ZACH FALLON, PASTOR OF CHURCH PLANT IN GEORGIA
What in honor it is to be your church planter. I hope that the report below strengthens your faith in Christ and encourages you with the power of the gospel and God’s desire to see the gospel advance in our own generation. PHASE 1 // GOD GATHERS A TEAM
Christine and I and the kiddos moved to the South Metro area of Atlanta in June 2021. We moved down with Steve and Lois Krogh, with the prospect that a local church down here in the area was prepared to welcome us and help us see a new gospel proclaiming church established. We spent the first three or four months down here getting settled in and meeting a ton of people to get a sense of what the Lord was preparing and what the spiritual needs of the area were. Having grown up here, I was already aware that there are many professing believers down here, yet there remained a need for clarity on the message of the gospel, a healthy understanding of the local church, and a commitment to training and sending gospel workers into the harvest. Christine and I hosted many people in our home and our leadership team had interest and introduction meetings for a couple of months to see who might be interested in helping see a new, healthy church planted. The result of those efforts was that by the end of October, 55 adults and 32 children would become the team the Lord had prepared to see this new work established. We are so grateful for these faith-filled believers! PHASE 2 // EQUIPPING THE SAINTS
After the Lord identified this group, we then spent two months having equip meetings together. At these meetings, we went to the Scriptures together to see what the Lord’s vision is for a healthy local church. During this time, we built relationships with one another and made plans for establishing a healthy local church. We identified some leadership teams to help oversee various aspects of the ministries we intended to pursue, and we spent many evenings praying and planning for all the Lord had for us.
18
CO L L E G E C H U R C H 2 02 2 ANNUAL R E PO RT
PHASE 3 // PLANTING THE GOSPEL
On January 16, 2022, the day Georgia saw snow and flurries for the first time in years, 175 people gathered to worship the Lord Jesus and hear the gospel proclaimed from Galatians 1:1-5. The following week, we started our discipleship cohorts ministry, which is one of our key discipleship ministries for our members. We also started hosting monthly community groups in our homes and welcomed in many visitors the Lord was drawing to our ministry. Since then, we have had about 150 different people come through at various times to see what the Lord is doing in and through Christ Church. We hosted our first new members meeting in late February and had 20 adults participate in that. We also had another new members meeting planned for late March, and 15 people signed up for that at the time of this writing in early March. Several encouraging stories have begun to emerge. Probably the most encouraging one is a 22-year-old guy named Ben. Ben came to our church on our second Sunday through the friendly invitation of one of our members. He showed up at our church and said he did not own a Bible, so I gave him a copy of God’s Word and asked if he would be interested in reading it together. We met up later that week with a couple of young guys from our church and began to go through the Christianity Explored resource on the Gospel of Mark. By the end of that first study, Ben shared that he sensed God was calling him to trust in