Selling a Vision for God on Craigslist

from The Global Advocate - May/June 2023

by Churches-of-God-General-Conference

Region by Region

by Jacob Clagg, Director of Communications

The Southeast Region Conference (SRC) is the newest region in our denomination, having been ratified less than a year ago at the Triennial Conference in July of 2022. But we would be selling the SRC woefully short if we pretended their history extended back only a year. Plans have been in place for the Southeast for years, and hardworking spiritual leaders have been building the Kingdom in places like Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina during that whole time. The story of the Southeast is one of patience, persistence, and prayer. It’s a story in which small churches have big visions, and where individuals have made it their mission to change whole cities for Christ.

In truth, the work of the SRC began over a decade ago, having sprung from the most unlikely of places, a Craigslist ad. And the person who posted that ad was Rich Thornton. Rich is currently, along with Victor Glover, one of the Directors of the SRC but at the time, Rich was a worship pastor and working for the Eastern Regional Conference (ERC) of the Churches of God. Rich and Chuck Frank, the Director of Church Planting for the ERC, were working together with the Church Planting Commission, coming up with all sorts of ideas of how and where to plant churches, while desperately seeking out motivated individuals to carry out the work.

In an interview, Rich recollected that, in late March of 2010, he was sitting at home in Pennsylvania. His wife had recently read an article about how Raleigh was in the top five places to live in the country and suddenly Rich realized that if Raleigh is going to grow, then it would need churches to shepherd that booming population. But the ERC, and, in fact, the entire denomination, didn’t have any churches near Raleigh. The CGGC’s closest church was in Manassas, Virginia. Then Rich made the connection. He’d used Craigslist to sell all sorts of things. He had sold some TVs, a swimming pool (probably not an inground one), and even a car on Craigslist. Why couldn’t he sell a vision for planting churches? It didn’t come with money, but it came with support, training, and mentorship. As Rich tells it, it felt like a shot in the dark, and he was hesitant to tell anyone about it.

**The Southeast Region Leadership Team in December 2021**

On his own blog from 2011, Rich describes his pessimistic feelings about the Craigslist ad, saying, “Somehow I don't even think the process worked enough for it to get posted. If it did, it never worked because no one contacted me.” Both in his blog and through our interview, Rich confirmed that he told only one person about the ordeal, asking them to pray about it. He related that the ad “remained unanswered for 16 months. No one responded, not even a bad candidate. Not even a response trying to sell me something. Nothing at all.” But none of this deterred Rich. His confidant kept on praying, and more than a year later, in late July of 2011, Rich posted the ad again. This time he received three responses almost immediately. It was, perhaps, providence that 11 years later, almost to the day, the CGGC would officially recognize the Southeast as a region. In the months following, more responses would continue to roll in, and it wasn’t long before Rich and the ERC were interviewing pastors from North Carolina as potential church planters. By 2012, they were actively planting churches in Raleigh and other towns like Chapel Hill.

In and of itself, it’s a mysterious little success story. Rich reflected on the unlikelihood of it all, and how nearly they had missed the opportunity. “I often think about, what if I had not posted it again? What if I had just let the idea go?” In truth, God was moving behind what Rich could see. Chuck Frank had serendipitously left a brochure for the ERC’s 2020 Church Planting Initiative at an event at Liberty University. A pastor by the name of Victor Glover decided to pick up the brochure, and it just so happens that he had also seen the Craigslist ad. Victor hadn’t met either Chuck or Rich, but had just recently started a church in the Spring of 2011, and was looking for additional

support. Victor wasn’t alone either. A number of pastors were being pushed towards the Raleigh area to plant churches and none of them had any affiliation with the Churches of God, General Conference. As alluded to earlier, by the fall of 2011, a whole group of pastors were being interviewed and selected for the church planting process.

At this point, it was clear that something bigger was forming. Indeed, individuals in the ERC were already starting to talk about the idea of regionalization. The sentiment seemed to be that if these churches took off, they would be too distant from the ERC to be easily grafted in. Rich admits that he was “actually slow on that. I didn’t want to start a region that wasn’t ready. Before I was ready to say it’s a region, others were saying let’s do it. I was real hesitant.” Rich believed that, despite the obvious quality and character of the people involved, the churches in the south still needed support from the ERC, and Rich remains convinced that this was the right decision. As an example, remaining connected to the ERC through the troublesome time of Covid seems particularly fortuitous.

In truth, the relationship between the Eastern Regional Conference and the church plants is still quite special. Pastor of Last Days World Outreach Ministries in Hillsborough, NC and current Director of the Southeast, Victor Glover says that, “It’s been everything to me, from the very beginning, I’m just appreciative because the ERC has discipled us and now, we’ve been equipped from all the training, and they empowered us. This is what was birthed out from intentional relationship building. And this is the fruits of what ERC had a vision for.”

As the churches were planted and the ministries really started to take off, leadership from the ERC, especially Rich, made frequent trips down to North Carolina and South Carolina with the goal being to equip the pastors and church planters. There they had training sessions, boot camps, and other times of teaching. Many of the pastors were planting churches for the first time, and so while they could use the extra ministry training, they also needed things like finance training and best practices for operating a business. It’s the kind of institutional memory that legacy churches and businesses take for granted, but which start ups are in desperate need of.

Conversations were being held within the denomination as early as 2015 to begin the process of regionalization, where members of all levels of the CGGC were present including the CGGC Executive Director, Lance Finley. Which is to say, things were starting to become official. By then, Rich was already in a full-time position as the ERC’s Southeast Field Director, a position that reflects the growing sense of the Southeast as a legitimately connected field of churches and pastors who were working toward a common goal, as opposed to a few isolated ministries.

The years between 2015 and 2019 solidified the region, and by this point, the majority of the churches present in the region now,were either getting off the ground or were well-established and growing in their ministries. The Orchard Church, started in 2012 and currently pastored by Jimmy Grainger, feeds people in Thomasville, North Carolina once a month. The aptly named church doesn’t gather on that Sunday and instead they go pass out meals. They've been doing it for about 9 years, and this past December they celebrated giving out their 10,000th meal! We all know the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5000, and the immense scale of the miracle often baffles people. How do you feed 5,000 people like Jesus? Well, maybe you do it 50 or 100 people at a time.

Pastor Mary Houston began House of Restoration Church (2015) in Charlotte, NC, which has since grown into a potent prayer ministry. Meaning while, in 2016, both Pastor Antoine Lassiter and Pastor Everett Spencer, Sr. planted Think Kingdom church and New Dimensions Church in North Carolina and Georgia, respectively. What developed through these years was, as Pastor Reginald Byrden described, “a team effort. We win as a team, we don’t lose, we just learn as a team.” And it was this sense of unity, mutual support, and inclusion, which Pastors Mary Houston and Randall Hall-Walker spoke about at length in their interviews. More than anything, it was the unity of the pastors on the ground that turned this group of pastors into a genuine region.

The Southeast couldn’t just have a name on it. It had to be real and authentic, and by 2019, it was. Rich and his wife were all in on moving south. Their daughter had just entered college, and they both recognized the need to be closer to their calling. After a meeting with the then director of the ERC, Nick DiFrancesco, Rich was finally given the gohead, with his only assignment being to get the region up and running. With a powerful sense of calling and motivation, Rich and his family moved south. Of course, this was just before the start of Covid. Rich typifies the experience when he said, “Then Covid hit. And I spent 2020 and two and a half years talking to people.”

During Covid, Rich and Victor buckled down and continued to do what they were called to do, namely, build leaders and get the region off the ground. For Rich, this meant a long process of writing and formalizing a constitution for the Southeast Region. For Victor, it meant continued efforts to uphold his own ministries, like Fathers on the Move, while working to support the leadership in the region. Through this difficult season, their hard work paid off. The churches under their care didn’t close, and in fact you’ll read in a later article how some of them flourished. Likewise, when in 2022, the pandemic had largely settled, the constitutional work was done, and during the CGGC’s Triennial Conference, mountains were being moved to ensure that the Southeast would be officially recognized.

After 11 years of hard work for Rich and the rest of the Southeast pastors, it must have been particularly meaningful then when on Monday, July 25th, 2022, the Southeast was officially made a part of the CGGC and was recognized as the denomination’s newest region.

“It was one of the coolest things ever for me,” Rich said, “Last summer, when the motion passed and people immediately, without being asked, stood to their feet and began to applaud, that was pretty cool. It wasn’t just the Southeast. It was a General Conference thing. It was the support of everybody.”

There was an interesting mixture of joy and relief in Rich’s eyes and voice when he retold that story, and he’s equally proud of the leadership in the SRC, because while they are official, there’s still a lot of work to do. Director Victor Glover knows that now is the time for the SRC to build the Kingdom, “Now let’s go, do, and be what we’ve been equipped to do. Let’s represent the CGGC in a way that’s pleasing to God. We can see disciples being made, disciple makers being developed, church planting, leadership, micro church, fresh expressions, and have a pathway for people to go through… We’re excited.

The Southeast is our baby, and it’s been birthed and we’re going to feed it, nurture it, and it’s going to be a beautiful asset to the CGGC. And we want to have relationship to the other regions. One body but many members.”

Amen, Director Victor.