World Impact’s mission is to facilitate church planting movements among America’s unchurched urban poor. In my 14 years in ministry as a preacher, planter, and pastor I can testify that church planting in impoverished neighborhoods is one of the most challenging yet rewarding calls in my life.
I have planted and/or replanted three different churches in my career. My first church plant was called A More Excellent Way – taken after the Apostle Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13 passage about love. This church plant started out of my home. My second church plant was called Revolution Carson. This Church plant was originally going to start as a “campus” of a multi-site church. But after the moral failure of the founding pastor of that mother church our launch team decided to separate ourselves from that ministry and plant The Rock Church.
The Rock Church was birthed out of the words spoken to the Apostle Peter by Jesus himself who said, “Upon this ROCK I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Since then, we have been worshiping and engaging our community for the past seven years. We are now on the brink of birthing a new church plant with World Impact Associate Cedric Nelms, who is a good ministry partner of mine.
Officially launching Pastor Cedric Nelms and Chosen Generation Fellowship has been a year and a half in the making. Cedric was under the pastoral leadership of our pastor at Holy Chapel Baptist Church in Compton and then under my ministry and leadership at The Rock. He received coaching, mentoring, and friendship from me during this almost two-year process. What makes this one so special is he is a World Impact Associate who has been a great ambassador for the ministry here in Los Angeles. Secondly, through all of the trials and ups and downs, he has finally landed a home in Los Angeles for his church plant. Chosen Generation will launch on March 13 at noon at Slater Street Missionary Baptist Church in Watts.
If you are not aware of this church let me give you a little history. Slater Street is directly across the street from Will Rogers Park (the name I know it to be from back in the day). It is also on the corner next to the Hacienda Projects and around the corner from Compton Ave Elementary (my first teaching assignment in LAUSD) and Markham Middle School. What makes this so special to me is that Slater Street is the church that my family helped organize in the early 60's when they moved out there from Memphis, TN. It is also the church where my grandfather was a deacon and the church where I received Christ!
This is a huge blessing for Pastor Cedric and his wife Karen as they are parents to a son who is an ambassador for Verbum Dei High School as a freshman right there in Watts. With World Impact's history starting right there in the city of Watts almost 50 years ago, I think it is a great opportunity to for us to re-establish a presence there in the community once again.
Peter Watts is the Los Angeles City Director. Read more from Peter.