- When I started to sense
the Lord's calling in my life
to plant this church,
I really had no idea
that he would ultimately be calling us
back to our hometown.
(gentle music)
Back in 2019,
I was serving in a wonderful church
in Huntsville that my family and I loved,
we'd been there for 10 years,
but it felt like God
was bringing that season to a close.
And we'd been praying about
what he would have us do next.
And it was during that season that I met
a guy named Allen Tate.
He's a church planter in Florence, Alabama
who started a network of churches
called The Well Network to plant churches
in college towns across the Southeast
to reach and disciple and equip and send
college students and people across that city
to the cause of the kingdom.
And so as he shared that vision with me,
it was captivating.
It was compelling.
And so Allen and the network asked me
to pray about planting a church
in a college town across the Southeast.
And honestly,
my initial reaction to that was was no,
absolutely not.
I've got three young kids
and that was terrifying for me and my family.
And I didn't, I didn't want to pray about that,
but as my wife and I started to pray,
we couldn't help but pray about it
and really felt the Lord calling us
and drawing us into church planting,
particularly in a collegiate context.
And so that's what we did.
We started to pray about that.
We began a season of researching college towns
and maybe figuring out a city where
we could do this type of work,
where God would call us to do that.
And we were struggling to figure that out.
And I grew up in Tuscaloosa,
Tuscaloosa is my hometown,
my wife and I were both born here
and grew up here.
So we were coming home for Mother's Day weekend
to come see our moms and in the car,
we were talking about Tuscaloosa
and my wife just kinda muttered.
She said, I just,
it sounds like Tuscaloosa
could use a few more good churches.
And it was startling to me.
It was almost embarrassing
because it never crossed my mind
that God might be calling us home.
(gentle music)
We picked up, we moved our family to Tuscaloosa,
to plant Church at the Oaks
here on the campus of University of Alabama.
I believe that the college campus
is one of the most strategic mission fields
in the world.
In a college context, like University of Alabama,
10,000 people a year move here,
6 or 7,000 of them are not going
to know the Lord.
I can't think of anywhere more strategic
to do ministry where you're reaching
and then discipling, equipping,
and then sending out people
all over the world to be kingdom makers.
And so that's what we've tried to do.
So we began that process with discipleship groups
and added community groups.
And the last thing we did was add in
weekly worship services in January of 2021.
And so, through the pandemic,
we've seen God be incredibly faithful.
I would get to see this incredible amount
of fruit through that.
And so, God's continued
to draw people to the team.
We've seen people trust Christ as their Savior.
We've gotten to do baptisms in our services
and baptisms in lakes.
And it's just it's been a beautiful season
getting to see the gospel take root
in people's lives.
If I were to ask anything of you,
I'd ask you to pray.
And so every day at 10:02,
I have an alarm set on my phone
to remind me to pray Luke 10:2,
which says the harvest is plentiful,
but the workers are few.
So pray for the Lord of the harvest
to send laborers into his harvest field.
We're never going to run out
of lost people to reach in Tuscaloosa.
We're never going to run out of people
that that are, you know,
to be discipled in Tuscaloosa,
but we need laborers.
We need people to join in to help shoulder
the weight of ministry with us.
(gentle music)
I am so thankful for
the Myers-Mallory State Missions Offering
and the way that it supported us
and encouraged us and helped sustain us
through this time.
It's a huge part of God's faithfulness
to help make this work possible
and works like ours
all across the state possible.
(gentle music)