason people keep showing up. Christ Fellowship Cherrydale isn’t supposed to be big, not in the way historical American Christianity has viewed it, anyway.
“We’ve always wanted to be seen as an aircraft carrier to the nations, a place where disciples can be formed to lead a healthy church,” Rogers said. “We want to nurture a vibrant life in Christ that compels a person to give their lives for the second mission.
“From the beginning, we wanted to be a mission-sending church by practice, not by aspiration.”
Baptist Press reached out via email to one of those sent out from Christ Fellowship. For security reasons, his name and place of service can’t be identified, but he said Christ Fellowship showed him that local churches are the “ecosystem of our life in Christ.”
He told Baptist Press when he began attending Christ Fellowship in college, he learned for the first time that God wasn’t concerned only with what happens inside the church, but He is concerned with the whole world. He soon began going on overseas trips with the church.
“Following Jesus means going where He leads you,” the Christian worker said. “Sometimes it’s next door, sometimes it’s to other nations. The reason Revelation 7:9-10 will one day be a reality is because faithful, Jesus-centered, local churches raise up laborers to be sent to places where Jesus is not known and worshiped so that Jesus would be known and worshiped through the local church. We’re where we are because CFC raised us up and sent us to do just that.”
One may notice that Christ Fellowship’s building looks considerably older than its congregation. That’s because it was built in 1946.
After meeting in various spaces for the first few years, Christ Fellowship eventually merged with another congregation that was without a pastor. The combination works in many ways, as it is a young congregation that has always had a more historical way of looking at things.
It began with Rogers’ experience at Crosspoint.
“That was about helping to train and equip future pastors, and that got into my bones,” he said. “I grew a love for the local church and awareness of it as a mission-sending force. The entirety of the church’s life should exude a passion for God’s glory among the nations.”
In turn, he has also led in establishing similar pastoral residencies.
“I got my PhD on pastoral formation in North America and argued for a return to the local church, apprentice-based models of pastoral training,” said Rogers, who attended Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. “I think kind of like in the colonial era, where if you’re a blacksmith you’re trained under someone in that craft.”
Christ Fellowship has already planted three congregations in the Greenville area. One of those, Ridgewood Church in Greer, S.C., needed approximately 40 members from Christ Fellowship to launch.
It recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.
“Cost” doesn’t feel like the right word when a family leaves Christ Fellowship, Rogers said. It feels more like you’re celebrating that individual, family or group’s opportunity.
“You want to create a culture that’s valued. When we put our church budget together this year, 26 percent of it was going outside of our walls to some type of mission or mission endeavor. So when families join our church, that’s the kind of thing that excites them.
“And when you see what incites them to give their life, to move, I think it’s seeing a generous church that is investing in the nations. They feel tethered to it and what God is doing. That’s a really beautiful thing.”
