Our church’s journey begins in the fall of 2011. I resigned from a secure position at Zion Tabernacle Baptist Church to pursue the calling God had placed in my heart – to plant a church! In 2008 the Lord gave me the vision to plant The Way Church. As a leader I saw the need for a church to reach “de-churched” and unchurched urban people in inner city Oakland. From that vision The Way Church was planted in East Oakland a few years later – an intentionally multi-ethnic, gospel-centered church of and for poor people. Something we hoped to duplicate over and again throughout Oakland.
Later on I had the opportunity to meet Paul Chan (the West Coast Regional Vice President for World Impact). I shared with him the burden I had to reach Oakland by strategically planting new churches. Paul shared with me the vision of World Impact. You could only imagine the excitement I had when I heard World Impact’s vision and mission – it’s safe to call it a match made in Heaven! A few meetings and an interview resulted in our church being an official partner with World Impact and me becoming an Associate.
I was given the opportunity to attend an Evangel School of Urban Church Planting. This was by far the most effective conference gathering of my ministry career. What an experience! This was a great time of learning from urban ministry practitioners and people with hearts big for urban ministry. Honestly, I had grown weary of church planting conferences. They never seemed to address the unique challenges and issues associated with urban ministry. So I was always left with the task of trying to explain my context at conferences or trying to translate what was communicated into my context. Evangel proved to not only recognize the challenges and issues associated with urban ministry but answered those challenges and issues with Scripture, experience and proven practices.
I left Evangel challenged, encouraged and prepared for church planting among the urban poor. Since then, our church’s impact has been seen through the spiritual transformation in men, women and families in our community. We’re celebrating people coming to know Christ and being baptized! Evangel’s training resulted in the most effective Easter celebration in the life of our church. We witnessed a record number of guests, some we were able to get connected to our plant. We serve the third Sunday of every month at CrossRoads, an emergency homeless shelter in our city, and we have been experiencing an overflow of attendance! To our surprise (not God’s), people who have transitioned out of the shelter are returning there for church! We are eternally grateful to God for this act of grace. We believe that our training from Evangel aided in this significantly. We have a hope that eventually the ministry at CrossRoads will be a church plant, and when that happens Evangel Urban Church Planting School will provide the training for the pastor who will lead this new church.
Read more about pastors equipped by the Evangel School of Urban Church Planting.