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.

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

I have a hunch that this might go down as one of the most significant pictures of my life! My heart rejoices in the Lord for these two godly pillars (founding elders David Meade and Steve Krogh) and the list of these 55 precious First Members of Christ Church.

Christ. We looked at Romans 10 and right there in a coffee shop about five minutes away from where I grew up, Ben called upon the name of the Lord and confessed Jesus as Christ and Lord. Since then, we continue to meet together weekly to study the Gospel of Mark. He had also gone through our baptism class and publicly professed his faith on March 20 along with two other people. This is a great encouragement to me.

Other testimonies we have heard from people who have engaged with our ministry is that they are so thankful that in the midst of a lot of things being done in the name of Jesus, there is a church that preaches God’s Word and proclaims the gospel. Many have also testified that they did not realize that God’s Word has so much to say about how we are to intentionally and faithfully pursue life in the local church. We are grateful to hear these kinds of testimonies.

PHASE 4 // ESTABLISHING NEW MINISTRIES OF EQUIPPING AND STRENGTHENING

As the Lord continues to build his church, our elders are beginning to make plans for how we can raise up ministry leaders and gospel workers and also strengthen our families and young adults that the Lord has brought to Christ Church. We are hoping that this coming fall 2022, we will be able to establish family ministries, a young adults fellowship and a ministry training track for those who sense God is calling them to serve in leadership in the local church.

GRATEFULNESS TO GOD FOR YOU

College Church is a special local church. What the Lord is doing in you and through you is having ripple effects for the advancement of the kingdom of our Lord throughout the world, and he is establishing a new outpost for the gospel in the southeastern part of the U.S. None of this would be possible without your steadfast encouragement, your love for us and for the gospel, and your generous giving and entrustment that you have so graciously given to us. We hope to make you proud in the best sense of the word and we look forward to sharing more encouraging updates in the days ahead. Please continue to pray that we would be found faithful to God’s Word, that we would lovingly and courageously proclaim the gospel, that the Lord would raise up a new generation on the southside of Atlanta who love Christ and count everything else as loss to know him. Your words of encouragement are food for the soul, so feel free to drop a note and check in anytime: zfallon@ christsma.org.

If you would like to see more about what’s going on with our church plant, visit our church’s website: www. christsma.org. You can also follow us on Instagram to keep an eye on what we doing: www.instagram.com/ christchurchsma.